FOLLOWING the report on the Lawrence murder and the admitted racism of the Metropolitan Police it seems to have been assumed without proof that almost the whole of the indigenous population is guilty of racism, either personally or institutionally.

This is far from true but this extreme official view coupled with the theory of multi-culturism (a form of apartheid) and separate communities is unacceptable to many non-racist people such as myself who want nothing more than to see immigrants integrated into British society as it stands.

I view with horror the assumption that a chance remark or physical action is now seen as racist if the recipient or a witness consider them to be so; and that employees are now expected to police and report each others' perceived racist words and actions.

From the report by the Rowntree Foundation it seems that the very word "British" is considered a byword for racism. Even our national flag is questioned on racist grounds.

Now, Ken Livingstone, a man for whom I used to have great respect, has jumped on the bandwagon and questioned the presence of the equestrian statues of Havelock and Napier in Trafalgar Square, thus betraying his complete ignorance of their importance in quelling the Indian Mutiny.

We are made to feel guilty about the slave trade when in fact Africans had been engaged in it long before the Europeans who could not have indulged in it without their close co-operation. It was the British who abolished the trade and effectively stopped most of it.

Our history cannot be changed or rewritten, it is as it was and on the whole is something to be proud of rather than ashamed of.

Am I the only one to see an Orwellian nightmare lurking in the shadows?

When a dangerous piece of rail track can be described as "not good" without comment, I fear that I am.

ROGER HARVEY

Pound Close

Lyneham