BOOS AS BIGOT FACES FURY ON TV

He urged the audience to give Griffin a fair hearing and insisted the BNP would not dominate the entire hour-long show. “Nick Griffin will feature large but it is not the Nick Griffin show,” said Mr Dimbleby. But bitter confrontations began from the first question onwards.

An audience member asked: “Given what the UK fought for in the Second World War, is it fair that the BNP hijack Winston Churchill?”

The question referred to images of the wartime Prime Minister used on BNP material.

Griffin responded by insisting Churchill had been “Islamophobic” and attempting to taunt fellow panellist Jack Straw over his father’s arrest as a conscientious objector. Later the BNP leader was put under intense pressure over his inter­national links with racist groups.

Mr Dimbleby showed the audience a photograph of Griffin with Ku Klux Klan chief David Duke. The BNP leader did not deny meeting the American racist, and claimed the Klan was a “non-violent organisation”.

Throughout the show, audience members directly challenged the BNP leader over his poisonous views. An Asian man asked “where am I supposed to go” if the BNP ever forced non-white people to leave the country. To incredulous jeers, Griffin claimed to be “happy” for the man to stay.

A Jewish member of the audience challenged Griffin over past accusations that he has denied that the Nazis murdered six million Jews in death camps during the Second World War.

The BNP leader claimed his views on the Holocaust had “changed” but refused to say why. He claimed: “I can’t tell you why I have changed my mind due to a European arrest warrant.” Griffin repeatedly pleaded that “out­rageous lies” had been spread about him. “I am not a Nazi, I never have been,” he said.

LibDem MP Chris Huhne, another panel member, challenged him: “You say Hitler went a bit too far. Which bit too far did he go?”

Griffin was also confronted over accusations that he had claimed black men “walk like monkeys”. He went on to argue that white people were Britain’s “aborigines” and claimed they were being “shut out” of their own country. As the show drew to a close, Mr Straw claimed the BNP had suffered a “catastrophic” week. “For the first time their views have been properly scrutinised,” he said.

Mr Straw pointed out that the BNP was a direct descendent of the neo-Nazi National Front of the 1970s.

Griffin had sneaked into Television centre around 3pm yesterday, accompanied by an entourage of burly BNP security staff.

At one point, he even admitted he was considering pulling out of the show because he was worried about his safety.

But he was clearly revelling in the media spotlight yesterday.

In a sickening message to BNP supporters hours before last night’s broadcast, Griffin described the show as a “milestone” for his party.

“Never before have we had the chance to present our patriotic, common sense solutions to Britain’s nightmare situation to the public at large in such a prominent fashion,” he boasted.