"ONE vote is enough, and we won" was the verdict of a relieved leader of Bexley Council's Tory group, Councillor Teresa O'Neill as the Conservative candidate scraped home to victory in the East Wickham by-election in Welling.

After two recounts at Bexley's civic offices on Thursday (22nd), Tory Steven Hall was declared the winner over the British National Party candidate Michael Barnbrook, by just eight votes.

All of the main political parties revealed their canvassing on the doorsteps of East Wickham, had showed a groundswell of support for the far-right BNP, and have admitted the closeness of the result has left them with some serious thinking to do.

Cllr O'Neill said: "Perhaps we are not getting our message across as clearly as we could.

"We are going to go away to look at that now and get our message across even better."

Labour group leader on Bexley Council, Councillor Chris Ball said he had found the strength of the BNP vote "disturbing" and said the council would need to address the situation seriously, and "not in a party political way".

He said: "Clearly, if people feel the need to support an extreme party, they are feeling very unhappy with what is being provided currently."

He said he was shocked at the fact that in the last two years the BNP had risen locally to a position where it had nearly won a seat on Bexley Council.

Cllr Ball added: "And we need to do something about that.

"If they had won, the message it would have sent about Bexley as a place and the quality of what happens here, would have been extraordinarily damaging and would have made Bexley a place less good to live and work."

The seat had been a Liberal Democrat stronghold before the borough elections in 2006 and the Lib Dems harboured hopes of winning it back.

But on the night they finished fourth out of five candidates.

Lib Dem campaign organiser Duncan Borrowman said they were not disappointed as they had increased their percentage vote.

He said the arrival of the BNP on the scene was "very worrying" and said the Tories would "have to go away and learn the lesson that they have got to stop taking the electorate for granted".

He added: "And then, maybe, we can all do something about pushing the BNP down again."

Mr Borrowman said he felt part of the BNP's success had been due to the fact that, because it was a by-election, it had been able to swamp the area with supporters.

He added: "In an ordinary run-of-the-mill election they will never be able to repeat this result."

But Mr Barnbrook was delighted.

He said: "I feel like it was a victory tonight. We feel we can claim victory."

Mr Barnbrook said the narrowness of the margin of victory boded well for the BNP's future in Bexley.

He said: "People feel badly let down. They are fed up with being treated like second class citizens.

"I don't what the Tories are cheering about. They should have nothing to cheer about at all."

Also standing in the seat was another nationalist party, the English Democrats, which took 128 votes.

Mr Barnbrook said: "I have no hard feelings against their candidate.

"I don't want to talk about the English Democrats."

He claimed if "patriotic" parties made a decision not to stand against each other in local elections "we would have lots of seats".

RESULT

Pat Ball (Labour) 700 Michael Barnbrook (BNP) 790 Grace Goodlad (Lib Dem) 564 Steven Hall (Conservative) 798 ELECTED Laurence Williams (English Democrats) 128 2,989 votes were cast (36.93 per cent turnout) There were nine spoilt ballot papers