Minister tells unions to stop boosting the BNP

Caroline Flint, minister for Europe, fears 'feeding a climate of intolerance'

Labour officials fear rise of far-right in North-west, Yorkshire and Humber regions

A minister has warned Labour MPs and trade unions they will play into the hands of the British National Party if they continue their campaign against companies they claim recruit "foreign workers" to undercut pay levels.

Caroline Flint, the minister for Europe, has told parliamentarians and unions that they risk giving an "unintentional boost" to the BNP's prospects at the European Parliament elections in June. Labour officials fear the far-right party could land seats in the North-west and Yorkshire and Humber under the proportional voting system.

Unions and many Labour MPs are convinced that engineering contracts are being handed to firms which hire foreign workers because they can be paid less than under industry-wide agreements covering British employees. A strike over the issue at Total's refinery at Lindsey, Lincolnshire, last month was followed by walkouts around Britain.

Ms Flint said: "After the debate in recent weeks about foreign workers and EU law, the danger is that it will be misused at every opportunity by those who don't share our progressive values. And no amount of campaigning by anti-fascist groups, however important, will undo the damage if we unintentionally boost the BNP's campaign in Labour heartlands by feeding a climate of intolerance."

Writing in the Labour modernisers' journal Progress, she said: "If in Britain we make EU workers into scapegoats, or open the door to the BNP to stir up that feeling, what message does it send to the other EU member states where thousands of British people work?"

The issue is highly sensitive in Labour circles because the unions are demanding that Gordon Brown honours his 2007 pledge to create "British jobs for British workers." He insists he meant ensuring these workers had the skills to land the jobs available – not curbing "foreign" job-hunters.

In an attempt to head off further protests from unions, ministers are launching a campaign to stress the benefits of working abroad. "Europe's open market – freedom to live and work anywhere in the EU – is not a one-way street to our constant advantage," Ms Flint said.

Some 10 per cent of all the 3.5 million jobs in the UK were as a result of trade with the EU, she said. Non-British EU citizens made up less than one in 20 of the workforce in Britain, while 1.6 million Britons lived in other EU countries – more than 200,000 of them in work. "The difference is that EU residents in Britain are younger and have higher skills," she said.

Ms Flint added: "EU membership, including free movement of workers, has been good for British families and companies and we must vocally support it."

Independent

BNP attempts to infiltrate wildcat strikes

Warnings are being sounded about far-right involvement in the Lindsey wildcat strike over foreign workers, with the deputy leader of the British National party telling politics.co.uk: "We'll be the last people there."

Trade unionists and anti-fascist activists have been alerted to the growing BNP presence around the picket line. The strike spread across the country yesterday, with heavy snow doing nothing to stop over 300 people gathering around the site as the sun rose.

"We'll be there for the foreseeable future," Simon Darby, deputy leader of the BNP, confirmed to politics.co.uk. "We'll be the last people there."

He continued: "Unfortunately Labour have sent in the Socialist Workers party storm troopers who have been aggressive against our people. Police were supportive of us, but the left got rather aggressive. The police said 'we can't guarantee your safety'. The last thing we want is clashes with the left on TV."

That particular event carried a different interpretation from anti-fascist organisation Searchlight. A spokesman told politics.co.uk: "The local trade union people have gone to the police and said we don't want these people anywhere near the picket line. They've got nothing to do with the dispute. The police said to the BNP 'if you bring your truck to the picket line we'll do something about it'. They were forced to move to about half a mile away."

Yesterday the party started handing out leaflets about the strike.

"It's all over the place," the spokesman said. "It has lots of typos but the basic reason it doesn't make any sense is that they don't understand what the trade unions are about."

The Socialist party, which has members on the strike committee, is also handing out a leaflet tomorrow, but one targeted at the Italian workers brought in to work. Written in Italian, the leaflet says Italian workers have more in common with their British counterparts than Italian management.

The BNP, which is at the site in its 'truth truck' (nicknamed the 'liars' lorry' by anti-fascist activists), are understood to be using a BNP-based union called Solidarity' to become involved in the strike, which expanded to include Sellafield nuclear power plant workers yesterday. Solidarity is a registered trade union formed in 2006. Its last returns to the certification office said it had only 100 members, although that number has almost certainly risen slightly since then. It does not have a certificate of independence, meaning it can't represent members at tribunals or in court and employers are under no obligation to recognise it.

The party has dedicated large sections of their website to the strike, with photos of Italian workers showing cameramen the V-sign displayed prominently beneath the slogan: "British job s for British workers – When we say it we mean it."

The response of the unions to a BNP infiltration has been mixed. A spokesman for the GMB union told politics.co.uk "We held mass meeting with our members. We recommended our members go back to work. They decided not to take our advice. You're talking to me about something that's not our responsibility."

But a political officer for the union took a different stance, telling politics.co.uk: "We want to make sure the BNP don't hijack this to peddle their hate. This is not a dispute concerning immigration or asylum seekers. It's completely different to that. I've not heard people say they can see a lot of BNP activity at the moment although I acknowledge there is some."

He added: "We'll make sure that members and people on picket lines are alerted to the fact they will be about and they will try to recruit. We need to be smart enough to know they will be there and act against it."

Police plans to bus in the Italian and Portuguese workers today are being treated as a statement of intent by strikers, with many saying it is reminiscent of the miners' strike in the 1980s.

View London