Phillips tells of 'rural apartheid'

Black and Asian families are being subjected to a form of apartheid in rural Britain, a race campaigner claimed today.

Trevor Phillips, who chairs the Commission for Racial Equality, said ethnic minorities were forced to live only in big cities because of the reaction they receive from country-dwellers.

His remarks highlight the fact that most first and second generation immigrants live in urban areas.

They were being subjected to "a passive form of apartheid", Mr Phillips told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

The CRE says it has been told that people from ethnic minority backgrounds frequently feel uncomfortable when visiting the countryside.

Even on a brief holiday or while walking, black and Asian people were watched closely and treated suspiciously, it is claimed.

Mr Phillips highlighted the fact that in the South-West one person in 85 was from an ethnic minority rather than one in 11 nationally.

Tacit racism was also deterring black and Asian people from jobs in rural public services, he said.

"Hospitals, prisons and so on, which want to recruit staff from ethnic minorities, find they can't attract people because people say 'I'd like the job but that will mean that my partner will be living in a village where he or she feels lonely and my children will be the only black or mixed race children in the local school'. So there is a practical cost to this as well."

He said that he personally had felt uncomfortable when visiting the countryside.

"It's not that anybody says 'you must not come here'.

"But you go into the shop and people look at you as if to say 'where have you come from, planet Zarg?'"

Mr Phillips said it was time to stress the common bonds between ethnic groups and those in the country, such as playing cricket and churchgoing.