IAIN WATSON:                The images from our worst 
nightmares can often be so vivid, they still haunt our waking hours. Since 
the events of last June, Burnley has been associated in the collective 
consciousness with disturbances and division.  A cross-community task force 
has worked hard to find ways of preventing this from ever happening again. 
 But there's one political party which still wants to exploit any underlying 
tensions even though victims of the rioting would rather build a better 
future.

Now the BNP are standing for only sixty-eight council seats out of nearly 
six-thousand which are being contested across England. But they seem very 
keen to target the areas which saw disturbances last summer. In Oldham 
for example, they're putting up five candidates and here in Burnley they 
are contesting thirteen of the fifteen electoral wards.

Now Labour are so keen that the BNP shouldn't be allowed to establish 
a bridgehead in any of Britain's town halls, that they have drafted in 
outside organisational expertise. But it's clear it'll take more than spin 
doctoring to see off the twin viruses of deprivation and resentment on 
which the BNP campaign hopes to build.

Burnley is situated in a pleasant location near the Pennine hills, but 
it's clear it's still reeling from the collapse of many of its traditional 
industries.  Forty per cent of households are claiming state benefits, 
and some pockets of poverty are amongst the worst in England. One ward 
is the eighth poorest in the country. It's the discontent that comes from 
deprivation which the BNP is trying to exploit. Their local organiser is 
making his way into town from his home in the nearby countryside. He polled 
eleven per cent of the vote as their parliamentary candidate last year. 
While the BNP say they are democrats, the prospect of direct action is 
never far from their thoughts. 

STEVE SMITH:                There's a lot of resentment 
in this town, especially in regard to the imbalance of, of wealth distribution 
in Burnley.  And fundamentally if that is not addressed and the frustrations 
and the anger addressed also, then we are going to see more of the kinds 
of, of division and conflict that we saw some months ago.

WATSON:                    More riots?

SMITH:                    Yes, you cannot expect a 
council that performs in the way that our council does and expect people 
to take it lying down.  

ACTUALITY:        

WATSON:                    Larry O'Hara is an academic 
who has written extensively about the BNP and the far right. 

LARRY O'HARA:                What they want is to win 
one contested council seat anywhere in the country and they, and they think 
that the national publicity which would follow from that would help them 
onto their next plateau of growth. You know you're gonna get a small core 
minority of people in any area, including Burnley, what, whatever happens 
in the elections who would see themselves as racist but you will get a 
larger percentage of people who will see themselves as having been abandoned 
by traditional politicians.  And they might think that a vote for the BNP 
could be a protest vote.

WATSON:                    There's almost four-thousand 
empty homes in Burnley; some are awaiting demolition but others have to 
be boarded up as soon as a tenant leaves to prevent drug addicts breaking 
in to steal fixtures and fittings to pay for their habit.  Doing more to 
combat crime in working class communities is territory the BNP are keen 
to occupy, but there may be some distance between their rhetoric and reality. 
Their organiser is certainly a conviction politician, though not in the 
conventional sense.  He's just come out of prison after a three month sentence 
for electoral fraud. 

SMITH:                    That matter was, has been 
actually looked at by our party hierarchy and they have decided that what 
I did there was no more than a misdemeanour.

WATSON:                    What credibility does your 
party have on law and order when one of your organisers was convicted of 
attacking police with a hammer, another organiser of the BNP was convicted 
of storing explosives and you yourself are just out of jail?

SMITH:                    How, all I can tell you 
is that anyone connected with the British National Party, who is in breach 
of our national code of conduct, is expelled.

WATSON                    Does it breach your code 
of conduct?

SMITH:                    You would need to address 
that matter to the party hierarchy, I'm a branch organiser.

WATSON:                    Attacking police with a 
hammer may not breach your code of conduct, is that what you're saying?

SMITH:                    If you wanted to actually 
make a list or perhaps even write a book about the offences committed by 
people in the Labour party you couldn't actually produce a book thick enough.

WATSON:                    The BNP attack Labour by 
saying the government isn't spending enough on Burnley; but they also insinuate 
that Asian voters are given an unequal share of an already small cake.

Not all of Burnley's old terraced housing is boarded up or awaiting demolition. 
Here in the Daneshouse ward, there's an impressive programme of improvements 
already underway. But what the BNP are keen to point out is that this is 
predominantly an Asian part of town. But what they fail to point out is 
the reason that more cash, relatively speaking, is being spent in this 
area is because this ward is the most deprived in Burnley and one of the 
most deprived in the whole of Britain. So the way public money is spent 
in this town is being exploited for electoral reasons by the BNP.

While the charges of unfairness coming from the BNP can be refuted, the 
Labour MP for Burnley thinks his own government could do more to overcome 
resentment.  The funds to tackle deprivation are often awarded through 
special schemes tightly targeted on those areas with the greatest needs, 
so some people in neighbouring districts feel left out.

