Ukip should be identified as a racist party, communications union CWU leader Billy Hayes has said.

Addressing the CWU black workers’ conference in Leeds at the weekend, Ms Hayes (below) called for people “to stand up and confront racism.”

The labour movement was successful in taking on the British National Party and defeating it all over the country and Mr Hayes called for a similar approach to be taken towards Ukip.

Ukip leader Nigel Farage cannot use the incendiary language of Enoch Powell in the 1960s due to legislation such as the Race Relations Act.

However, Mr Hayes said that similar sentiments were carried in his comments about English not being spoken and cities and towns being unrecognisable.

“Farage is not on planet UK,” he said. “If you don’t mention Europe and don’t mention immigrants what policies do Ukip have?”

But Communist Party of Britain general secretary Rob Griffiths warned against being too quick to label Ukip as a racist party.

“Although Ukip attracts racists it also enjoys the support of many people who rightly oppose the EU and its cheap labour policy,” he said.

“Labour should prick the pro-big business bubble by offering voters a clear anti-austerity, anti-EU alternative.”

And Mr Hayes expressed his optimism that Labour could win the next election, needing 35 per cent of the vote to form the next government.

He recalled that Lord Ashcroft’s polling of marginal seats showed Labour winning enough from the coalition parties to form a Labour government with a working majority.

Labour Norwich South ­candidate Clive Lewis argued that Labour’s response to Ukip must not be to start getting more like them on immigration.

“We can never out-Ukip Ukip,” he said.

“Look at Cameron destroying his own party.”

Mr Lewis cited contributions to the NHS, the impact of foreign students coming to Britain and contributions to entrepreneurship as positive effects of immigration.