A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published around 17th April 1999.

It’s not institutional racism we have in our country, but instinctive prejudice against the English people on the part of New Labour and its fellow travellers in the BBC and other public services.  It is noteworthy that Mr Dewar is not rushing to impose on Scotland what Mr Straw is imposing on England.

Unlike the situation in the USA, ethnic minorities in England are not basically one group, but many – Afro-Caribbeans being the single largest, but still only about a quarter of the ethnic minority population.  If Jack Straw’s quotas (sorry, targets) are applied to the police by lumping all ethnic minorities together, then as in certain Inner London Local Authorities, there will inevitably be huge over-representation by some minorities, given the disinclination by other minority groups to join the police for social reasons (as is seen among parts of the English population too).  This in turn will mean a further lowering of entry standards as there already has been to facilitate the recruitment of women where the height qualification has been reduced to a ludicrously small 5 ft 4 in.

Again, how are the police going to judge whether or not someone of mixed parentage qualifies for one of the quota vacancies?  Will Mr Straw bring in the sort of rules which the Nazis used to decide the maximum proportion of non-German parentage which allowed a person to claim German citizenship?

What Jack Straw is doing is sensitising everyone to race, when he should be doing the opposite.  The widespread racial harmony which exists here is clear for anyone with unprejudiced eyes to see in our streets, businesses, shops.  Yet Mr Straw, who seems never to express a kindly word for the ever so decent, ever so kindly, native people of this country, is installing what will be a resented if not hated system, at the behest of an unbalanced report and its race industry supporters.