Baroness Warsi said she made no apology for reaching out to people who voted for the BNP, or disaffected Muslims who ran the risk of being seduced by the calls of terror group al-Qaida as she set out an agenda for community cohesion based on pragmatism rather than political correctness.

The Shadow Minister for Community Cohesion has spent her life in Dewsbury, a town as segregated as any in the country, where Asian communities dominate some areas and are hardly to be found in others, where schools are segregated and tension is palpable on the streets.

Baroness Warsi said she shared the frustrations the town's Asian population, stigmatised by its links with terrorism – including 7/7 ringleader Mohammed Siddique Khan and three teenagers currently going through the courts – but she is not afraid to court controversy over her stance on the BNP.

"I'm not prepared to write off people who vote for the BNP," she said. "The BNP stand for division and hate, they have their own racist agenda, but 6,000 people in Dewsbury voted for them at the last election and I'm not prepared to write them off as racists.

"They did it as a protest vote and if they're protesting about issues it's up to the mainstream parties to take that on board and hear those people out. They vote BNP through a sense of frustration – it's important to get to the root causes of it all."

At the same time, she does not subscribe to what many believe is the answer – an end to multiculturalism and with it the
ghettoisation of communities.

She said: "Just because people choose to live in a certain part of the town, that's a matter for them. What are we going to do, bus people around? Have quotas on the streets?

"What we should be dealing with is issues of deprivation in estates rather than worrying that they are not mixed. Where you live should be up to you. I don't get hung up on pure housing – it's about how much you feel part of the country you're in."

Dewsbury was under the microscope again in late 2006 after 24-year-old primary school teacher Aishah Azmi was suspended for refusing to remove her niqab full-face veil, again adding to the siege mentality.

Baroness Warsi said: "I found the whole veil debate uncomfortable because I don't think a Briton should tell people what or what not to wear. I also think we're getting hung up on the face veils of a few thousand women and what we should be looking at are the broader issues – access to education, access to jobs, economic inaction among certain communities."

She said the ensuing storm set back community cohesion.

"Every Muslim in Savile Town is not the same. The economic gap between them is huge, there are gender issues, there are people in there with PhDs and those without a single GCSE.

"Some of them are from Indian backgrounds, some Pakistani, some Bengali, some of them Arab origin; they don't speak the same ethic languages. For someone to block them all into one group is actually a very ignorant and patronising approach to ethnic minorities. It's like saying all white people are the same."

Baroness Warsi, 36, says she has been saying this for a long time, but it is only now that people are listening.

She is now somewhat of a national hero after riding to the rescue of schoolteacher Gillian Gibbons, imprisoned in Sudan, but her political ascent has not been seamless.

Eyebrows were raised when Tory leader David Cameron made her party vice chairman with responsibility for cities, and then this summer elevated her to the Lords and placed her in his Shadow Cabinet.

But after Sudan, and a well-received speech shortly afterwards when she said that British Muslims needed to change their victim culture, Baroness Warsi's stock is at an all-time high.

"I'm very pragmatic in terms of my political career," she said. "I don't have a long-term plan, I'm privileged and delighted to be where I am.

"I think it's fantastic to be leading this agenda which I'm so passionate about and hey, if it's not here in six months time, at least I did what I did when I had the opportunity."


The issue in figures

Just over 30 per cent of schools in Bradford have a minority of children speaking English as their first language.

National Insurance numbers were given to 41,640 foreign workers coming to Yorkshire between April 2006 and March 2007.

Yorkshire police forces spend more than £2m a year on interpreters.

A YouGov poll last year revealed 72 per cent of people in the region believe levels of immigration are making community relations more difficult.

Poles make up 38 per cent of all foreign workers coming to Yorkshire. About eight per cent are from Pakistan, five per cent are from Slovakia and another five per cent

are from India.

Almost 800 school-age children have arrived in Bradford from eastern Europe in the space of 18 months.