BNP votes to allow in non-whites
By politics.co.uk staff
The British National party (BNP) will allow in black and Asian members after holding an extraordinary meeting on the subject yesterday.
The far-right party has been forced into making the concession after a case brought against it by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).
A possible court injunction was hovering over the BNP’s head as it frantically tried to get its membership criteria to meet race relations laws.
But any favourable press earned by the meeting, in Essex, would have been lost after party members violently ejected a Times reporter, Dominic Kennedy.
Mr Kennedy said he was invited by party officials but was confronted by BNP London member Richard Barnbrook on arrival before being bundled out by security guards
“A number of BNP security people shoved me out of the room. I was hit in the back and had my nose grabbed,” he told the BBC.
Pressed on how the party could be treated as a legitimate political force when it treated journalists in such a way, party leader Nick Griffin said: “He refused to leave when he was asked so he had to be encouraged to leave.”
In an email to supporters today, Mr Griffin appeared to proud of the ejection.
“That’s not the actions of a snivelling PC party, but of an organisation that has had enough of being lied about,” he said.
The party will have to wait until next month to discover if the exact wording of the change to its membership criteria will allow it to escape the injunction.
