As the aftershocks from last week's violent disorder ripple across Britain, a febrile mood hangs over the nation.
The air is filled with tension and anxiety. Explosive controversies are now flaring up over a host of issues, from zero-tolerance policing to public expenditure cuts.
Now, the historian Dr David Starkey has sparked a conflagration of his own.
During a debate about the disturbances on BBC2's Newsnight, Dr Starkey argued that one of the central problems was the influence of a 'violent, destructive and nihilistic' black culture that had corrupted too many of Britain’s youngsters.
Warming to his theme, he said: ‘A substantial section of the chavs have become black. The whites have become black. Black and white, boy and girl, operate in this language together . . . which is wholly false, which is a Jamaican patois that’s been intruded in England, and this is why so many of us have this sense of literally a foreign country.’
He then further stoked the flames by adding that Enoch Powell was right in warning, more than 40 years ago, that immigration would ultimately cause conflict across our cities.
Dr Starkey’s outburst not only outraged his fellow panellists in the BBC studio, but also many commentators who watched the show, even though over the weekend he insisted that he ‘was not talking about skin colour but gang culture’.
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