Barking the new far right capital with 11 BNP seats

Patricia Thomas remembered the precise moment when she realised the British National Party were poised for a breakthrough in …

Patricia Thomas remembered the precise moment when she realised the British National Party were poised for a breakthrough in Barking.

A neighbour, an elderly white woman, sidled up to her clutching a BNP leaflet.

"She told me that she was going to vote for them but that I shouldn't worry," Ms Thomas said yesterday.

"She said they told her that they had no problem with black people and that it was the eastern Europeans - the Poles and the Kosovans - that they were against. "She gave me the leaflet. The headline was something like 'Keep Britain White'. I realised then that they were going to have a lot of people fooled."

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Barking went to bed on Thursday night as just another deprived London suburb struggling to come to terms with the population shifts of the 21st century. It woke yesterday to find itself the subject of national notoriety - as a new power centre for the BNP.

On a sunny afternoon in the town centre, the realisation struck people in different ways.

A middle-aged woman ambled towards a television crew filming black, Asian and white people shopping in Victoria Road. She drew level, grinned and punched the air with a cry of "BNP".

A few yards away, an older white woman told of her hatred of east Europeans.

"Isn't that racist?" she was asked.

"I am a racist," she replied sweetly.

A man with a red face and wispy white hair watched a multiracial group sitting on the market's bandstand.

"They should bring the army back from Iraq to sort these foreigners out," he said as he moved away.

He kept his distance from people such as Abdul Garuba (38), a black man with sunglasses, a bucket hat and an easy smile, who had been watching through the opened window of his sportscar. "From no councillors to 11," he said slowly, as if for emphasis.

"That is a serious thing. The problem is that some of the white people here do not have the knowledge to do the jobs at the top and they are not willing to do the jobs at the bottom that migrants do," said Mr Garuba.

"But they are happy to blame them for everything and to claim that everyone is getting benefits."

He noted that where the BNP gains a foothold, racial attacks invariably follow. "But they better think about that," he said. "Here you have got a lot of people who have come from war zones like Somalia and Kosovo.They are not going to put up with that."

Though resigned to losing seats, Labour politicians in Barking and Dagenham were taken aback by the scale of the BNP gains.

Some councillors gained more support than in 1992 but were beaten anyway.

Terry Wade, deputy leader of the council, was one of the local luminaries who lost his seat.

Jeffrey Porter was another.

Less than a year ago, he was the Circle line tube driver who stopped his train when the terrorist bomb exploded at Edgware Road station and led hundreds of passengers to safety. He was a national and local hero.

But as the BNP intensified its campaign in his Goresbrook ward, his achievements and past contributions to the area were simply swept away.

"The whole Home Office [ interior ministry] and Charles Clarke [ then home secretary, who revealed the release of foreign prisoners due for deportation] thing was very, very damaging. It was a gift for the BNP," he said.

"People were determined to give Labour a good kicking. You can't fight a tsunami."

Yuri and Tammy Garraway, a mixed-race couple said the worst thing to do was panic.

"They got a lot of votes but nothing like the majority," Yuri said.

"The BNP are the old days."

- (Guardian Service)