|PIC1|The Archbishop of York has joined the chorus of condemnation aimed at the controversial British National Party in the run up to the local elections, as he joins church leaders and politicians in urging voters to reject the party in this week’s local elections.

The call comes after fresh evidence against the BNP emerged last week when both Sky News and The Sunday Times reported of conversations recorded secretly last year in which a BNP describes black people as genetically inferior to whites.

Numerous politicians and community leaders have even gone as far as to call on local constituents to vote for rival parties rather than give votes to the far-right party, with the local government minister of Manchester, Phil Woolas, the latest to announce he would rather see votes cast for the Tories or Liberal Democrats than the BNP.

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, told voters on the BBC Radio Four’s Sunday programme that voters in England have an opportunity to shun parties playing on xenophobia and seeking to clamp down on immigration.

Dr Sentamu warned that political groups like the British National Party, which has also tried to espouse its ‘Christian’ credentials, were following a “politics of fear” agenda.

|TOP|The Uganda-born Dr Sentamu, who opposed the terror regime of the notorious Idi Amin, said that the UK was “a country of immigrants”, adding that he found Britain a “most accommodating” country, despite the racist hate mail he has received since beginning his tenure as Archbishop of York.

“This country has been one of the most welcoming,” he said during the broadcast.

“I want to suggest if it lost that because people simply say 'we're going to put a barbed wire around a number of things in order for us to feel safe', that is not actual security, that's fear - and any politics which plays on people's fears in the long run, give it a bit of time, it will fail.”

In the secret recordings taken in January 2005 and handed to Sky News last week, chief spokesperson of the BNP, Phil Edwards, said: “The black kids are going to grow up dysfunctional . . . and are probably going to mug you.” He adds: “To put it crudely, there’s no black Mozart, no black Dickens.”

|AD|When asked to defend his comments, Edwards said: “If I thought I was going to be recorded . . . I would not have used such intemperate language, but let’s be honest about it, the facts are there.”

Churches Together in Britain and Ireland came out to distance itself firmly from the Christian Council of Britain, set up by members of the BNP, including a mysterious “Reverend Robert West” who does not appear in Crockford’s, the directory of the Church of England clergy.

A spokesperson for Searchlight, the anti-fascist group, Nick Lowles, commented to The Sunday Times: “Edward’s views clearly show they [the BNP] are a hard-core racist organisation.”

Phil Woolas told Sunday Live on Sky News He said: "Whichever way they [voters] vote I would sooner they voted Conservative, Liberal (Democrat) or Green - I would prefer them to vote for my party obviously - but please don't vote for the British National Party.

"I know from my own area the damage they can do in terms of community relations, it is a terrible party."
Shadow Commons leader Theresa May said all the three parties had an obligation to denounce the BNP’s “appalling message of hate”.