THE British National Party look set to more than double its council seats nationwide with a significant breakthrough in the South and further gains in the North.

The far-right party was expected to walk off with at least six seats in Barking and Dagenham, where early this morning they were on course to form the main opposition.

Before the London results started coming in the BNP had already gained 11 seats: 3 in Epping Forest, 3 in Sandwell, 3 in Stoke on Trent, 1 in Pendle and 1 in Redditch.

The party fielded a record number of candidates this year to try to boost its tally of 20 seats, which were mainly concentrated in the North.

But BNP activists focused most of their efforts in the East of London, in Barking and Dagenham, with intensive campaigning in the past few days and a late surge before polling stations closed.

As Labour faced losing seats to the nationalists, some activists started blaming Margaret Hodge, the MP for Barking. Her warning that eight out of ten voters in her constituency were considering voting BNP had given the party “the oxygen of publicity”, according to Liam Smith, a Labour candidate. “Since she said that, we have never seen so many reporters and cameramen around here,” he said. “She has raised their profile and put them in the limelight.

“We have had people saying they are considering voting BNP because they feel that once the Labour minister says something, it must be right.”

The turnout for the election was 38.1 per cent, with 46,656 votes cast, a massive rise on the 22.76 per cent of the electorate who turned out to vote four years ago.

Jon Cruddas, Labour MP for Dagenham, said last night: “I don’t know where these figures came from, but that sort of stuff hasn’t dropped out of the sky in the last ten years. It’s come from a fairly longstanding set of issues. But people I know in the BNP can’t believe the amount of media coverage they have received.”

He predicted a significant movement against Labour in the borough. “It’s not looking too clever for us. They’ve put up 13 candidates and in all of them they will have done pretty well.”

Ryan Edwards, a Liberal Democrat candidate for the fiercely contested Eastbury Ward, said: “It seems the Labour vote has collapsed. It’s between ourselves, UKIP and the BNP. That’s my impression from the campaign. People feel immigration has spiralled out of control, they want to make a protest vote by voting for a right-wing party.”

Diane Challis, a Lib Dem candidate seeking re-election to the same ward, told The Times: “We’ve been fighting a local election on national issues and it’s all been immigration.

David Winter, a retired roofer and former Labour activist, now campaigning for the BNP, said he had been campaigning on “more than just black and white — jobs, crime, housing, education.”

At last year’s general election, Richard Barnbrook, the BNP borough leader, came within 50 votes of the Conservative tally.

Times Recommends

• UK regional accents thrive against the odds
• ‘Scarecrow’ wind farms put rare birds to flight
• What an anti-climax: G-spot is a myth