Britain is a remarkably tolerant country with an impressive record on integration.
Despite huge demographic changes in recent decades, our political system has not been scarred by extremism, nor has our society been gripped by racial discord.
Our national spirit of openness is precisely why so many migrants wish to settle here.
It is therefore a bitter paradox that this success story is being undermined by a small minority who pose as the champions of anti-racism but who only promote friction as they seek to paint Britain as a land wracked by bigotry.
The great American civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King urged that, in the fight for equality, people should ‘not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character’.