British National Party linked to anti-Gypsy election broadcast

National Party members attack a Romany community in the Czech Republic in November 2008

As British politics slides into farce, with many Members of Parliament in Westminster having been found to be ripping off taxpayers, Britons are becoming increasingly angry. Angry people look for simple answers to complicated problems, leading many to fear that extreme right wing parties such as the British National Party will do very well in the European elections on June 4th.

Evidence has emerged that British National Party leader Nick Griffin is linked to a far-right party in Czech Republic which last week demanded a 'final solution' to the "Gypsy problem."

The National Party in Prague stunned mainstream politicians and viewers with an electioneering ad using Nazi-era rhetoric that called for a 'final solution to the gypsy issue'.

In WW2 the highest echelons of the Nazi party in Germany sought the 'final solution to the Jewish question' – the euphemism which covered the industrial-scale slaughter of six million men, women and children in the extermination camps. The only other ethnic group to be singled out within the "final solution" was Europe's Romany population. In many occupied countries up to 70% of the Gypsy community we exterminated.

In the tasteless Czech ad the camera pans over dishevelled and dirty-looking Romany women and children, intended to show them in the worst possible light, before a voice-over says: 'We call for final solution to the gypsy issue'.

There were also slogans on screen such as 'Stop black racism,' 'No favouring of Gypsies', and 'We don't want black racists among us'. Czech bigots routinely refer to Romany people as blacks.

The Czech government has expressed outrage over the broadcast of the ad made for the forthcoming EU elections – and pledged that it would not be repeated – as the group’s links with the British National Party were revealed.

BNP leader Nick Griffin, in a bid to cement ties with proto-fascist parties across Europe ahead of the EU elections, spoke at a rally of the tiny anti-immigration, anti-Muslim and anti-Romani National Party (NS) by addressing its rally to celebrate Czech independence in the autumn of last year.

In his speech he railed against the accession of Turkey to the EU, saying that the introduction of millions of Muslims into the EU would 'drive down wages, living standards and increase taxes'.

Griffin's trip, accompanied by several BNP activists, followed an invitation to the NS leader, Petra Edelmannová, to the BNP's Red White and Blue festival in August 2008 in Denby, Derbyshire.

Edelmannova did not attend citing other commitments. Edelmannová was the brains behind the final solution TV ad and wrote a pamphlet last year which she had been intending to bring to Britain.

In it she stresses the case for 'repatriating the Czech Republic’s Romany population to India'.

BNP deputy leader Simon Darby conceded in a newspaper interview shortly afterwards that the phrase'final solution' was 'not exactly the best title for a document'.

But he added: 'There is a Gypsy problem there. There is a problem in this country as well.

'Some of the Travelling community have been here for a very long time. They keep themselves to themselves and sort out their own problems within their own communities. They have the same morals as me. I don't have a problem with them.'

He identifies the 'problem' as being foreign Romanies who have immigrated into the UK since European enlargement, along with an undefined group of what he calls 'homegrown pseudo-Gypsies'.

After the video was shown on Wednesday night in Czech Republic – a country that suffered enormous losses under the Nazis – Czech TV spokesman Ladislav Sticha said that the law obliged it to broadcast the 'election clips exactly in the shape submitted by the parties, without altering them and without bearing responsibility'.

Politicians have said the ad will however be banned and there is also a movement in the parliament for an outright ban on the NS.