Nick Griffin Denied Entry to Buckingham Palace Garden Party
THE TELEGRAPH: Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party, has been denied entry to a Buckingham Palace garden party after officials said he was using his invitation for party political purposes.

BNP leader Nick Griffin denied entry to Buckingham Palace garden party. Photo: The Telegraph
The far right leader, who is a Member of the European Parliament, had been invited along with 8,000 other guests to the event which is being hosted by the Queen and attended by the Duke of Edinburgh.

But officials withdrew the invitation after warning his attendance could increase the security threat and cause discomfort for others attending.

A Palace spokesman said: “Nick Griffin MEP will be denied entry to today's Garden Party at Buckingham Palace due to the fact he has overtly used his personal invitation for Party political purposes through the media[.]

“This in turn has increased the security threat and the potential discomfort to the many other guests also attending. >>> Martin Evans | Thursday, July 22, 2010

THE INDEPENDENT: Nick Griffin's furious as palace invite is withdrawn: BNP leader Nick Griffin was barred from a Buckingham Palace garden party hours before today's event - after he was accused of using the invitation for political ends. >>> Tony Jones, Press Association | Thursday, July 22, 2010

THE TELEGRAPH: The establishment turns on Nick Griffin. Persona non grata in Buck House >>>

Débarquement : la reine Elizabeth ne viendra pas
La reine Elizabeth II. Photo grâce au Figaro
LE FIGARO: Buckingham Palace assure toutefois que la reine n'est ni en colère, ni frustrée de ne pas avoir été officiellement invitée par la France, aux cérémonies du 6 juin.

«Ni la reine ni aucun membre de la famille royale ne participera aux commémorations du Jour-J le 6 juin, puisque nous n'avons reçu d'invitation officielle pour aucun des événements» prévus. La sobre déclaration a été diffusée jeudi par Buckingham Palace, comme pour clore la polémique naissante sur un éventuel délit de lèse-majesté de la France.

Mercredi, le tabloïd Daily Mail affirmait que la reine était «furieuse» et «frustrée» de ne pas avoir reçu de carton d'invitation aux cérémonies du 65e anniversaire du débarquement allié en Normandie le 6 juin.

Suite à cet article, le porte-parole du gouvernement, Luc Chatel, avait immédiatement affirmé que les Britanniques étaient «invités» et que «la reine d'Angleterre, le chef de l'Etat britannique, est naturellement la bienvenue», tout en précisant que cette célébration était «au départ franco-américaine».

Jeudi, le palais royal a assuré qu'Elizabeth II n'avait «jamais exprimé le moindre sentiment de colère ou de frustration».

La veille, l'ambassadeur de Grande-Bretagne à Paris, Peter Westmacott, avait déjà affirmé au micro de RTL qu'il n'était «pas question de colère du tout» de la part de la reine. Toutefois, «il n'appartient pas à la France de désigner la représentation britannique», avait-il précisé. >>> | Jeudi 28 Mai 2009

A Right Menace: Nick Griffin
THE INDEPENDENT: Fears of a surge in support for the BNP at the European elections have put its leader in the spotlight. And now he's got Buckingham Palace squirming

Whichever way you look at it, the announcement that Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party, might attend a royal garden party at Buckingham Palace is a milestone moment in British politics. For it marks another stage in the transformation of Britain's biggest far-right party from a past of street thuggery to the brink of electoral breakthrough. Griffin could next month become the party's first member of the European Parliament.

The real question is whether it has done that by shrugging off its neo-fascist antecedents and entering the extreme right of mainstream politics – or is it being done by the perpetration of long-running confidence trick upon the electorate? The answer to that lies in the one man whose personal writ runs authoritatively throughout the party. So has Nick Griffin really changed?

