THE leader of the British National Party walked free from court yesterday after being cleared of seeking to incite racial hatred, but prosecutors said immediately that he and another member of the hard-right party would face a retrial.

Nick Griffin said that he felt “absolutely vindicated” after a jury decided that his speech, made during the run-up to the 2004 local elections and secretly filmed by a reporter, was not abusive or insulting to Asian people.

Mark Collett, a senior member of the BNP, was also acquitted of race-hate charges triggered by two speeches that he had made to party supporters in West Yorkshire, one of which compared asylumseekers with cockroaches.

The jury at Leeds Crown Court was unable to reach a verdict on further charges in relation to a second speech by Mr Griffin, 46, and two more speeches by Mr Collett, 25. The Crown Prosecution Service said that the two men would be retried on the outstanding charges — a decision which surprised several observers, given the success with which Mr Griffin managed to turn the case into a trial of the Islamic religion.

A key element of his defence was the claim that he was not criticising Asians or Muslims, but the “wicked, vicious faith” of Islam. Ironically, given this week’s House of Commons vote on the religious hatred Bill, the BNP chairman was able to argue that he had not been charged with inciting religious hatred.

He also presented himself as a standard-bearer for freedom of speech and blamed the Government, the police and the media for seeking to hush up racist crimes committed by Muslims against whites.

Mr Griffin told the jury that Islam was “a terrible, mortal enemy” that threatened to “bring misery and disaster to this country”. He blamed it for crimes ranging from murders in Africa and the Middle East to the grooming of young white schoolgirls for sex and prostitution in West Yorkshire.

The “politically correct establishment”, he said, “want to outlaw any criticism of Islam in this country by saying it is a criticism of Muslim people. It is not.”

All the charges were based on recordings of the two men made using a hidden camera by an undercover BBC journalist posing as a supporter of the far-right party.

A large crowd of BNP supporters who had gathered outside the court building, many brandishing the Union Jack, cheered wildly and chanted “Freedom!” as Mr Griffin and Mr Collett walked out to greet them. Shouts of “scum” came from a much smaller group of anti-fascist demonstrators.

Mr Griffin said: “I was speaking the truth to an audience of decent, working people in West Yorkshire who in some cases are facing terrible problems, including the grooming of their children by paedophiles.”

The final decision to prosecute the two men, after a police inquiry and consideration of the case by the Crown Prosecution Service, was made by Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney-General. Mr Griffin and Mr Collett were charged 24 hours after Labour called the 2005 general election.

The three speeches over which the jury returned not-guilty verdicts contained language that, the Crown argued, was designed to stir up hatred of Asians and asylum-seekers. The trial lasted 14 days and cost the taxpayer £8,000 a day.

Mr Griffin said: “We are innocent of inciting racial hatred. We don’t hate anyone of any ethnic minority in this country. We don’t blame them for being here, in the case of asylum-seekers, seeking a better future for their kids. We blame our Government for putting those people over our people.”

Both defence counsel, in their closing speeches, cited a 1999 High Court judgment by Lord Justice Smedley that the “freedom to speak only inoffensively is not worth having”.

The law lord said: “Free speech includes not only the inoffensive, but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative, provided it does not tend to provoke violence.” No violence resulted from the BNP men’s speeches, the Crown accepted, and there were no Asians or asylum-seekers in the audience to whom their remarks were addressed.

The jury members were instructed that they were not voting in a mini-referendum on the BNP or its policies; they must focus only on the text of the speeches, their intent and their likely impact.

MARK COLLETT

'I often say asylum-seekers are a bit like cockroaches, because it's take, take, take'

'If you have got a son or daughter they are going to be first in line for the racist violence'

NICK GRIFFIN

'They're laughing .... telling all their mates you can kill; a white boy and nobody will care'

'We all know that ... there's going to be Islamic terrorists letting off bombs in major cities'

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