THOUSANDS of voters are no longer ashamed to back the British National Party, a minister said yesterday as the far-right party fielded record numbers of local election candidates.

Margaret Hodge, the Employment Minister, said that as many as eight out of ten working-class white families in her East London constituency of Barking were tempted to vote for the BNP on May 4.

Mrs Hodge said that fears about the rapid pace of change, with a large influx of ethnic minority families, rather than racism, were behind their concerns. She said that reports that she believed voters were considering the BNP because Labour had failed them were taken out of context.

Her remarks came as the BNP fielded 357 candidates for local elections on May 4, including for the first time one in every ward in Birmingham.

Mrs Hodge said that many families were angry at the lack of housing because immigrants began arriving in the area and because asylum-seekers had been housed there by inner London councils. “They cannot get a home for their children, they see black and ethnic minority communities moving in and they are angry. It is a fear of change. It is gobsmacking change,” she told The Sunday Telegraph. “Nowhere else has changed so fast. When I arrived in 1994 it was a predominantly white, working-class area. Now, go through the middle of Barking and you could be in Camden or Brixton. That is the key thing that has created the environment the BNP has sought to exploit.”

Mrs Hodge added: “The political class as a whole is often frightened of engaging in the very difficult issues of race and . . . the BNP then exploit that and try and create out of a perception a reality which is not the reality of people’s lives.”

Phil Edwards, the BNP’s press officer, said: “People should not be ashamed of voting for the BNP. They have only been persuaded by the media to be ashamed. The media has painted this idea that anyone who does not want Britain to become multiracial and multicultural is somehow wrong and fascist.”

The BNP is campaigning in Birmingham with a warning that the city could have Islamic law imposed within ten years. Simon Darby, a Midlands spokesman for the BNP, said: “Birmingham will become an Islamic city in ten to twenty years, and to a lot of people that is quite startling, that a city in the middle of England can swap over to Sharia.”

Ian Austin, the Labour MP for Dudley, who has taken students from the Midlands to Auschwitz to learn about the Holocaust, said: “This is the old Nazi tactic of the Big Lie. The challenge to the mainstream parties is to work harder than ever to show local communities that we have the answers to the problems they face.”

Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat president, said: “For many years one issue above all has not been adequately addressed by political parties in government and that is enough affordable housing for people where they want to live. The solution is not for people to turn to the BNP.”

There was no comment from the Conservatives.

BNP TARGETS

Council candidates 357

Current councillors 21

Target councils (and current councillors) Amber Valley (0), Barking & Dagenham (0), Bexley (0), Bradford (3 out of 87), Burnley (6 out of 43), Calderdale (3 out of 51), Dudley (0), Epping Forest (3 out of 57), Kirklees (1 out of 69), Oldham (0), Stoke-on-Trent (2 out of 60), Thurrock (0)

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