There can be no doubting the unsavoury background from which Griffin emerges. It is deep rooted in his family history. His parents met while heckling a Communist Party meeting in north London in 1948. Nicholas John Griffin, who was born a decade later, was as a boy reputedly given by his grandfather some of the more anti-Semitic literature of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists. While at private school in Suffolk aged 13, he was reading Hitler's Mein Kampf and making notes in the margins. "Adolf went a bit too far," Griffin conceded in 2006.

When Griffin was 15, his father Edgar took his son to his first National Front meeting. When he went up to Cambridge in 1977 to read history and law at Downing College, he founded the university's Young National Front Students group and soon rose through the ranks of the neo-fascist party. Within a year he had become national organiser.

But the National Front fell apart a decade later. Griffin was a key figure in the foundation of one of its successor factions, the International Third Position (ITP), advocating a blood-and-soil alternative to communism and capitalism. In it he praised the black separatist Louis Farrakhan, met David Duke, the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, travelled to Libya at the expense of Colonel Gaddafi and expressed support for Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini – who also had a strong dislike of Jews, women's rights, homosexuals, liberal democracy, international capitalism, Coca-Cola and McDonald's. >>> | Saturday, May 23, 2009

BNP Chief 'Barred from Royal Party'
PRESS ASSOCIATION: British National Party leader Nick Griffin has been effectively barred from attending a Buckingham Palace garden party.

The right wing politician had been invited to the social event by BNP colleague Richard Barnbrook who, as a London Assembly member, was nominated for two tickets by the Greater London Authority (GLA).

But Jeff Jacobs, the GLA's deputy chief executive, has written to Mr Barnbrook telling him to change his controversial guest and stop exploiting the situation for "publicity", or his nomination would be "reviewed".

In recent days London Mayor Boris Johnson and Darren Johnson, chairman of the London Assembly, have both spoken of their concern about Mr Barnbrook's chosen guest. >>> Copyright © 2009 The Press Association. All rights reserved | Friday, May 22, 2009

Johnson Intervenes to Block BNP Leader from Attending Queen's Garden Party
The toff of toffs: Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, the Mayor of London. Photo: Google Images
THE GUARDIAN: Mayor urges London assembly to rescind invitation to far-right colleague of Nick Griffin to spare monarch embarrassment

The London mayor, Boris Johnson, today intervened to prevent the BNP leader, Nick Griffin, from attending a garden party hosted by the Queen.

Johnson wrote to the London assembly chair, Darren Johnson, urging him to rescind the BNP assembly member Richard Barnbrook's invitation to the Buckingham Palace event in June.

The mayor accused the far-right party of trying to turn the garden party in to a "political stunt".

Johnson's intervention came after it emerged that Barnbrook said he intended to take Griffin to the party as his guest.

Speaking at a routine assembly session with the mayor, the assembly chair said members were "extremely concerned" that the BNP was seeking to turn a social event into a political stunt.

He confirmed he would take the matter to the chief executive to request that Barnbrook's invitation be withdrawn unless he had a "more acceptable guest" to take along. >>> Hélène Mulholland, Matthew Taylor and Rachel Williams | Thursday, May 21, 2009

BNP Leader Nick Griffin to Attend Queen's Garden Party
Nick Griffin will be the guest of Richard Barnbrook, a BNP London Assembly member. All Assembly members have been invited. Photo credit: TimesOnline
TIMESONLINE: The leader of the far-right British National party is to attend a garden party hosted by the Queen, it was claimed today.

Nick Griffin will accompany Richard Barnbrook, a BNP member of the London Assembly, as his guest at the event on July 21, Mr Barnbrook said.

A BNP spokesman said: “Richard Barnbrook has got an official invite in his capacity as a member of the London Assembly and he is allowed to bring a guest, which will be Nick Griffin.

“For him to snub an invite from the Queen would be absurd.

“It is something people are going to have to get used to because if we get elected MEPs, this is the kind of thing we are going to be doing on a regular basis.

“It is the emergence of a party from beyond the pale to mainstream.” >>> Fiona Hamilton | Wednesday, May 20, 2009