BNP votes to accept non-white members (and a Sikh grandfather will be first to join up)



The British National Party has ripped up its racist constitution and voted to allow black and Asian members.

BNP leader Nick Griffin pushed the far-right party to axe the whites-only membership rules after being told it could face legal action by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

After yesterday's vote at a meeting in Essex, Mr Griffin said he expected a 'trickle, rather than a flood' of applications from black and Asian people.

But he added that several ethnic-minority supporters had been 'begging' to join the party because they supported its opposition to immigration.

BNP president Nick Griffin said the party would accept black and Asian people provided they agreed with its aims

Mr Griffin said he expected to soon welcome the party's first non-white member - a Sikh called Rajinder Singh.



He said: 'I will be absolutely delighted to shake his hand and give him his membership card.



'People like Rajinder accept the party's position.

'He's a guest of our country - he agrees to abide by our laws and customs. We are happy to accept anyone as a member providing they agree with us that this country should remain fundamentally British.

'Some of these people have been in Britain for years now. They don't like the current wave of mass immigration and they want us to help stop it.

'Plenty of ethnic minorities agree with us. People came here in the 1950s and 60s specifically because this was a British Britain.

'It was a good place for them and for their children and that's what we're losing now. Three million new immigrants since Tony Blair came to power in the most overcrowded country in Europe. It's madness and it's not racist to say it.'

Controversial: Rajinder Singh, who once appeared on the BNP's internet TV channel, is set to become the party's first non-white member

Mr Singh, a 78-year-old retired maths teacher from Wellingborough in Northamptonshire, came to the UK in 1967.

He was born in West Punjab, now Pakistan, where he says his father was killed by a Muslim mob during Indian Partition in 1947.



He has expressed his admiration for the BNP's 'tough stance' on Islam and believes Muslims are trying to take over Britain.



The grandfather has been a convert since he saw Griffin on television in 2001 and even provided him with a character reference for his 2005 trial for inciting racial hatred for which he was convicted.



The BNP has accepted only white members since its foundation in 1982

It was formed by John Tyndall, a former chairman of the extreme-right National Front who enjoyed dressing up in Nazi uniform and was jailed in 1986 for disseminating racist literature.



Mr Griffin, a Cambridge law graduate, took over in 1999 with the intention of toning down the party's image, dropping the party's public declarations of Holocaust denial and policy of forcibly repatriating non-white immigrants.



Members yesterday also agreed new rules that mean party members must share the views of the party - an attempt to prevent opponents infiltrating the party and destroying it from the inside.



The party's claims to be open and democratic took a knock when Mr Griffin helped to bundle a Times journalist out of the meeting.



A spokesman for anti-fascist group Searchlight said: 'This is a meaningless gesture by the BNP.



‘No-one seriously believes that thousands of black and Asian Britons will now be queueing up to join Nick Griffin's party. The BNP are as racist and extremist as ever.'



A spokesman for the Equality and Human Rights Commission said: 'We haven't yet seen what the changes are, but hope that the BNP's revised membership policy is no longer discriminatory.



'We're expecting to see a copy of the policy on Tuesday, which is the deadline set by the court. When we've received this we will consider our position ahead of the next court hearing on March 9.'







