BNP leader Nick Griffin under fire in stormy Question Time debut
The BBC defended the appearance of Nick Griffin on a Question Time in which the BNP leader gave a twitchy performance and described homosexuals as "creepy".
Hundreds of angry protesters massed outside Television Centre in west London last night as Mr Griffin also denied he was a Nazi and said the Ku Klux Klan were "almost totally non-violent".
The BBC came under fire from critics who accused it of having legitimised the BNP's "racist" policies by inviting Mr Griffin on to the show.
Afterwards Welsh Secretary Peter Hain - who campaigned for many years against Apartheid and who had made a last-ditch appeal to the BBC to drop the BNP leader - bitterly denounced the broadcast.
"The BBC should be ashamed of single-handedly doing a racist, fascist party the biggest favour in its grubby history," he said.
"Our black, Muslim and Jewish citizens will sleep much less easily now the BBC has legitimised the BNP by treating its racist poison as the views of just another mainstream political party when it is so uniquely evil and dangerous."
However Justice Secretary Jack Straw, who was also on the Question Time panel, insisted that it had been a "catastrophic" week for the BNP, which had seen Mr Griffin exposed as a "fantasising conspiracy theorist".
"For the first time the views of the BNP have been properly scrutinised," he said.
BBC deputy director general Mark Byford insisted it had been "appropriate" to invite Mr Griffin to appear given the level of support his party achieved in the last European elections.
"Members of the audience asked the kind of tough questions that mark Question Time out as the premier television programme where the public put the panellists on the spot," he said.
"We remain firmly of the view that it was appropriate to invite Nick Griffin on to the Question Time panel this evening in the context of the BBC meeting its obligation of due impartiality."
