I WRITE in response to the letter from Mr Paul Bailey, chairman of the Manchester branch of the Black and Asian Police Association (Your Letters, Jan 5).

As an exercise in smear tactics it could scarcely be bettered. As a contribution to both police morale and good race relations it was a disaster. Mr Bailey is obviously one of those people who believe that to allege something is wrong is to prove it. The allegation is sufficient to prove that Mr Hague is a racist who owes an apology to the public he has insulted.

Has Mr Bailey ever heard of due process? Has he any conception of the rules of evidence? Can he not see that, if he is to convince the reader of the truth of his offensive allegation then he needs to specify, with quotations, precisely which of Mr Hague's words constituted racism.

If he would simply take the trouble to read what Mr Hague said, there is no reference whatsoever to the matter of race. He was doing no more than draw attention to two issues of great public concern: the loss of control by the Government of immigration, and the undermining of police morale after the publication of the Macpherson Report into the Lawrence case. Mr Bailey denies the truth of the latter assertion, and states that the report had no effect on police morale. Perhaps he would like to consider the following: a written parliamentary answer on December last year from Charles Clark stated that 1,236 Met police officers resigned in 1999, compared with 774 in 1998. The minister went on to agree that "the number of people leaving a profession may be taken as an indication of morale".

In addition, we have the view of someone who might reasonably be considered to have a special interest in the subject. I quote: "As a Sri Lancan Tamil who came to Britain 30 years ago, I believe the Tory leader is absolutely right to claim that the Macpherson Report has badly undermined the fight against crime . . . the authority of the police has been shot to pieces, while street crime soars."

Those are the words of Dr Raj Chandran of the Commission for Racial Equality.

As for the Macpherson Report, on which Mr Bailey rests so much of his case, it has been excoriated by independent research. A major, detailed study of the Report, its methods of enquiry, conclusions and probable consequences established the following: it departs from the traditions of English law; rules of evidence were modified; witnesses were harassed both by the enquiry team and from the public gallery; certain Met police officers were required to "confess" to charges of racism, if only in their thoughts; and they were even required to testify to the private racist thoughts of other people.

Despite this appallingly totalitarian approach, the enquiry team failed to detect any form of overt racism on the part of the police." In this enquiry we have not heard evidence of overt racism or discrimination," it was said.

In order to make its anti-police intentions stick, the enquiry relied on the notion of "institutional racism," a concept which has no grounding in common sense or English law. In fact, it derives from the inflammatory rhetoric of militant blacks in the United States in the sixties, an astonishing source for an English judge.

High Court judge Patrick Hooton averred "All it (the Report) has done is to stir up a seething resentment among the police and the black community, the price of which will be more racism, not less. He refers to "this utterly misguided document " and adds: "Macpherson seems to have taken leave of his senses". The whole enquiry was an anti-police show-trial reminiscent of the Stalinist show-trials of the sixties.

Incidentally, would Mr Bailey care to explain how an organisation called the Black and Asian Police Officers Association which appears to depend on racial criteria for membership actually makes racial harmony more likely? If white police officers so much as dared to create a corresponding organisation there would be howls of outrage from the race relations industry and threats of prosecution.

It is a measure of the lop-sided thinking and positive hysteria which now surrounds race issues that whilst black and Asian officers may form their own race-conscious organisation, white officers may not. I believe neither group should be permitted to do so. Frankly, I sometimes wonder who the real racists are.

RAY HONEYFORD,

Wragby Close, Bury.