Last night, Nick Griffin claimed:
Finally my father was in the RAF during the second World War while Mr Straw’s father was in prison for refusing to fight Adolf Hitler.
Unity from the Ministry of Truth/Liberal Conspiracy takes up the story:
However, yesterday’s Suffolk Evening Star carried an interview with Griffin’s father in which its stated that:
Mr Griffin, who moved to Suffolk shortly after Nick was born in Hertfordshire in 1959, joined the Conservative Party when he returned from two years national service with the RAF in India.
Although the reintroduction of conscription into the armed forces was reintroduced, in 1939, by the National Service (Armed Forces) Act service during World War II, and in any armed conflict, is always referred to as either ‘War Service’ or ‘Military Service’.
The term ‘National Service’ did not come into use until 1948, three years after the end of World War II and ceased to be used, at all, with the end of conscription in 1960.
If, as the Evening Star’s article suggests, Griffin’s father undertook National Service, rather than War Service or Military Service, then he cannot have served in the RAF in World War II.
Perhaps Lee John Barnes can clear up this misunderstanding.