Britain’s most reviled man

27 March 2004

Jeremy Clarke talks to the BNP leader Nick Griffin, and is a bit shocked by his moderation

If there’s a race riot going on anywhere in Britain, Mr Griffin is there ‘visiting friends’. He was ‘visiting friends’ in Pollockshields on Saturday. I suppose that a man as hated as Mr Griffin is obliged to keep the few friendships he has in good repair.

‘There is nothing to be shown by going in and swaggering about the place,’ Mr Griffin is reported to have said. When pressed, Mr Griffin placed the blame for the murder fairly and squarely on the shoulders of the police, accusing them of halting an investigation into Glasgow’s ‘violent’ Pakistani youth gangs after it was branded as racist.

So what is the most accursed man in the United Kingdom actually like? Has all the bad karma directed at him given him galloping eczema or made him impotent? We met a fortnight ago, in the restaurant at Chester Services on the M56. He was on his way to his home in mid-Wales after ‘visiting friends’. Youthful vigour, cleanliness and a chunky-knit navy blue sweater were my first impressions. Thick black hair and the wonky eye my second. We sat at a corner table, a Perspex stand-up menu between us. The wonky eye is a result of an attempt on his life by Nature herself. He’d been burning rubbish in the fireplace of a derelict house when a shotgun cartridge, concealed among the rubbish, exploded in his face. ‘I’m lucky to be alive,’ he says.

For a very long time I had been wondering what exactly a ‘racist’ is. So who better to ask than the man accused of being Britain’s worst racist? ‘Can you tell me,’ I said, ‘what “racist” is and can your party be characterised as such?’