Protesters breach security at BBC

SIX people were arrested last night as anti-fascist protesters broke into the BBC’s west London headquarters ahead of a far-right party leader’s appearance on a leading political debate show.

Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the BBC Television Centre in a rowdy rally against British National Party chief Nick Griffin, who appeared on the broadcaster’s Question Time programme last night. About 25 people breached a police cordon and ran into the centre’s lobby.

Scotland Yard said three police officers were injured in the protests, and six people were arrested.

The broadcaster said the protesters were “escorted promptly” from the building.

The BBC later broadcast footage of Griffin taking his place on the Question Time panel to scattered applause. Justice Secretary Jack Straw, a senior member of the governing Labour Party, was seen sitting across from Griffin on the show’s panel.

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne, Tory peer Baroness Warsi and writer Bonnie Greer were also on the panel.

Griffin said afterward that he was relatively pleased with the programme, and had taken a lot of flack but had “been able to land a few punches of my own”.

“It was hard going,” he told The Associated Press in telephone interview. “It was a bit like a boxing matching.”

During the programme Griffin denied he was a Nazi, claiming he was “loathed” by Nazis in Britain because of the direction he had taken the far-right party.

At one pointed he taunted Straw, saying his own father had served in the RAF during the Second World War while Straw’s father had been in prison for “refusing to fight Hitler”.

Asked by presenter David Dimbleby if he had ever denied the Holocaust, he replied: “I do not have a conviction for Holocaust denial.”

He was attacked by a number of audience members, with one man branding his views as “disgusting” and accusing him of “poisoning politics”.

He said he didn’t believe the show itself would revolutionise his party’s fortunes, but said it was a kind of “boy scout’s badge” for having secured, he claimed, the BNP’s place on the national stage.

The BBC said that, as a publicly funded broadcaster, it must cover all political parties that have a national presence.