Straw calls for race tolerance as BNP wins council seat

Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, called for greater racial tolerance yesterday after the far-right British National Party unexpectedly won a seat in a council by-election in the Blackburn constituency.

The Lancashire town's understanding of the threat from the far right dates to the 1970s, when two extreme right-wing councillors were elected. Since then, ethnic tensions have been less pronounced than in neighbouring areas – and last year it avoided the riots experienced by Burnley and Oldham.

But the BNP tactics of heavy leafleting and door-to-door canvassing were enough to bring a self-employed local builder, Robin Evans, from nowhere to snatch the predominantly white Liberal Democrat ward of Mill Hill by a 16-vote margin early yesterday.

The BNP's success has confirmed the fears of Mr Straw, who discovered while canvassing during the last general election campaign that the asylum issue was "a code" for local white people to express their anxiety about the size of Blackburn's Asian community.

Mr Straw said at the time: "[I] remind people of why Asian people came, because of a shortage of labour in the mills in the 1950s." In the past few weeks, the BNP has played heavily on the fact that asylum-seekers are being given accommodation in Mill Hill, delivering warnings that an empty nursing home in the ward might be turned into a 30-bed hostel for them. It has not. The party has also played on white fears that Asians – who form 25 per cent of the town's population – are receiving all the regeneration money.

Mr Evans, 38, polled 578 votes, compared with 562 for Labour, 505 for the Liberal Democrats and 154 for the Tories. Turn-out was 39 per cent. After being forced to wait for two recounts before learning he had won, he said he would not be "handicapped by political correctness" in fighting for the town's needs.

Mr Straw said the result would not obstruct efforts to build "a more tolerant, multi-religious community". He said: "The politics of racial exclusion can have no place in British society and all mainstream parties and politicians will have to work harder to defeat it."

But the leader of the Muslim Parliament,Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, said the success was a symptom of a continued failure by mainstream parties to tackle poverty and deprivation.

"Until and unless these issues are tackled, the BNP will have a field day. These councils for a long time have pursued policies which have created ghettos – Asian ghettos, black ghettos," he said. "Each side thinks because they live in ghettos that the resources are going to the other side."

Alan Dean, a Liberal Democrat councillor for the Mill Hill ward, said it was a "very sad" day for the people of Blackburn. He told BBC Radio 4: "The majority of people are against the BNP. We have got racial harmony in Blackburn."