As political makeovers go, it has been as cynical as it has been effective. Angry rhetoric about race and immigration is no longer the core message. Instead, the BNP styles itself as a “community champion”, focusing on rundown Labour areas and promising to stand up for local people.

Residents find their lawns are now being cut, while the elderly receive help with shopping. Meanwhile, rumours start circulating about the gradual “Islamification” of the area.

This was the experience before the May election in Stoke-on-Trent, which has been studied by a local government commission.

Until a few years ago all Stoke’s 60 seats were held by Labour. But on May 1 there was a BNP surge and Labour lost seven seats on the council and the BNP won nine.

Times Archive, 1981: National Front complains of police action

Mr Martin Webster claims that the Anti-Nazi League had published addresses and telephone numbers of party members and officials

• National Front blamed for attack on campaigner's home

• National Front advised to drop march

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High unemployment, poverty and “hopelessness and despair” were behind the decision of many to vote for the BNP, the report found. It was a pattern repeated around the country, an election in which 56 BNP councillors were elected on one day.

Slowly, below the radar, the BNP has been building support around Britain. An electoral force for more than a decade, at the last general election in 2005 the BNP contested 119 seats, taking 192,850 votes compared with 47,129 in 2001.

Its best result was in Barking, East London, where it took 16.89 per cent of the vote. But it lost its £500 deposit in 84 seats. In 2006, the BNP doubled its number of councillors in England. The biggest gains were again in Barking & Dagenham, where it became the second party.

Since then, the party has made gains from Wales to Windsor & Maidenhead, showing that its electoral appeal spreads across class demo-graphics. It reached a new electoral milestone in May, winning its its first seat in the London Assembly after Richard Barnbrook received 5.3 per cent of the poll, about 130,000 votes.

With the elections comes momentum. The BNP is about to embark on its largest advertising campaign, using the slogan “Racism cuts both ways”. The party says that it is the biggest and most ambitious stategy it has ever undertaken.

Ministers fear that the forthcoming recession could benefit the BNP. Jon Cruddas, the Labour MP for Dagenham who campaigns against the BNP, said recently: “It will make a qualitative difference in terms of the context within which they’re allowed to perpetuate their scapegoating.”

Many are now looking nervously towards next year’s European elections. The absence of UKIP, which squeezed the BNP vote in 2004, means that Britain’s first BNP Euro MP could be just months from taking office.

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