As protesters bay outside BBC, Nick Griffin insists 'I am not a Nazi'.

A police helicopter hovered over the BBC studio in White City last night where over a thousand protesters stood outside lamenting the appearance of Nick Griffin on Question Time.

In the first question, the panel was asked whether it was fair that the BNP had hijacked Winston Churchill. Griffin said that the wartime prime minister would have been a member of the BNP. "I said that Churchill would belong in the BNP, because no other party would have him for what he said in the early days of mass immigration into this country, the fact that they are 'only coming for our benefits system', and for the fact that in his younger days he was extremely critical of the dangers of fundamentalist Islam in a way which would now be described as Islamophobic."

In one of a series of hostile interventions from the audience, a young black Briton called Griffin disgusting, and accused him of poisoning British politics. "For just one minute, could you not think of the benefits that my parents brought to this country? No. All you're thinking of doing is poison politics. The vast majority of this audience find what you stand for to be completely disgusting." As the audience cheered, Griffin said he had been portrayed as a monster because of "outrageous lies".

Asked by the Question Time presenter David Dimbleby what had been untrue, Griffin said: "The vast majority of them, far too many to go into." As the audience laughed at Griffin's refusal to detail what he called lies, Dimbleby asked whether he had denied the Holocaust. "I do not have a conviction for Holocaust denial," he replied.

Griffin's defence appeared to be that he has been misquoted, but Dimbleby was quick to bring up quotes which Griffin was unable to deny, such as his wish that Britain return to being 99% genetically white, as it was 11 years before he was born. It was notable that Griffin offered no defence for such a statement - how could he, as this is his dearest wish - and instead concentrated on some misquotation from today's Daily Mail.

It was also pointed out that Churchill had previously been abused by the BNP as "a f@cking (beeped out) who led us into a pointless war with other whites, i.e., the Nazis who were standing up for their race", and the panel members found it particularly offensive that the BNP now use Churchill in their campaign leaflets.

In a sign of the BBC's determination to put pressure on Griffin, Dimbleby asked why he had met Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Griffin said Duke was a non-violent figure, prompting laughter.

The panel was also asked why Islam is a "wicked and vicious faith" – a reference to remarks by Griffin. He said there were good points to Islam because it opposes usury, but added: "It [Islam] doesn't fit in with the fundamental values of British society – free speech, democracy and equal rights for women."

When a young Jewish boy said, "Sir Winston Churchill put everything on the line so that my ancestors wouldn't get slaughtered in the concentration camps. But here sits a man who says that is a myth just like a flat world was a myth. How could you say that? How could you?"

Griffin pathetically replied, "I cannot explain why I used to say those things." He then went on to claim that European law prevents him from properly explaining his position.

Jack Straw, the justice secretary, said there was no law preventing Griffin from explaining himself. Griffin said he now accepted that Jews were murdered after hearing British radio intercepts of German transmissions which showed there had been a mass murder of Jews on the eastern front. "What about Auschwitz," Straw asked of the extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. "You don't need a subsequent radio intercept to find out that people were gassed at Auschwitz."

Griffin won't remember this as one of his finest nights. He came across as duplicitous, as someone who was frightened to actually state what it is that be believes in. Instead, he attempted to make out that he was constantly being misquoted, instead of taking this moment to make clear to all what it is that he actually believes in.

The fact that Griffin did not take this moment to tell us all what he actually stands for condemns him. He can't tell us what he believes in because he knows that the majority of people would be repulsed by the actual policies of his party.

His party stands for racial purity. Their limited success has been by hijacking public concern over immigration and attempting to use those concerns to take the country towards a racially pure place, which he knows that the majority of Brits do not share with him. This is why his answers were so tediously evasive.

He made me laugh out loud at one point when he was speaking of the "indigenous British". When Jack Straw interrupted saying, "The whites?", Griffin ludicrously stated, "Skin colour is irrelevant Jack, skin colour is irrelevant."

This, coming from the leader of a party who have only recently been forced by a court of law to accept non-Caucasian members, was simply laughable.

The truth is that even Griffin lacks the courage of his own convictions to stand up and loudly make his case. He pretends not to see colour, but I defy anyone to state that they truly believe that Griffin is serious when he says that.

He won't count this amongst his finest moments. As Jack Straw said in summing up, this was actually catastrophic for the BNP.

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Tags: Nick Griffin, BNP, Question Time