Blunkett voices fears of asylum backlash in Britain

David Blunkett expressed fears yesterday that asylum-seekers would be "scapegoated" by frustrated Britons and become the victims of attacks by vigilantes.

The Home Secretary said: "We are as a society like a coiled spring. We are undoubtedly prone to display that anger in different ways. People in some cultures do a lot of shouting, but let it out. We display ... anger from within."

He told the New Statesman: "I am deeply worried ... because genuine fears and concerns can so easily turn to a desire to find scapegoats." He added: "I'm worried about tension and frustration spilling over into the disintegration of community relations and social cohesion ... about people taking the law into their own hands." He criticised some national newspapers for the way they had reported the alleged involvement of asylum-seekers in terrorism since the death of Detective Constable Stephen Oake in Manchester.

Mr Blunkett likened some editors to the "Trotskyists" who made "impossible demands" when they tried to hijack the Labour Party in the 1980s. He said: "I'm not going to have a go at any individual newspaper editor, I merely ask they do not act in that way, and that they accept we're all responsible for our actions. It isn't criticism I fear; it is criticism without solution." Mr Blunkett said some unnamed newspaper commentators "whose families survived only because they were able to flee to Britain are actually writing about how we should stop families fleeing to Britain".

Appealing for a balanced discussion on the asylum issue, he said: "I want the debate in the open, I want people's fears to be genuinely reflected, I want to be able to ensure they get the information on which they can make a judgement."

The Home Secretary also turned his fire on "liberal left" critics opposed to his hardline approach to asylum and anti-terrorism measures, warning that right-wing parties such as the British National Party would prosper if the Government did not adopt a tough stance. "If you don't create a sense of order and stability, if people do not feel secure, then progressive politics is dead ... the right has always emerged supreme when destabilisation and insecurity prevail."

Mr Blunkett dismissed criticism that Britain had ignored warnings from other European countries that terrorists from North Africa had taken refuge in the UK, saying the evidence was "general".

He also dismissed calls for a crackdown against "noisy clerics" such as Abu Hamza al-Masri, the spiritual leader of the Finsbury Park mosque in north London. "It isn't the bigmouths who are the most dangerous. It's the ones you cannot see and you do not hear," he said.

But the former Tory leadership contender Kenneth Clarke last night accused Mr Blunkett of using "nasty" language. He told BBC1's Question Time programme: "I don't think there is a great risk of violence. I think our race relations are comparatively good. We are a reasonably tolerant nation, particularly the younger generation.

"I have been Home Secretary. You mustn?t use ill-judged language on this subject."