00:00Joining us in the studio is James Bethel, Director of Nothing British About the BNP,
00:04the campaign group responsible for circulating today's letter.
00:07Nick Griffin, Chairman of the BNP, is in Strasbourg.
00:09We did ask all the generals who signed today's letter to come on the programme,
00:12but they wouldn't agree to debate Mr Griffin, or indeed to appear.
00:15Nick Griffin, truth to tell, there's a high percentage of the British Army
00:20you wouldn't allow to be members anyway, at least 10% anyway,
00:23because they don't fit your ethnic criteria.
00:27Yep, that's entirely true. It doesn't mean they're not British.
00:29They're civically British, but the British National Party is here
00:32for the ethnic British, who are otherwise represented, unrepresented.
00:36It doesn't make them hostile to those other people.
00:38It just means that we're different from them.
00:39And they may not join your party?
00:42And at present they may not join our party,
00:44but we recognise and appreciate the sacrifices that they've made
00:49and the service they've brought to the British Army as much as anybody else.
00:52Well, what's your problem with Mr Griffin's position?
00:56Well, he claims to be sharing values
00:58with British military armed services.
01:01That's just not true.
01:03The armed services stand for courage, fairness, decency.
01:06Mr Griffin stands for segregation and confrontation.
01:11Mr Griffin?
01:13Well, Mr Bethel, of course, is a high-ranking Conservative.
01:17This whole thing is the Conservative Party having a go at a political rival.
01:21You're talking there to the fifth Lord Bethel,
01:24to a Tory toff who's got no idea of what ordinary squaddies are going through
01:28in places like Afghanistan today,
01:30because our establishment insists on dragging us into wars
01:34that are nothing to do with us and sending our troops in improperly equipped.
01:37It does seem rather odd that none of the generals that have signed your letter
01:40are prepared to come on and challenge you, Mr Griffin.
01:42No, it was a short-notice request,
01:45and it was put to them after lunch,
01:48and I'm afraid they had other plans.
01:50But I'm here, and I'm here to explain what our campaign is about.
01:53But can I just pick up on one of Nick's points there?
01:56We're not a Tory front.
01:57That's just completely untrue.
01:58I was a candidate in the last election,
02:00and I do have a background in the Tory party.
02:02But our campaign is deliberately independent,
02:04because we're not only trying to hold the BNP to account,
02:08we're also trying to hold the establishment to account,
02:10because we recognise there are people out in Britain
02:13who have had a tough time,
02:15who are not properly represented by the government,
02:18but I don't believe that Nick Griffin has the answer for those people.
02:21Mr Griffin, isn't there a problem with some of the symbols that you use anyway?
02:24I mean, for a start, Winston Churchill's mother was American.
02:27She could not have been a member of your party.
02:29And the pilot in that Spitfire was a Pole.
02:32And it's doubtful he'd have been allowed to be a member of your party either.
02:35We've got a number of Polish members
02:37whose fathers fought for this country during the Second World War.
02:40We're very proud to have those.
02:41We're opposed to mass Polish immigration now.
02:44Yeah, but the guy in that plane was a Pole.
02:47He would not have been allowed to be a member of your party.
02:49So you've rubbed out 10% of the British Army serving today,
02:52the Polish pilot pilot in that plane,
02:54and possibly even Winston Churchill himself,
02:55because he had an American mother.
02:58No, we've got no issue with people with American mothers.
03:01In fact, Winston Churchill wouldn't have had a place in any party...
03:03She is said to have had a bit of Red Indian blood in her,
03:05according to the Daily Mail.
03:07She had a bit of Red Indian blood in her.
03:09You're in a terrible mess in the way that you try...
03:11Why are you so upset with race, Peter?
03:14...because your interest is in stripping out the race
03:17of the people who may or may not join your party.
03:20And that, in the end, is what upsets people.
03:23No, it's not.
03:24Our interest is the fact that Britain,
03:27if we're talking about immigration,
03:28that Britain is one of the most overcrowded countries in the world,
03:30that mass immigration is unfair,
03:32in fact, not just on the indigenous British,
03:34but also on settled ethnic minorities in Britain
03:37who've paid into our system.
03:38They should have their kids at the front of the housing queue,
03:41not people who've just arrived off a plane from Nigeria or Somalia.
03:44Why do you deny those Indian ethnic minorities,
03:48as you describe them, membership of your party?
03:51Why do you say they are unfit to join the British National Party?
03:56We do not say they're unfit.
03:58Please don't put words into my mouth.
04:00We say that...
04:01Or we've had a concern that when, for instance,
04:03we have the head of Operation Black Vote
04:04saying that they want to get large numbers of black people
04:07into the British National Party to destroy it,
04:09that would leave particularly the white working class
04:11in places like Burnley, with no-one standing up for them
04:14and giving them a political voice, that would be wrong.
04:16So we have to resist that, which we have done up until now.
04:19The charge against you, surely,
04:20is that you're making more of a mountain
04:22than the molehill that the BNP really deserves.
04:25I'm not sure about that.
04:26I think that there is a lot of anger out there
04:28that the BNP claim constantly,
04:31in the rhetoric, propaganda, leaflets, newsletters that they do,
04:35to have this shared values with the military.
04:38It was, after all, the Euro-election campaign
04:40called The Battle for Britain
04:42that got them a million votes in two places in Strasbourg.
04:45I'm really concerned that they will continue
04:47to draw on the warm feelings of the public
04:49towards the military,
04:51to masquerade as a group of people that...
04:55This is not unique to the BNP.
04:57Mrs Thatcher played to the great, sort of,
04:59patriotic virtues of Winston Churchill and the rest of it.
05:02Is the BNP doing anything so different?
05:04They are.
05:04I mean, all politicians, you're right,
05:06at some point try to associate themselves with the military,
05:08and the voters can make a decision
05:10on whether those are plausible or not.
05:11What I'm worried about is that the BNP
05:13are making a deliberate strategy
05:15to try and gloss over the association with criminality,
05:19with incompetence,
05:21and with indecency that they have
05:23by associating themselves with the military.
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