TORY councillor Ellie Bland is seeking legal advice after being labelled a racist for circulating an email containing an offensive poem.

The Calne town councillor insists it was her husband who actually forwarded the poem, which contains the lines: "We have hobby, it's called breeding. Welfare pay for baby feeding," and "By and by, I get plenty money, thanks to you, British dummy."

She has now been suspended from the Conservative party after the email accidentally ended up in the inbox of a Liberal Democrat councillor who took the opportunity to publicise it.

Cllr Bland, who stood as a parliamentary candidate in the last general election, denied she had meant any offence to anyone and is holding her head high despite the story making headlines in the national press.

"It's been blown out of all proportion. The Liberal Democrats have plastered my name around the UK and I will be seeking legal advice to find out what compensation I'm allowed," she said.

"They're the ones who have caused any embarrassment or hurt to those in the UK who reads it and is offended."

She said the poem, far from being racist, is merely a criticism of illegal immigration in Britain, which Cllr Bland blames on the Labour Government.

"The huge worrying factor which everyone is forgetting, because of political correctness, is that we have people in our country who possibly have no right to be here and could have committed crimes in their own home territories and we are allowing them to stay here while the tax payer funds them.

"We can't speak freely in this country anymore. Servicemen and women are fighting to help people have freedom of speech and choice yet in this country I'm being slammed. I'm being denied the right to speak freely and am told I'm racist which I categorically deny."

Cllr Bland said she had received a large number of emails, letters and telephone calls since the story broke on Monday and said 80 per cent had been in support of her.

"Anyone who is broad minded in middle England is saying, come on what's wrong with it? She's right. There is a problem with immigration,'" she said.

Calne mayor Cllr Colin Viner, a Liberal Democrat, has backed Cllr Bland and insisted she is not a racist.

"It annoys me that the ones kicking up a fuss about this supposedly racist email have bandied it about all over the press," he said.