Fred, I think the situation in http://www.thisisleicestershire.co.uk/news/did-BNP-favour-Coalville-voters/article-1069297-detail/article.html was not unique.

Take the ward of Coalville -

"A decade ago, Labour held 36 of the district's 40 seats.
Their majority was so overwhelming that opposition and scrutiny came not from the Tories, who had just three seats and were rarely seen, but from rival factions inside the ruling Labour group and the media.

It was at a time when the town, through no fault of its own, was on its knees following the death of the mining industry.

Six collieries – Snibston, Desford, Whitwick, Ellistown, South Leicester and Bagworth – closed in and around Coalville in an eight-year period from 1983-1991. About 5,000 men – men with well-paid, proud jobs – were put on the dole.

Shops and pubs and businesses which relied on that industry and all that it provided went to the wall.

A community which thrived on the commodity which gave it its name was economically and then socially bereft."

Areas such as Coalville – including the former mining towns in the north where the Labour vote also collapsed – provided a rich seam of disillusionment for the BNP, said a local 'politics exper
"The BNP target white, working class areas with a degree of deprivation,"

In the run up to the election, most national newspapers, including the local Mercury, ran editorials advising their readers not to vote for the BNP.
In a unprecedented move, the NUT delivered leaflets in and around Coalville urging people not to vote BNP.
It was a move which played right into the party's hands, argued some.

"If you're angry at the system and the establishment and what you perceive to be the same establishment telling you how you should vote, you may well rebel."


Now Thatcher can certainly be held responsible for the closure of the pits but - "The New Labour project, that brave centre-left experiment to bring Clintonian Third-Way politics to a post-Thatcherite Britain" must take a very great share of the blame too in it's abject failure to communicate to it's traditional supporters

Kowtowing to the Murdoch press and a commitment to spinning a narrative to a 'middle England', have ensured it no longer speaks directly to the poor and disenfranchised

"Whenever a section of society is ignored and marginalised, the predatory fascist right move in to fill the vacuum" writes one political blogger