This week with the Rev Kevin Logan, of Christ Church, Accrington

FOR 30 years we've fought for peace in our isles - a peace that many thought impossible to keep.

They said we'd never be able to live together. Some spoke of streets becoming rivers of blood*.

It was said that Britain could happily receive individual immigrants but not the millions who bring a "massive shift of composition of the population" in our communities.

This, it was prophesied, would produce "by the sheer inevitabilities of human nature" ever increasing and more dangerous alienation.*

As I write, my hometown - despite petrol bomb attacks - has courageously kept the peace. Elsewhere, sadly, the reality is painfully different.

Jesus Christ said, "Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called sons of God." A people of peace will go on striving. And to the hard work will be added newer levels of honest talking.

With some, talk of immigration and its effects is taboo - a least-talk-least-mended approach. Any voices raised are gagged by racism accusations.

But silence in this case isn't working. We need to confront the problems of both the community stemming from immigration and the community that received the immigrants.

Failure to hear the grumbles of one will lead only to more extremism. Failure to listen to the other will ferment more protests against perceived injustice. Both forms of deafness will only fuel more petrol bombs.

Learning how two can be one is the hard route to community living. It takes courage to talk rather than throw bombs. It takes peacemakers - often unpopular with both sides.

Thank God that only a minority of our streets are so far affected. Thank God we can still make choices in our mix of cultures.

* Enoch Powell, in his Birmingham speech, April 20, 1968.