A FORMER headmaster who was driven out of his job 15 years ago after being accused of being racist says he has ultimately been vindicated.

Bury man Ray Honeyford feels his views have now been "justified" in a long-awaited race relations report about the riot-hit city of Braford, West Yorkshire.

His articles on multi-racial education in a right-wing journal cost him his job in Bradford in 1985 amid massive publicity from the national media.

But he says his opinions seem to have striking similarities with some of those just published by Lord Herman Ouseley, the former head of the Commission for Racial Equality.

"I got it right," said Mr Honeyford, of Wragby Close, Bury.

The former headteacher turned political theorist declared: "In a way I feel vindicated. The report justifies what I have been saying all these years. I am struck by the irony of it all."

Mr Honeyford, 67, said there was "a high probability" that the recent disturbances in Bradford may not have taken place if his controversial ideas had been given a trial run in the 1980s. Between 1982 and 1985 Mr Honeyford was vehemently criticised over his opposition to Bradford's multi-cultural education policy.

During that period Mr Honeyford wrote a number of letters and articles criticising Bradford City Council's policy to educate children from ethnic minorities according to their own culture at their local schools. Mr Honeyford considered such policies would create division between the Asian and English communities.

Accusations that he was racially prejudiced and a torrent of personal abuse and harassment forced him to retire early in December 1985 for the sake of his family.

In 1991 Mr Honeyford accepted £20,000 libel damages over an article in a Commission for Racial Equality pamphlet which he said accused him of spreading racism after making speeches at universities.

"No-one listened to me at the time," said Mr Honeyford, who was in charge of Drummond Middle School. The school was in the heart of the Manningham area of the city with more than 80 per cent of its pupils Asian.

Bradford has since abolished middle schools, but Mr Honeyford said the comprehensive school in the same area does not have any white children.

Mr Honeyford, who now works as a freelance journalist, believed schools should have a more mixed population.

He said he was in favour of transporting youngsters from inner city areas to more affluent areas of the city to strike a more balanced population of youngsters from different cultures.

"The cultures have not been mixing and that creates tension," he said.

"Some Asian children go to Asian schools and live in Asian areas and have never had a friend who is white. Better integration was needed.

"It's no coincidence this (the rioting) has happened now."

Mr Honeyford said he was sad to read of the riots in Bradford, adding: "It was predictable and now I feel frustrated because no-one listened to me."

After he left his post in Bradford, loyal Bury FC fan Mr Honeyford became a Conservative councillor for the St Mary's ward in Prestwich in 1988 but stood down in 1992.

In the late 1990s, he wrote a book entitled The Commission for Racial Equality: British Bureaucracy and the Multi-Ethnic Society.