From the latest British Social Attitudes survey (just published by Sage), we learn that a significant number of people believe that ethnic minorities have been treated too kindly by the elite. More than one-third of the white population agree that "attempts to give equal opportunities to black people and Asians have gone too far".

Well, let me get one thing absolutely clear: we have never been given anything. We have had to fight every step of the way in order to make the advances we have. I quote the American ex-slave Frederick Douglass: "Power concedes nothing without demand, it never has and it never will."

So I return to the New Cross massacre, which occurred almost 20 years ago, and all that flowed from that murderous night. A 16-year-old, Yvonne Ruddock, held a birthday party at her house in Deptford, south-east London. In the twinkling of an eye, the building was ablaze, and 13 teenagers - all of them black - were consumed in the horrible inferno.

The first police officer on the scene was told that a man had been seen throwing a firebomb through the front window of the house. Traces of a Molotov cocktail were later found in the garden. At first, this version was accepted by all. Within 24 hours, the police had back-pedalled and started pointing fingers at the children who died. They alleged that young Owen Thompson set fire to the house, ran up to the top floor and died. They went on to suggest that Owen, and maybe another teenager, had placed "a substance on the carpet" that facilitated such an intense fire. There was an implication that he was very nearly an expert in the business of arson.

The police raided the homes of the partygoers (kids, man), took them to the station without their parents, tried to force them into making statements that a fight at the party had caused the fire. And the Daily Mail reported their manoeuvres triumphantly.

But the black community would have none of it. Within hours, there was a spontaneous meeting at the local youth club. We formalised it and called it the New Cross Assembly of the People; it gave birth to the New Cross Massacre Action Committee. At once, it took responsibility for burying the dead, or the remains of these children, and mobilised a psychiatrist to tend the parents.

The assembly called a demonstration in mid-week and elected me as the organiser. I did not have to agitate, simply to mobilise the feeling. I toured the country and, by the time I had returned to London, I had support from 20,000 people. There had never been such a response from the black community in this country.

The ultimate consequence was that fire consumed the streets of almost every black community in Britain, from Liverpool to Moss Side in Manchester and down to Southampton. The slogan, spilling over from the demonstrations against New Cross into the riots, was: "Thirteen dead and nothing said." The Mail called for the police to snatch me from my home and force me to tell them where I was every second of the day during the Brixton riots. It was motivated by malice, spite and racial prejudice.

I repeat these events in detail in order to show that it is not easy to hand out injustice to the black community. We just ain't having it, and that is all.

Had the Lawrences, after the murder of their son Stephen, taken the same route as the New Cross Massacre Action Committee, more than 100,000 people, black and white, would have responded in a manner more devastating than anything previously known. In fact, one of the members of the action committee, a moderate who had since been embourgeoised, steered the Lawrences into the Home Office to plead with Jack Straw for an inquiry. Straw was thankful for such huge mercies. That lady has since been made a baroness.

I say only this: if the racist attitudes outlined in this new survey lead to another massacre, then it will be "a horse of a different colour". Be warned!

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