Former BNP member Dowson had been running a branch of the anti-immigration group 'Knights Templar International' in Budapest for the last few years.

Based on an assessment by Hungary’s counter-terror police unit TEK, both the far-right figures posed a threat to Hungary’s national security. The Hungarian Government acted on the assessment given TEK's primary scope of duty is to minimize the number of residents who pose any national security risk.

58-year-old John Nicolas Griffin recently visited Hungary to back the ‘Stop Operation Soros!’ organisation, and he aimed at halting the pro-refugee activities of Hungarian-born US financier George Soros's 'Open Society' Foundation.

He told local website 444 he would continue his political activism after he moved to Hungary. When asked where he intended to live in Hungary, Griffin said: “I love Budapest, I think it's a fantastic city. But I'm a country boy really, so I'll probably live somewhere out in the sticks, as we would say in England.”

Griffin added, “There's already a sort of nationalist emigre community building up here,” he said. “There's French, there's Italians and Swedes, and Brits as well, so it's only a trickle at present.

He continued, “I have no doubt at all that when the trouble really begins with Al-Qaeda and ISIS in Western Europe, that trickle is going to become a flood.

I hope that Hungary, the Hungarian government, the Hungarian people, will welcome people who are genuine refugees from Western Europe but keep out the liberals who have brought western Europe to this state in the first place.”

The vast majority of expats here will be delighted that Griffin, who has been affiliated with Holocaust-denial and has made numerous xenophobic comments, and who was convicted in the UK of distributing material likely to incite racial hatred, is now a persona non grata in Hungary and accordingly has been denied entry and residency permits.

Words By Timea Klincsek

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