Cover Story

Let the people of England speak

1 January 2005

The BNP may be odious but, says Rod Liddle, there is something fishy about the arrest of its leader

That’s not quite what West Yorkshire police say officially, however. In a written statement to me (their press officers are incapable of speech, I think) they said the following: ‘West Yorkshire police has worked closely with the Crown Prosecution Service throughout this inquiry. The Home Office has had no part in the direction and control of this inquiry, which is the responsibility of the chief constable. However, both Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabularies and Home Office officials have been kept apprised of the progress of the inquiry.’

This is, to my mind, a direct contradiction of what the Home Office told me. What do you think?

Unofficially, the West Yorkshire police were more forthcoming. Two officers visited a local BNP member, Paul Cromie, as part of the same operation which ‘netted’ Nick Griffin. Here’s what one of the police officers, from West Yorkshire’s Manningham nick, told Mr Cromie at the close of his interview: ‘At the end of the day this whole thing should be ...well, it is very political. It’s not coming from senior police. It’s coming from much higher than that.’

Earlier in their conversation the same officer asserted that the investigation wasn’t expected to ‘come to much’.

We know this because Mr Cromie made a surreptitious recording of his interview and I’ve got a copy of the tape. I suppose he might have paid some actors to play the parts of policemen, but I don’t think so.

Anyway, West Yorkshire police said they wouldn’t comment on the comments allegedly made by one of their officers, which was no great surprise, frankly, as they wouldn’t even tell me what the regional crime figures were.

Curious to find out a little more about the mechanics behind the arrest of Mr Griffin, I spoke to the magistrate who signed the warrant for his arrest. That’s Mrs Valerie Parnham, who lives near Bradford.

A man answered the telephone. I told him I was a journalist and wanted to speak to Mrs Parnham. He shouted down the hallway: ‘Valerie? VALERIE? I told you this would happen!’

Then a timorous Mrs Parnham came on the telephone. ‘I can’t say anything about this. I could get into trouble.’