SHAHID Malik today said he felt liberated after he was not re-appointed to the Commission for Racial Equality.

He added: "I am obviously disappointed but not terribly surprised. I feel liberated from the shackles of Home Office rules "

Shahid, son of Burnley's deputy mayor Coun Rafique Malik and a member of the Labour's national executive, has been a commissioner on the CRE for four years.

He added that if Home Secretary David Blunkett and others thought he was critical of them while he was a Commissioner it would be wrong to think he would be less so now he was no longer a member.

In a personal column in the Guardian newspaper Shahid was critical of the Home Office and CRE.

He said: "I think my article summed up where I am coming from and that is not the same direction the CRE and HO are moving to. Under these circumstances the Home Secretary felt it would be inappropriate to re-appoint me.

"There have been serious divisions between myself and the HO and CRE which seem to have merged into one which was not the reason they were set up."

Shahid said a lot of his criticism stemmed from comments made following a fleeting visit by the CRE chairman to Burnley that seemed to suggest forced integration and forced English lessons were the way forward.

He added: "I stand by my criticism 100 per cent.

"It has painted Burnley as being a wholly intolerant community where everyone is polarised. That is clearly not the case. I am fed up with Burnley being battered by people who have not lived here and who have only visited for half an hour.

"It doesn't help the forward moving process to be constantly tarred in this way. It is totally inappropriate. It damages the image of Burnley at a time when we are trying to repair it. It is not helpful."

Shahid said there were challenges to be faced which were being addressed following the report of the Task Force investigating last summer's disturbances and other measures.

In the Guardian article he said the Home Secretary had unsettled hundreds of thousands of non white Britons with comments about forced marriages among British Asians and references to genital mutilation among British Africans.

He said all right-thinking British Asians and Africans opposed such practices and were astonished at the comments.

"For those who have spent decades trying to promote good race relations in this country it felt like a kick in the teeth," he said.