The BNP yesterday got 496 votes in the Rosedale ward of Cheshunt, Herts, giving them a seat on the Broxbourne local council. I'm only surprised this didn't happen earlier.

I grew up in this area and went to school opposite the Rosedales estate. Most of the estate itself was built during the 1970s, and was described as a 'GLC overspill'. Part council, part private owned, the people who moved there were almost exclusively white, relatively well off working class, from boroughs in north London.

They were, for the most part, openly racist, making no bones about leaving north London so as not to have to 'live with blacks'. Inside school neither pupils nor teachers made any secret of their prejudices either, and anyone dissenting from generalised racism was considered to be very wierd.

The National Front always had supporters in the area, followed by the BNP as the NF declined. There have always been fascist candidates. Bulldog magazine was briefly sold in my school at one point, raising only amusement and derision, rather than any outrage or horror - although I don't remember anyone being interested enough in any kind of politics to buy it.

Brent Cheetham, who belongs to some obscure fascist offshoot called Third Way (He seems to be number two to Patrick Harrington - the one who was at north London poly in the 1980s) runs a local newspaper in an adjoining village, and is a member of the parish council.

Broxbourne council itself is overwhelmingly Tory, and my guess would be that the BNP vote represents more a desire to see a working class racist councillor instead of a middle class one than anything else. It isn't a particularly poor area, and doesn't have an asylum seeker population for anyone to whip up hysteria about. But the people there have always had the same outlook, and the same fear that the London they left will catch up with them. The BNP didn't go and 'whip up' racism. I assume it just did some better canvassing among apathetic voters and got some people to express their sentiments with a cross in a ballot box, rather than just a rant at the TV or in the pub.