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7th March 2008BNP leader Nick Griffin has sparked controversy by blaming Muslims for the nation's hard drug problems.
The BBC was last night dragged into a race row after it broadcast claims by the British National Party blaming Muslim immigrants for the country's hard drugs problems.
The comments were made during a debate on multiculturalism on BBC2's Newsnight, which examined the results of a survey for the channel's White season - a series of documentaries on what it means to be white and working class in England today.
It found that white working class are far more pessimistic about England's future than their middle-class counterparts, while more than half said no one represented their views and that their quality of life had got worse over the past decade.
When informed the poll showed that white working class English people were more concerned about drug and drink culture than immigration, the BNP leader Nick Griffin responded with an attack on Pakistani immigrants.
He said: "You can't possibly separate the hard drugs trade from the question of Islam and particularly Pakistani immigration.
"Any working class area of England - in a multiracial area - the hard drugs problem is related to Islam and Pakistan."
Griffin went on to reiterate that mixing cultures is not a good thing, saying:
"I would say that people who want to reduce the world to a mono-culture coffee-coloured world, they are the ones who hate."
