The majority of housing in the borough of Tower Hamlets was owned by the council at the time, so housing was a major issue in local politics. At the time, the Liberal Democrats had a "bottom-up" strategy for local elections, where the local party determined its own strategy with little direction from headquarters. As most of the Asian residents in Tower Hamlets supported the Labour Party, the local Liberal Democrats increasingly became the party of local White residents. Roger Eatwell has used the phrase "syncretic legitimation" to the favouring of "local people" by the Liberal Democrats that led to greater acceptance of the BNP's racism. For example, the Liberal Democrats' leaflets in Millwall had said that Labour's policies for positive discrimination meant "NO to Island Homes for Island People" (the Isle of Dogs is known locally as "the Island") and implying that the Liberal Democrats favoured the White community. In November 1981, a local Liberal Democrat councillor had travelled to Bangladesh and was quoted as telling local people that there was "no room left for immigrants". Another councillor hung a Union flag in a proscribed place from his office in Globe Town and made a stance of refusing to take it down. The BNP themselves said that the local Liberal Democrats had "transformed themselves from being composed of a small group of early yuppie outsiders, to being the party of the local frustrated housewife". In time, the Labour Party felt obliged to defend themselves against perceptions of favouring Bangladeshis and also began to use similar language about favouring locals.
