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BBC allows BNP members in Question Time audience
Fears of trouble in the studio as anti-fascist activists are also expected to attend
The BBC will allow supporters of the BNP to be audience members at tomorrow night's Question Time, the corporation revealed yesterday. The decision comes as it also appears likely that the BBC Trust, the broadcaster's governing body, will announce today that moves to block the appearance of Nick Griffin, the far-right party's leader, have failed.
The decision to allow party members and sympathisers into the studio at Wood Lane, west London, was taken after hundreds of BNP members wrote in to ask for tickets to the televised debate. The Question Time audience is vetted before they are invited - one sample question asks them which party they would vote for in a general election from a list that doesn't include the BNP but which gives the option of 'other' - and the BBC are carrying out extra security checks for tomorrow's edition.
Episodes of the programme are usually pre-recorded at 8.30pm on a Thursday evening before transmission later that night, but tomorrow's broadcast has been brought forward to 6.30pm for security concerns. No external journalists will be allowed to attend the studio, and all audience members are being asked to provide their phone numbers and email addresses. The worry for the BBC is that anti-racist and anti-fascist campaigners have urged their supporters to apply for tickets too, and trouble could break out in the studio.
Welsh Secretary Peter Hain, a long-time anti-racist campaigner who has staunchly opposed Griffin's participation on Question Time, attacked the BBC for their decision, saying: "This just reveals what I have said all along. This is not about the BBC exercising its charter duties of impartiality, as they maintain. This is about creating a great big beanfeast of a show that rockets their ratings and they walk away leaving the BNP in pole position. This is the BBC seal of approval on the BNP - a racist and fascist party - as a respectable party. It stinks."
Meanwhile attempts by Hain and others to have Griffin removed from the Question Time panel are expected to come to naught today. A panel of BBC Trust members, including Richard Tait, a former Newsnight editor, is thought likely to report that the BNP leader's appearance is acceptable under BBC guidelines.
Whether they take into account Griffin's attacks on four senior British Army former generals, remains to be seen. Responding to criticism from Sir Mike Jackson, Sir Richard Dannatt, Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank and Major-General Patrick Cordingley, Griffin wrote on the BNP website yesterday: "Those Tory generals who today attacked the British National Party should remember that at the Nuremberg trials the politicians and generals accused of waging illegal aggressive wars were all charged - and hanged - together.
"Sir Richard and Sir Mike fall squarely into this bracket, and they must not think that they will escape culpability for pursuing the illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan." ·
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LibLabCons brought it on themselves by ignoring the subjects that annoy most people in Britain,ie Uncontrolled immigration ,the EU and our diluted proud British and English heritage.
Let's have that General Election and soon !
I watched the BBC question time, and although I am not a BNP fan, Nick Griffin had every right to be on the show. However, I feel that the BBC had stacked the deck against Griffin in their choice of a studio audience. As for the panel, they were a bunch of unbelievable bores, who instead of debating, turned to attack Griffin. Griffin looked rattled by the onslaught of hatred vented by all concerned. It was like the pot calling the kettle black. Our political system is corrupt, and for that reason the BNP will continue to prosper, God help us.
"The BBC will allow supporters of the BNP to be audience members at tomorrow night's Question Time, the corporation revealed yesterday." That's not newsworthy. Has there ever been any other Question Time when members of the public who support legitimate parties other than the 'listed' ones have been deliberately excluded? If not, then why would there be any reason to suppose they would be banned when they have one of their own politicians and MEP on the panel? Such would be deliberately malicious and contrary. If the BBC did attempt to ban members of the public who vote for legal parties other than those on the list they themselves have drawn up - now THAT would be newsworthy! It would open the BBC up to all sorts of legal challenges. As for Peter Hain - well, he's just behaving like a fascist thug, trying to shut down the possibility of voices being heard who don't agree with his politics. Well, why don't we simply disenfranchise all those who don't want to vote for lefty parties? Why not turn the Army on them (since a few ex-Generals seem to be so het up), pull down their houses and turn them into dunghills? Make martyrs of them, that will do it. Making such fools of themselves, as Hain and the ex-Generals have done, guarantees to make the whole thing a bigger talking point this week so that more people tune in. A fantastic own goal, Peter: you're doing a grand job at making sure the BNP get a VERY good hearing tomorrow.
No problem, i am all for freedom of speech, if he is talking rubbish then the whole country will hear and act accordingly, it is political correctness gone mad and a out of touch Labour party that have allowed groups like the BNP to get over one million supporters, so deal with it.