The general election may well drown out the significance of the local elections in May. Not so in Barking and Dagenham, though; who controls the council is the focus of national interest. The reason is the BNP, whose manifesto is launched today. Nick Griffin may be standing against government minister Margaret Hodge in the general election, but this seems little more than a side-show. As Griffin says himself: ‘The council…That is the real prize’. Already the official opposition, the BNP could indeed take over its first council in Britain.

There is a cross party alliance to counter this possible BNP victory. ‘Hope Not Hate’ has a ‘war room’ in the area and the national anti-fascist organisation Searchlight has relocated its headquarters there. Rob Whitehead, chief exec of Barking and Dagenham, has now revealed that the council’s communications strategy has been reorganised to counter ‘a mismatch between the traditional style of council communications and our residents’ world view’, and deal with ‘fears that the BNP is set to make major gains’.

I am nervous about this focus on residents’ alleged ‘world view’. It is a thinly veiled reference to the notion that the white working class think differently to everyone else because – damn it – they keep voting the wrong way. When communities minister John Denham specifically targeted £12 million of government money to ‘reassure’ hundreds of ‘white enclaves’, he surely reinforced the idea that the white working class has an identity and set of interests distinct from the rest of us. It speaks to an increasingly contemptuous view of ‘traditional communities’ who need to be saved from their own prejudices. They are frequently portrayed as a dangerous mob that do not seem to understand the niceties of multicultural Britain.

The emphasis on communication seems equally wrong-headed. It is assumed that a key reason for BNP support is the far-right peddling ‘misinformation, myths and half-truths’. However, local resentment may have more material foundation than Nick Griffin’s opportunistic racist spinning. You don’t have to listen to the BNP to note that after it was only at the start of March that foundations were laid for the first council houses to be built in the borough in 27 years.

I am particularly concerned with Barking and Dagenham’s innovative communications approach ‘to build bridges between statutory agencies and disaffected residents’, with its emphasis on communicating in a new ‘tone of voice’ and developing an ‘empathetic narrative’. A recent training course put on by the council for front line staff and volunteers who ‘play an important role in representing the Council to the public’, is full of pseudo-behaviourist and therapeutic advice on how to gain ‘a better understanding of the emotional content of local people’s concerns’. This implies local people are far too irrational to manage even facts or information, let alone political arguments.

There is something unsavoury about a council assuming it should appeal to residents’ ‘gut feeling or emotion’ and ‘perceptions and feelings’ rather than their reasoning. The training course, put on the Campaign Company (strap-line ‘tacking inequalities through behavioural change’) discusses residents as though they are stroppy, misbehaving adolescents, whose ‘inability to listen rationally’ needs to be countered by a range of patronising and manipulative communications techniques. Trainees are advised to ‘Let then “talk themselves out” – they’ll often calm down…’; after all, ‘if we can make residents feel heard, even if we can’t solve their problems immediately, this will increase the trust’.

One community trainee on the course told me the whole premise of this new communication methodology made her feel as though the Council view local residents as ‘lab-rats to be experimented on, their behaviour dissected rather than actually engaged with’. This was less about winning people’s hearts and minds and ‘more a case of playing mind-games’. She was horrified that her peers and fellow citizens were being treated as ‘an alien breed’ so much so that to communicate with them, she was told to ‘Speak the way they do – by using similar language…(to) make them feel more comfortable’ ( – effective customer conversations page 10 and 14). Oh no! Look out for hordes of municipal employees adopting cockney slang to relate better. Under the creepy section on rapport and body language, we are assured that ‘By deliberately mirroring someone, you can often make them feel at ease’ (page 11) and ‘warm to you’.

It’s all a disingenuous con of course. With amazing frankness, the endless role plays and modules on offer from Barking and Dagenham are described as trusted techniques used by ‘salesmen and many other people who want to make friends quickly’ – so ‘Fake it til you make it’ (page 10). With friends like these, no wonder voters in the local area are quite rationally furious and alienated. Until the council has something worth communicating, they should shut up, and let the voters decide for themselves who should be trusted to run the local area.