Fiona Hamilton, London Correspondent
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The owners of Marmite sought an injunction against the British National Party yesterday after it included images of the brand in a political broadcast.
The video, which featured the party leader Nick Griffin addressing viewers about the election, was available on the far-right party’s website yesterday morning and featured a jar of Marmite.
It was removed after Unilever threatened legal action. In a statement the company said: “We want to make it absolutely clear that Marmite did not give the BNP permission to use a pack shot of our product in their broadcast. Neither Marmite nor any other Unilever brand is aligned to any political party.
“We are currently initiating injunction proceedings against the BNP to remove the Marmite jar from the online broadcast and prevent them from using it in future.”
Mr Griffin today said that a “joker” had amended the political broadcast, which will be aired on television this evening, to include the Marmite images.
He said that it was a reference to a recent Marmite campaign that featured a spoof election campaign battle between the Love Party and the Hate Party.
In a statement on the party’s website, Mr Griffin said: “The official broadcast contains no mention or images of Marmite at all.
“The clip shown on the BNP website is essentially the actual broadcast, but apparently one of the people to whom we had given the broadcast to review inserted the Marmite jars in reaction to the disgraceful smear advertising campaign being run by Unilever, which smeared and spoofed the BNP and its Euro 2009 TV broadcast.”
Dan Hodges, a spokesman for anti-BNP campaigners Hope not Hate, said: “In politics there is only one thing worse than being hated, and that’s being mocked. Nick Griffin’s Marmite broadcast has turned his party into a laughing stock.
Maurice Cousins, a researcher for Nothing British, another anti-BNP organisation, said that the party’s election plans were a “complete mess”.
Mr Cousins said: “Mr Griffin’s unauthorised use of great British brands such as Marmite shows just how chaotic their 2010 General Election campaign is being conducted, particularly on the eve of the party’s manifesto launch.”
The Marmite jar was featured at the beginning and end of the video, next to the party’s logo and the slogan “Love Britain, Vote BNP”.
The broadcast, which is almost five minutes long, begins with an air-raid siren followed by Mr Griffin telling viewers that he will not “flatter and deceive, to promise everything to everyone” but will “tell the truth about the terrible state of our country”.
A voiceover warns that British people have become “second-class citizens”, while footage of a woman in a burka walking towards a mosque is shown.
It then makes a number of claims about asylum-seekers, MPs’ expenses and the EU, before calling for troops to be brought home from Afghanistan immediately.
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