BRITAIN: The British National Party claimed a new lease of life yesterday when its leader Nick Griffin and one of his lieutenants walked free from a race hatred trial, cleared on half the charges by a jury irreconcilably divided on the others.
A retrial was confirmed last night by the Crown Prosecution Service, which Mr Griffin mocked as an unprecedented recruiting sergeant after he was released on bail, to roars of applause and shouts of "freedom" from 100 supporters. Greeted with bouquets of red, white and blue flowers outside Leeds crown court, he deliberately repeated comments at private BNP meetings recorded secretly by a BBC TV reporter which led to the prosecution.
"If the Crown Prosecution Service feel they must continue to persecute us for speaking the truth, we will be here," he said. "This case has brought us more donations than ever before, including one of £20,000, the biggest in our history. We've never had such good publicity before."
Mr Griffin (46), who trailed last in an attempt to win Keighley in West Yorkshire at the general election, made no secret of airing his views during two days in the witness box.
He distributed passages from the Koran to the jury to back his argument that he was attacking a religion not a race, and was warned twice by the judge he was not addressing a political meeting.
After the verdicts he nodded to what he described as "a very decent jury" from the dock, where he has used a laptop to post a daily blog on the BNP's website. The Cambridge graduate from Llanerfyl in Powys, whose wife Jackie and their teenage children let out a long "yesss!" in the public gallery, has also reported on his trial on the site's BNP TV.
His acquittal brought counter-chants of "scum" from a small picket who held a larger protest on Wednesday but were wrong-footed by the timing of the verdicts. The Recorder of Leeds, Judge Norman Jones QC, recalled the jurors at 3.45pm after nine hours' deliberation for them to confirm they were deadlocked on the remaining charges.
The eight men and three women (down to 11 after a juror was discharged through ill health) had earlier acquitted Mark Collett (24) of four of eight charges of stirring up racial hatred which followed the BBC broadcast of two speeches at closed party meetings in West Yorkshire pubs.
Mr Collett, a Leeds graduate of Rothley, Leicestershire, punched the air as the foreman successively answered "not guilty".
Both men had argued at length during the two-week trial that their views, including describing Islam as a "vicious, wicked faith" and comparing asylum seekers to cockroaches, came within the boundaries of free speech.
Mr Griffin said in evidence during and after the trial that neither he nor the party "hated" Muslims or ethnic minorities, but objected to the imposition of multiculturalism.
To renewed cheers from his supporters, he pushed past burly BNP security men with wrap-around dark glasses to say: "Millions of people in this country will be able to hold their heads higher and walk a little taller tonight. 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 racist paedophiles from part of the Muslim community. "
Four charges deadlocked the jury, including the pub speech where Mr Griffin used the "vicious, wicked faith" lines.
The trial followed a six month undercover assignment by reporter Jason Gwynne for a BBC1 programme, The Secret Agent, which was watched by an audience of five million last July. - (Guardian Service)