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BNP on Question Time: Nick Griffin uses BBC appearance to attack Muslims and gays
Mr Griffin said Islam was not compatible with life in Britain, while describing homosexuals as "creepy".
However, he admitted sharing a platform with the Ku Klux Klan, which has carried out racist attacks across America’s Deep South, and defended leaders in the organisation as "non-violent".
The remarks provoked indignation from other members of the BBC panel and hostile parts of the audience, some of whom booed, calling him "a disgrace".
The BNP leader could not explain why he had previously sought to play down the Holocaust and defended his use of Sir Winston Churchill on BNP literature on the basis that his father had fought in the Second World War.
He claimed that Churchill would have been a member of the BNP and was "Islamaphobic" by "today’s standard".
Asked whether he denied that millions of Jews and other minorities had been killed by the Nazis, Mr Griffin would only reply: "I do not have a conviction for Holocaust denial."
He was then chastised by David Dimbleby, the host of the programme, for smiling.
The controversial statements were made in response to intense questioning by members of the audience from ethnic minorities.
BBC Television Centre in west London came under siege as filming took place, with MPs joining hundreds of protesters behind lines of police. There were six arrests as dozens of protesters attempted to storm the studio.
BBC studios in Hull, Scotland and Wales were also targeted by demonstrators. The cost of the police operation was estimated to be more than £100,000.
The BBC was certain to be questioned over why it allowed Mr Griffin to air such controversial views but executives were hoping that the intensive questioning that he faced would justify their decision to invite him on the Question Time panel for the first time.
The BBC, which Mr Griffin denounced on the programme as "ultra-Leftist", had claimed that impartiality rules meant that it had little choice but to invite him on to the programme after the BNP won seats in the European Parliament in elections earlier this year.
He was joined on the panel by Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, Baroness Warsi, the Tory spokesman on community cohesion, Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrats’ home affairs spokesman, and Bonnie Greer, a black American playwright.
Mr Griffin was seated next to Miss Greer.
One of the most controversial moments came when Mr Dimbleby asked the BNP leader why he had been pictured with David Duke, the former leader of the Klan. Mr Griffin claimed that parts of the racist group, officially classed as a "hate organisation" in America, were "non-violent".
However, he insisted: "I’m not a Nazi and never have been."
He claimed that he was "the most loathed man in Britain" among British fascists.
He was questioned over his views on Islam and said it had "good points" but "does not fit in with the fundamental values of British society". He was also attacked for describing white Britons as the "indigenous" population who faced "genocide". We are the Aborigines here, he said.
Amid angry scenes, one Asian member of the audience asked Mr Griffin where he would like him to be sent and then suggested that he himself might find the South Pole a good destination because it was "a colourless landscape".
Mr Griffin boasted to BNP supporters before the programme that he was "relishing" the prospect of "political blood sport". "I will, no doubt, be interrupted, shouted down, slandered, put on the spot, and subjected to a scrutiny that would be a thousand times more intense than anything directed at other panellists," he said. "It will, in other words, be political blood sport. But I am relishing this opportunity."
Speaking after filming had finished, Mr Griffin claimed that he had been able to "land some punches".
About one million people voted for the BNP at the European elections, leading to Mr Griffin taking up one of its two seats in the European Parliament. As a result, BBC executives said strict impartiality rules effectively forced them to include the party in Question Time.
Mark Thompson, the director-general of the BBC, said the Government should ban the BNP if it felt that Mr Griffin should not have been allowed to take part in the broadcast.
"If there is a case for censorship, it should be debated and decided in Parliament," he said. "Political censorship cannot be outsourced to the BBC or anyone else."
He said the BNP had "demonstrated a level of support that would normally lead to an occasional invitation to join the panel on Question Time".
Politicians from minor parties, including George Galloway, the Respect MP, and Caroline Lucas, the leader of the Green party, regularly appeared on Question Time.
Mr Thompson insisted that Mr Griffin had been invited so that the public could challenge his views, rather than any "misguided desire to be controversial".
Speaking before the programme, Gordon Brown said the BNP’s appearance was a matter for the BBC and that he was confident that Mr Griffin would be exposed for his "unacceptable" views.
"I hope that the exposure of the BNP will make people see what they are really like," the Prime Minister said.
However, there were fears that Mr Griffin’s appearance would lead to an increase in support.
He had said he was hopeful his party would be propelled into "the big time" as a result of the broadcast and described his appearance on the show as "a milestone in the indomitable march of the British National Party towards saving our country".
Ken Livingstone, the former mayor of London and the chairman of Unite Against Fascism, claimed that the broadcast could lead to an increase in racist attacks and views.
"For the angry racist it’s a trigger that turns into an attack," he said.
"We first saw this when Enoch Powell made his Rivers of Blood speech. There was a huge surge of attacks on black conductors on our buses, and that is why I think you apply a different standard to the BNP to those parties that do not legitimise this sort of violence against minorities."
