VIOLENT racial attacks - like attacks committed for any other motive - are crimes which must be prosecuted with the full force of the law.

We emphasise violent because we reject as absurd the inclusion of trivial incidents such as playground name-calling in 'racial attack' statistics.

This kind of manipulation was evident when ethnic minority organisations tried to secure inclusion within the Criminal Justice Bill measures designed to criminalise any opposition to multi-racialism.

This is not the only propaganda device employed by members of minority ethnic groups to win special privileges for their group and/or to criminalise 'racists' among the majority. The staging of hoax 'racial attacks' has also transpired.

As yet there has been no published study of this phenomenon in Britain, but a survey of recent incidents in the United States has been published entitled: Crying Wolf: Hate Crime Hoaxes in America.

This study, byLaird Wilcox, covers hundreds of cases where convicted hoaxers admitted fabricating incidents (ranging from arson to graffiti) 'to alert the public to racism/anti-semitism'.