Party shrugs off 'stop BNP' calls

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BNP mayoral candidate Richard Barnbrook has brushed off cross-party efforts to stop people voting for his party.

On Tuesday the Bishop of Barking - where the BNP won the most council seats in 2006 - was the latest to join calls not to vote BNP.

But Mr Barnbrook told BBC London the bishop should not "jump on the bandwagon of other politicians, saying 'don't do this and don't do that'".

He said housing had proved the biggest issue among voters during the campaign.

Mr Barnbrook, who is a councillor in Barking and Dagenham, where the BNP is the official opposition with 12 councillors, believes his party will take several seats on the London Assembly on 1 May.

Bishop's intervention

But he has not been invited to hustings attended by other candidates, and has been the subject of a wider "stop the BNP" campaign - one of the sole platforms to unite the other mayoral candidates.

However, Mr Barnbrook said the campaign had gone "pretty well... the majority, by returns of post, by email, by telephone has been pretty good".

On Tuesday the Bishop of Barking, the Rt Rev David Hawkins said each vote for the BNP would "put into reverse the patient, strategic work of healthy, race relations and social integration that is developing in our London boroughs".

In an interview with BBC London, Mr Barnbrook denied campaigning on race adding: "If we were to ... make a statement that could be deemed to be one way or another way looking at people as lesser people, I would appreciate him stepping in. We don't do this."

He said the bishop should not "jump on the bandwagon" of other politicians adding: "I will say this happily, the more you tell people what they should and shouldn't do, the more they will come back and kick you in the backside."

Mr Barnbrook said his call for 50% of all new housing to be made council housing - "not affordable housing, not half-buy half-rent but solid council property" had gone down well with on the doorstep, adding people on less than £18,000 a year "can't afford these pretty little schemes".