British National Party chairman Nick Griffin spoke today of a 'bloodless genocide' as he defended a party leaflet which says that black Britons and Asian Britons 'do not exist'. The BNP leader was referring to the party's Language And Concepts Discipline Manual, which says the term used should be 'racial foreigners'.
Mr Griffin said to call such people British was a sort of 'bloodless genocide' because it denied indigenous people their own identity.
The leaflet was leaked to an anti-fascist group.
Commenting on the leaflet's content, Mr Griffin told The Report on Radio 4 that although 'in civic terms they are British, British also has a meaning as an ethnic description'.
'These people are 'black residents' of the UK etc, and are no more British than an Englishman living in Hong Kong is Chinese,' he said.
'Collectively, foreign residents of other races should be referred to as 'racial foreigners', a non-pejorative term... The key in such matters is above all to maintain necessary distinctions while avoiding provocation and insult.'
The manual describes the BNP's 'ultimate aim' as the 'lawful, humane and voluntary repatriation of the resident foreigners of the UK'.
'We don't subscribe to the politically correct fiction that just because they happen to be born in Britain, a Pakistani is a Briton. They're not. They remain of Pakistani stock,' he added.
'You can't say that especially large numbers of people can come from the rest of the world and assume an English identity without denying the English their own identity, and I would say that's wrong.
'In a very subtle way, it's a sort of bloodless genocide.' The Archbishop of York has branded Mr Griffin's comments as being 'beyond belief'. Dr John Sentamu, who was born in Uganda and is a vocal supporter of making today - St George's Day - a public holiday to promote English unity, said it was not up to the BNP to define Englishness.
He said: 'You don't have to be a member of the BNP to be clearly English, and it is quite a mistake to suggest that everybody who wants to affirm Englishness affirms that narrow thinking.
'This "bloodless genocide"? I think that is just language which is beyond belief.'
Mr Griffin is standing in the European Parliament elections in June as a candidate for the North West.
Poster Comment:
"A Pakistani that moves to England is no more an Englishman than an Englishman who moves to Hong Kong is Chinese. This is a fact. But, of course, liberals are often shocked, surprised, and angered by the facts." "You can be sure that nearly all 1.3 billion Chinese consider Britons living in Hong Kong to be foreigners."