Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race(30)

It seemed to be that for Nick Griffin, accommodating difference was akin to erasing white Britishness. The comfort of white privilege blinds him to the fact that he is part of the majority and that he is already catered for. In his Question Time monologue, Griffin appealed to that British sense of fairness to conjure images of an embattled white minority under attack, losing control of their heritage and culture. Even more insultingly, he used the struggles of black and brown people who were colonised, raped and beaten by white British people to preserve white British culture.

Because of British defamation laws, you can get into hot water if you publish something that harshly criticises someone without giving them the right to reply in the same piece of work. I think that a book detailing British racism would be remiss to overlook the vast influence Nick Griffin and the British National Party has had in how we talk about race today. So I found myself in the position of trying to get in contact with Nick Griffin, a man who, throughout my lifetime, has openly attacked the idea of people like me being truly British, and who represented a party that held policies stating that my mixed-race family is an abomination.

Having been in the same position a few years before me, an editor I work with gave me his address. I wrote Mr Griffin a letter. He replied the next day, agreeing to speak to me. I suggested meeting at my publisher’s offices. He declined, saying he hardly ever goes to London, as it’s ‘largely a foreign country’. We agreed to speak on the phone the next day.

I was very worried throughout this whole process, but I chose to use my own mobile number to call him, in an effort to be as open and honest as possible. I needed the interview, after all, and acting suspicious or withholding information was not going to help with that. But I’d handed over my personal phone number to one of the most infamous British far-right leaders in the last fifty years. If he so wished, he could make my life a living hell with a few keystrokes. He could choose to post my number online. I knew it was something he’d done before – posting the address of a gay couple online back in 2012.8 My only security was that we both had something over each other – I had his number and email address. So I took the risk. Our conversation was so surreal that I publish it here in full.

REL: Back in 2009, you said something along the lines that white British people are an ethnic minority in Britain. Do you still think that?

NG: Not are. Will become.

Why do you think white people will become an ethnic minority in Britain, then?

It’s simply a demographic fact. If you want to go and look, I’d look at Professor Coleman from Oxford University. He’s probably Britain’s leading demographer. Using government figures, not my figures, he said some years ago we’d be a minority in our own country by the end of this century at the latest. That was at present trends, but of course, present trends have got worse. So there’s simply no doubt about it. Not just Britain, but the whole of Western Europe.

But currently in Britain, 81.9 per cent of the population is white British, don’t you think that’s a bit far-fetched?

No, that’s how demographics works. The British population is very large compared to the others, you’re right. But if you look at the age differences between the populations, and the British population is significantly made up of two waves of baby boomers who, over the next twenty years, are going to die off at an incredible rate . . . It’s going to go up. Whereas the age profile of a number of the immigrant populations is much younger, therefore they’ll have more children. You’re not arguing with me, you need to go and argue with Professor Coleman. He’s a leading demographer in the world, and you and I aren’t. What he says is true. There’s really no doubt about it.

Why do you think that his projections are bad news, then?

I regard that as a racist question. Because no white person would dare to go to, say, Nigeria, if Nigeria was being flooded with Chinese, and say ‘Why do you think it’s a bad idea that Nigeria should cease to be Nigeria?’ It’s self-evident that all the peoples of the world have a right to remain the dominant people, culturally and ethnically, in their own homeland. Anyone who says otherwise, just because we happen to be Europeans, is a racist.

I see. So I’m a racist then.

No, no, I’m not saying you’re a racist. It’s in saying that, with that point of view. [If you’re happy to] have fewer rights than Nigerians, then you’re a racist. If you’d be absolutely happy for Nigerians to become Chinese, then you’re not a racist, you’re just mad.

This was many years ago, so please do clarify for me, [but] is it true that the BNP had a policy, or had some sort of statement on the website, saying no to mixed-race relationships?

Yes.

Is that an idea that you share?

I think that it’s unfortunate when people are wiped out by a vast amount of racial integration. Muhammad Ali said exactly the same thing. I think that either nature or God made people separate, unique and wonderful, all of them, then it’s a shame if we’re all simply obliterated into one indistinguishable mass all over the world. It’s a pity. Having said which, it’s not for any state to determine who falls in love with who.

So do you think that the white British population is under attack from immigration and mixed-race relationships?

I think that the identity of all the peoples of Europe is under threat from mass immigration, integration, and mixed-race relationships, which aren’t in fact happening just because it’s a natural thing, but because they’re constantly promoted by every element of the mass media as a good thing. It’s a deliberate policy, it’s very very clear. If you go back to Coudenhove-Kalergi, the man who founded the European Union, he was openly saying in 1926 that the idea [was to] obliterate the nations of Europe in constitutional terms but also the peoples who made them. Through mass immigration and mass assimilation. Socially engineered assimilation, that’s what’s happening. We’re under attack. Not by immigrants, but by an elite who want to use immigrations to obliterate the nations of Europe.