The British National Party has made a shock by-election gain in Blackburn.

The racist far right group has secured a seat on Lancashire's Darwen Borough Council.

A BNP activist took the Mill Ward seat from the Lib Dems in foreign secretary Jack Straw's Blackburn constituency.

The BNP polled 578 votes to 562 for Labour, 505 for the Liberal Democrats and 154 for the Tories.

The result will fuel racial tensions in the area and add to the mainstream parties' anxiety that they are failing to halt the BNP's rise in the north west.

The far-right party won three seats in neighbouring Burnley earlier this year.

In the 2001 general election they also received 16 per cent of the vote in Oldham.

"This result will not obstruct our efforts to build a more tolerant, multi-religious community in the town," said Straw, the local MP.

"The politics of racial exclusion can have no place in British society and all mainstream parties and politicians will now have to work harder to defeat it" he added.

The BNP candidate, local builder Robin Evans, was forced to wait for two recounts before learning he had won by just 16 votes.

Evans refused to give interviews after his win but, reading from a prepared statement, said he would not be "handicapped by political correctness" in fighting for the town's needs.

Muslim Parliament leader Dr Ghayasuddin Siddiqui said it was a symptom of a continued failure by mainstream parties to tackle poverty and deprivation.

"Until and unless these issues are tackled the BNP will have a field day. These councils for a long time have pursued policies which have created ghettos - Asian ghettos, black ghettos.

"Each side thinks because they live in ghettos that the resources are going to the other side."

Conservative local government spokesman Eric Pickles said: "The BNP should be opposed wherever they stand. Their evil pernicious doctrine must be rejected.

"This is a wake-up call for all people who believe in democracy."

But despite the BNP taking the seat, Straw noted that electors had voted more than two-to-one against the party.