LONDON — Britain's racial and religious hatred laws may need reform after a court cleared a far-right leader for the second time this year over a speech in which he called Islam a "wicked, vicious faith", ministers said Saturday, November 11.
"Any preaching of religious or racial hatred will offend mainstream opinion in this country and I think we have got to do whatever we can to root it out," the Chancellor (Finance Minister) Gordon Brown told the BBC.
"If that means that we have to look at the laws again, I think we will have to do so."
Nick Griffin, leader of the British National Party, was found not guilty on Friday of inciting racial hatred during secretly filmed speeches in 2004.
Griffin, 47, and BNP worker Mark Collett, 26, were cleared on Friday of using words or behavior intended to incite racial hatred by a jury at Leeds Crown Court in northern England.
They were cleared of similar charges at a trial in February.
Griffin was charged after the BBC secretly filmed a speech he gave in 2004 during which he told supporters Islam was a "wicked, vicious faith" that was turning the country into "a multi-racial hell-hole".
Collett repeatedly called asylum seekers "cockroaches."
Griffin maintained throughout the trial that his comments were not racial and were designed to stir his audience to political activity.
Reassuring Muslims
British National Party Leader Nick Griffin, left, and party member Mark Collett, centre, celebrate after they were cleared for the second time of the charges.
Constitutional Affairs Secretary Charles Falconer said the country had to show it would not tolerate attacks on Islam.
"If you say Islam is wicked and evil and there is no consequence from that whatsoever, what is being said to young Muslim people in this country is that we ... are anti-Islam," he told the BBC.
Of Britain's 60 million people, some 1.8 million are Muslims.
Weyman Bennett, general secretary of Unite against Fascism and Racism, told the Guardian Saturday: "It's a tragedy that a fascist and racist organization can hide behind free speech ... But how do you prove intent without getting inside Griffin's head?"
The government was twice defeated in parliament over its attempts to introduce laws on incitement to religious and racial hatred before getting an amended version of the act on the statute books.
Inciting hatred against other races is already a crime in Britain but there is no equivalent laws protecting all religions.
The BNP is a fringe party with no members of parliament but has seen its popularity rise -- which they attribute recently in part to the court case publicity.
The party now has more than 40 council seats and made a minor breakthrough in becoming the second-biggest group on Barking and Dagenham Council in east London in an election earlier this year.
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