'This town is turning into a foreign land ... They are all illegal migrants'

"This town is turning completely into a foreign land." David Guynan was on his feet in his lounge, surrounded by porcelain cats, and in full oratorical flow. "Put this down. It's like the grey squirrels taking over. I'm a red squirrel, that's what I am."

Mr Guynan, 50, was not joking. He is taking his role as British National Party candidate for the Sunderland ward of Hendon very seriously.

A small group of BNP activists gathered at his home yesterday to plan the final push for council votes in a city where the party has channelled its efforts. Twenty-five candidates are standing across the city, contesting every ward, as part of what the party describes as its "biggest push to get the voice in the town halls of Britain for the long-suffering British taxpayer".

For all its talk of transport, reducing bureaucracy and plans to save the green belt, Mr Guynan encapsulates the essence of the BNP.

"The white people don't want a multiracial society. We never got a vote on it. They are all illegal economic migrants as far as I am concerned." Yet even he was aware of the party's family-friendly policy. "Try and get a nice one," the now smiling face of the BNP told the photographer.

The rise of the BNP is seen with alarm in a city looking overseas to fuel its economic revival. Once active in the late 1980s in Sunderland, the BNP went into temporary decline when two senior figures were jailed in the mid-1990s for an attack on an Asian student.

Now it is challenging the established political order of a city dominated by Labour for decades. In the previous council elections the turn-out was only 22 per cent; the BNP hopes to exploit the apathy, a new postal ballot system and the failure of the Tories to mount a big challenge to Labour.

Racist crimes fell last year in the Northumbria Police area, yet the murder of an Iranian asylum-seeker and disturbances before the recent England vs Turkey international football match point to hardcore discord.

In a city of nearly 300,000 people, fewer than 2,000 are asylum-seekers and refugees, mainly from Iraq, Afghanistan and Zimbabwe, sent to the city under the Government's dispersal scheme.

Despite an established Bangladeshi community, the last census results show that nearly 99 per cent described themselves as white British. Ethnic minorities told The Independent yesterday that they now felt even more threatened in the city because of the rise to prominence of the BNP.

Gurdeep Singh, 19, a Sikh who runs a shopping stall, said he had had to protect himself from violence on several occasions. "I have learnt martial arts," he said. "In Sunderland you have to."

The extent to which the BNP is likely to influence policy in the city was fiercely debated. Daoud Zaaroura, chief executive of the North of England Refugee Service, said the "outstanding" support network of voluntary groups was more important than any seats the BNP might win. The Tyne and Wear Anti-Fascist Association said it believed the BNP had overstretched itself with more candidates than their support could maintain.