Trevor Phillips knows as well as I do that rural racism is not the problem here

What in heaven's name moved Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, to launch such a gratuitous attack on our fellow citizens in the British countryside? And what is "passive apartheid"?

The evidence is as flimsy as a Versace half-slip. Trevor does not feel comfortable in a village: "Nobody actually says anything, but you can sense it." Then he said that members of the ethnic minorities get looks "as if they came from the planet Zarg". All this in an early-morning interview with John Humphrys, of Radio 4's Today programme. It made my stomach churn.

May I speculate? Trevor may well be from Planet Zarg as far as a shopkeeper in Port Kernow, Cornwall is concerned. The shopkeeper does not know, nor does he care, who is the chairman of the CRE.

This might well redound to Phillips's benefit. He might be mistaken for

Wesley Snipes, the Hollywood star, or for Kwame Kwei-Armah

of BBC1's Casualty, or even Thierry Henry of Arsenal.

I lived in Cornwall once - Falmouth, to be exact - working as a gardener at a local golf course. That was 40 years ago. I was metropolitan to the bone, from Port of Spain to London. I had been in Cornwall mere hours when my in-laws took me to the Old Quay Church for a communion service on a Sunday morning. It was a tiny church where the Gunn family worshipped. I was introduced to Pa Gunn, who spoke enthusiastically. I stared blankly. I managed only a dim smile. I could not understand a single word he was saying. As far as I was concerned, he came from Planet Zarg. Mothers would send their children to stroke my arm for luck; grown-ups rubbed my face to see if the black would come off. Months later, all that ceased as I eased into the local environs.

It is tedious to have to repeat all this. Trevor Phillips knows it as well as I do. So why this fuss? I suspect that Phillips is speaking in his role as a Labour Party honcho. The Hunting Bill is before the House of Lords, and the metropolitan middle classes and the rural population are at daggers drawn. His intervention smears the countryside in order to demean rural folk's cause. But he is not entitled to politic for the Labour Party under the banner of the CRE.

Racism, in our time, is almost always motivated by material concerns: competition for jobs, homes, school places and other social benefits. Rural Britain is not a target for the racial issue.

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