AS we approach the Millennium, the general view is that we in Britain now enjoy living in an integrated society, where people whatever their colour, religion or nationality can live in peace.

But events over the past week have removed the rose-tinted spectacles from our eyes. The issue of race is still very much a part of our lives, whether we like it or not.

The publication of the Stephen Lawrence report seems to have acted as a catalyst, and even though it concerns the murder of a black teenager in inner city London, the effects can be seen here in Warrington.

Just one day after the publication of the report, racist slogans were daubed on a railway bridge in Grappenhall and following our front page story last week about racist graffiti, the thugs were out in force again in Orford - painting swastikas and slogans on the walls and pavements around a shop owned by an Indian family.

Now we hear that a family have been forced to leave the town simply because others believe them to be Irish.

What is most upsetting about these incidents is that they appear to have been committed by children. It is bad enough that older people cling on to beliefs that belong in Nazi Germany, without them spreading their poison to the young.

Racism and bigotry in any form is unacceptable. The only way it can be defeated is if parents put their petty beliefs behind them when they talk to their children. But it seems that some of us - a minority of small-minded, uneducated and cowardly idiots - seem determined to keep living in the past.

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.