Bloody Nasty People. Daniel Trilling

      Introduction

      On a spring afternoon in early 2011, I was sitting outside a country pub, when a car pulled up. Out stepped two well-built minders, followed by the portly figure of Nick Griffin, chairman of the British National Party. The BNP has the dubious distinction of being Britain’s most successful far-right party ever; despite roots in a neo-Nazi subculture, it notched up a string of victories in local elections over the past decade, along with two seats in the European Parliament, before an electoral collapse in 2010. It remains an ugly presence on the country’s political landscape, with Griffin periodically invited onto national media to promote the BNP’s racist policies. Yet, for all that, it has been little understood.

      I was hoping to find out more. Griffin could not meet me in central London – a ‘security risk’, he had told me when we spoke on the phone – so instead we had arranged to meet here, a few miles outside the Essex town of Epping. (‘Are you a real ale drinker?’ he had asked me. ‘Choose a pub from the Good Beer Guide.’) The trio looked tired and grumpy when they emerged from the car. Because he is so widely despised, Griffin can’t take public transport and so spends hours crammed alongside his hired muscle into a grey hatchback. He speaks ever so slightly too fast, like a man who is used to being heckled or cut off mid-sentence. Since he was elected to the European Parliament in 2009 this semi-fugitive lifestyle has intensified as he makes regular trips across France and Belgium. Griffin, dressed in a dark suit, walked over, shook my hand and sat down; one of his minders nipped inside the pub and returned carrying an unappetizing on-the-road snack: half a Cornish pasty, on a paper napkin, and a packet of dry-roasted peanuts. ‘This is lunch, that’s why I’m not sharing any with you,’ Griffin said, mouth full, as I fiddled with my Dictaphone and searched in my bag for a notebook.

      ‘So,’ Griffin eventually said, brushing peanut dust from his jacket sleeves. ‘Tell me about this book.’

      In April 2008, the New Statesman sent me to review a music festival in East London’s Victoria Park, held to mark the thirtieth anniversary of Rock Against Racism, the cultural movement that had galvanized opposition to the National Front in the late 1970s. My parents, both of whom had gone on anti-racist demos during this period, had told me stories about Rock Against Racism when I was younger, and I was excited to see some of that spirit revisited. It was timely, too: for several years, the British National Party had been growing in prominence, winning seats on a number of councils across England. Elections to the London Assembly, where the BNP was expected to pick up support, were only a few days away.

      But something seemed wrong: while thousands of smiling, ethnically diverse teenagers turned out to see the bands, under the slogan ‘love music, hate racism’, it felt strangely detached from reality. Thirty years previously, Victoria Park, in the heart of London’s East End, had been the front line of the fight against the National Front. In 2008, the BNP was gaining support on the outskirts

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