Hate letters sent to lottery body after tabloid attacks

The Metropolitan Police is investigating a racist hate-mail campaign against a National Lottery funds distributor apparently provoked by articles in a tabloid newspaper criticising its decision to fund a charity helping asylum-seekers.

The National Lottery Community Fund and its chairman, Lady Brittan, have been bombarded with thousands of threatening phonecalls and letters, including one enclosing a long needle, after the Daily Mail attacked its £340,000 grant to the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns.

Lady Brittan, wife of the former European commissioner and Tory minister Sir Leon Brittan, has been subjected to racist, anti-Semitic and Islamaphobic abuse. The Mail published the address of her office and urged its readers to write to her. Over the past two months, more than 3,000 letters have been received, the switchboard has been bombarded with calls and intruders at the London office have threatened staff after the paper suggested they vent their "justified anger" about the funding.

Staff now wear rubber gloves to open the post which has included letters from the extreme right organisations, Combat 18 and the British National Party. The letters include threats such as: "We are going to get you, mother****er."

The Met's Westminster community safety unit, which investigates violent racist crimes, is examining "four items of hate material received by the Community Fund following recent publicity."

A Met spokesman said: "The charity provides support to asylum-seekers. The material contained racist, anti-Semitic and Islamaphobic sentiments."

Staff at the charity, including Lady Brittan, have been given an emergency police number to ring if they are threatened.

Last night, Lady Brittan said she "had been extremely distressed at the threatening and abusive letters and phone calls that staff at the community fund have received.

"The Daily Mail projects a very distorted view of the Community Fund's work. Our grants are making a significant difference to the lives of many disadvantaged people all over the United Kingdom."

But the police say they do not have the power to pursue the Daily Mail because it has not done anything illegal. Chief Inspector Leroy Logan, chair of the Black Police Association, said on BBC Radio 4 yesterday: "It's one of the most frustrating things for myself, as an operational officer, to look at a case, know there's something there, but because they haven't overstepped that mark legally, you just can't pursue it.

"But these sort of things are trends and, invariably, they will make a mistake and then you can take that action and, of course, bring them to justice."

The Daily Mail denied yesterday that the police had been in contact to tell it the articles had prompted a hate-mail campaign. The paper said that "while it has been critical of the Community Fund, the Mail would never condone or wish to prompt the sending of hate mail or threatening letters".

The Fund, which has given £2m to a charity headed by the Falklands War veteran Simon Weston, has been criticised this week for giving £200,000 to a charity advising the pupils excluded from school for making death threats to a teacher. The Communities Empowerment Network has also criticised America for bombing 13 countries since 1945 and discusses terrorism on its website. The Community Fund said it no longer funded this group and had no power over its website.