PETER PIKE;                    One of the problems 
with programmes is it looks at ward boundaries and indeed ward boundaries 
that haven't existed now for a number of years.  Now poverty and deprivation 
doesn't end neatly at a line on a map and certainly councils need more 
flexibility to be able to use their resources. Another thing that has been 
a problem for Burnley is that their main core funding is now less in real 
terms than it was in ten years.  Now we all know that the Labour government 
is going to change the structure of local government within the next twelve 
months. And one of the things that it has got to do is be much more positive 
to councils like Burnley to give them the freedom to be able to tackle 
the problems that clearly exist here.

WATSON:                    The call for more cash 
was echoed by representatives of the ethnic minority communities at this 
meeting  with the TUC

SHER ALI MIAH:                Successive governments have 
failed Burnley Burnley has severe problem in the form of housing, deprivation, 
overcrowding, poor health -Burnley need massive injections of money

WATSON:                    The BNP say that more public 
money would come to Burnley if they do well in the forthcoming council 
elections. That's because, as they put it, the Labour government would 
try to 'bribe' voters not to support the BNP in future. But they make no 
mention of the potential effect they might have on private investments. 
We spoke to the CBI in the region and they told us there could be an adverse 
effect on business confidence if the town became associated with BNP activity, 
but many of their members were just too worried to speak out. However, 
the chairman of this company  wasn't too afraid to tell us what he thought 
about the BNP.
                        This is a specialist engineering 
firm serving an international market. Its chairman supports Labour but 
he says the reason he wants to keep the BNP out of the town hall owes as 
much to economics as politics.

DEREK GILL:                It would be the ultimate disaster 
- I'm quite sure we would lose markets; I mean I've have been in Malaysia 
, we've been in China, we've been in Japan -and we would lose markets. 
 It is very difficult  as it is on a price basis but if we were associated 
with racism as well, it would be the end of businesses like this

PETER DOYLE:                I would prefer them not to 
be a legal party. With the type of policies that they are putting forward 
nationally, we do not want to be involved in that.  I mean my father fought 
people that were putting forward similar policies many, many, years ago. 
And as locally, the policies are - shall we say - watered down, and in 
my view they are just trying to hoodwink the people.

WATSON:                         Why no mention of 
your national policy on banning mixed marriages?

SMITH:                         That is a policy that 
I am not aware of.  

WATSON:                        It's national policy, 
I mean it's on the website?

SMITH:                         Yeah well I've been 
extremely busy just recently running the Burnley campaign and unfortunately 
I haven't had sufficient time or opportunity to, to examine that particular 
policy.

WATSON:                          Are you a racist?

SMITH:                         I don't actually recognise 
that word.  I believe it was a piece, it is a piece of propaganda which 
effectively makes it a sin for a person to protect their racial and cultural 
environment.  

WATSON:                         So who made the word 
up?

SMITH:                         Trotsky in the 1930's, 
fact.  

WATSON:                          So racism is all 
a far left Trotskyist plot?

SMITH:                          Correct.  

WATSON:                    The harsh reality is that 
the BNP are appealing to a certain section of the population. We'd even 
been told that this pub was displaying campaigning literature at a sensitive 
time before the local elections. 

                        Using a concealed camera, 
we were surprised at the prominence given to this example of  blatant support 
for the British National Party.  We contacted the owners of the pub, Thwaites 
brewery, to ask what action they intended to take against the landlord 
for allowing the poster to be put up. In a statement to On the Record, 
they said :

                        "Daniel Thwaites brewery 
runs a compulsory in house tenants training course where all our tenants 
are advised to remain impartial and show no bias to any sector of the community. 
Immediately this particular matter came to our attention we sent a representative 
to the Bridge Inn and the poster was duly removed. A letter reinforcing 
the guidelines laid down in our training course has now been sent to every 
pub in our tenanted estate."

                     However, they were unable to 
tell us if any action had been taken against the landlord for breaching 
the company's own guidelines on impartiality  Mozaquir Ali, a Liberal Democrat 
councillor, is showing a colleague the progress being made on a new multicultural 
centre; but he warns that the wounds of last June may be reopened if the 
BNP do well at the ballot box

COUNCILLOR MOZAQUIR ALI:         We are basing a project which 
will bring children from all faiths into activities where they will meet 
each other and they will grow up together into a better more cohesive Burnley, 
and that's what we are aiming at. And that's the aim that the BNP are causing 
a threat to, to  that aim; and I'm sure, and have full confidence,  and 
I hope the people of Burnley will reject them in this election
 
WATSON:                    But in Burnley, voters 
can to elect up to three candidates in each council ward, and there are 
fears that some of them may lodge a protest against the mainstream parties 
on their second or third vote.  Labour says anyone  who's fed up with them 
should  avoid the BNP at all costs

PIKE:                        If they are not for 
Labour then vote for the independents, Tories or Liberals but don't waste 
a vote for the BNP. All they will do is cause division and conflict

WATSON:                    The main parties are warning 
that a protest vote for the BNP next month will stir up racial tensions 
and erect  barriers between Burnley's communities. But  curing the  underlying 
disease of deprivation  will mean the government will have to put up extra 
cash and be more flexible about how it's spent, if disillusionment and 
division are to be banished from Burnley.