Now however, the ruling Labor Party is looking anew at the threat posed by the BNP, as a study suggests that almost 25 percent of the electorate would consider voting for the extremist faction.

Ask an average Briton what kind of person would vote for the BNP and terms such as "racists," "crazies" or "Nazis" would probably figure large in the answer. But according to several prominent Labor politicians, deprivation and resentment among the white working classes is breeding fresh support for the party's hard-line stance on immigration, raising the specter of a dramatic upset in May's local elections.

Employment Minister Margaret Hodge made headlines at the weekend when she claimed that eight out of 10 white voters in her east London constituency of Barking were threatening to vote for the BNP. Angered by the lack of affordable housing, which they blame on mass immigration and government favoritism of ethnic minorities, many are deserting their traditional Labor roots and flocking to the far right party, she said.

"They can't get a home for their children, they see black and ethnic minority communities moving in and they are angry," Hodge told the Sunday Telegraph newspaper. "When I knock on doors I say to people, 'are you tempted to vote BNP?' and many, many, many -- eight out of 10 of the white families -- say 'yes.' That's something we have never seen before, in all my years. Even when people voted BNP, they used to be ashamed to vote BNP. Now they are not."

Hodge said white working class families were frightened by the pace of demographic change in her area. "What has happened in Barking and Dagenham is the most rapid transformation of a community we have ever witnessed."

She denied such sentiments were rooted in racism. "It is a fear of change. It is gobsmacking change."

Hodge, a close ally of Prime Minister Tony Blair, blamed the phenomenon on a "lack of leadership" in the Labor Party and an unwillingness of the political classes to address race and immigration issues. "Part of the reason they switch to the BNP is they feel no one else is listening to them."

Asylum seekers had been moved from inner London boroughs to outer east London areas such as Barking yet neither Labor nor the previous Conservative government had invested in the expansion of social housing necessary to ensure local populations were still sufficiently accommodated, she said. Neither had the government done enough to deal with deprivation on council estates, she added. "It is the poorest whites who feel the greatest anger because there is no way out for them."

Her comments were reinforced by a study by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust published Monday, which indicated that 24 percent of voters in London and one in six nationwide would consider voting for the BNP.

The report cited feelings of "powerlessness and frustration" in white working class areas as one of the key reasons for the shift, alongside BNP attempts to exploit such sentiments by disseminating lies about the benefits afforded to immigrants.

Jon Cruddas, Labor member of Parliament for Dagenham and one of the report's authors, said that the BNP were "on the verge of a major political breakthrough." The government had neglected traditionally Labor-voting, working class groups, he said, focusing instead on middle class swing voters who decided national elections. This had led to a feeling of "disenfranchisement" in areas such as Dagenham where residents were concerned about local issues such as the availability of affordable housing.

"The cornerstone of New Labor has been the assumption that working class voters in communities like mine have nowhere else to go, as they would never vote Tory (Conservative)," he wrote.

"Yet this mixture of population movement and policy failure alongside the national discussion around race has meant that many are now developing a class allegiance with the far right."

The report lists a number of myths propagated by the BNP in order to exploit feelings of frustration in poor white neighborhoods. In the 2005 general election, the party distributed leaflets in Barking and Dagenham claiming that African immigrants were secretly being given $88,000 grants to buy houses in the area, a claim that has since proved to be entirely untrue. It eventually took 16.9 percent of the vote in Barking, far less than expected.

The BNP's strategy for the 2006 local elections is vehemently anti-Islamic -- after having sought to capitalize on the July 7 London bombings last year with a leaflet entitled "If only they had listened to the BNP," the party is campaigning in Birmingham with a warning that the city could have Islamic law imposed within ten years.

The initial reaction to such allegations from mainstream political parties was that to answer them would give the BNP the oxygen of publicity, the report said. However by failing to combat the claims, mainstream politicians allowed them to become fact, it said.

Labor's response to the study and to Hodge's comments certainly suggests confusion over how best to address the threat from the BNP. While some ministers have warned against giving the party too much coverage, more than 50 Labor MPs representing areas where the BNP is strong have formed a campaign group urging a more active and targeted counter-strategy.

James Graham of London-based think tank the New Politics Network, said it was vital that local government was seen to be addressing residents' concerns.

"We do see it essentially as a protest vote, an indication of disenfranchisement," he told United Press International Tuesday.

His organization expected the BNP to make modest gains in some areas at the May elections, he said; however from past experience, it was likely they would not be able to sustain these increases as they "tended to fall apart" once in local government.

"People learn the lesson the hard way that voting BNP tends to get you fairly inadequate local government representation," he said. "It's a means of expression, but a fairly high risk strategy."

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