The far-right anti-immigration British National Party could be on the verge of securing their first ever parliamentary seat, reports SBS senior correspondent Brian Thomson.
The party is standing on a platform which involves pledges to deport immigrants and reserve public housing for long term British citizens only.
The seat in question is Barking and Dagenham on the outskirts of London where the BNP has already gained a foothold on the local council.
A Cambridge University graduate who lives on a farm in Wales plies his trade on the streets of one of London's most impoverished boroughs.
British National Party leader Nick Griffin has been charged twice with incitement to racial hatred but he denies that he is racist - he does, however want many of the country's immigrants thrown out.
"We're about sending illegal immigrants back to where they came from, we're about sending bogus asylum seekers back to where they came from, we're about sending foreign criminals back to where they came from but people who've come here legally, who're part of our society and contributing to our society we're not about sending them anywhere." he says.
Griffin is the scourge of the political establishment in Britain.
But in Barking and Dagenham he is something of a local hero among the white working class.
A toxic combination of high unemployment and immigration together with a severe shortage of housing has turned this once safe Labour bastion into fertile territory for the BNP.
The high profile sitting Labour MP that the BNP is attempting to dislodge -- Margaret Hodge -- accepts that local people are concerned with the fast pace of change in the constituency.
"Yesterday while I was out canvassing a woman said to me that the BNP had knocked on her door and said 'do you know all these niggers are raping our daughters?' now you tell me is that racist or not.," she says.
In an effort to hold on to the seat and the council labour has started to build some new public housing for the first time in more than 20 years.
But it could be a case of too little too late.
