Letter: 'Relentless flow' figures accurate

YOUR report 'Churchill left isolated over 'foolish' race speech' (30 May) accuses me of inaccuracy in the figures which I advanced at a speech in Bolton a week ago when I declared that it was time to halt the 'relentless flow' of immigration which was currently running at a rate, to use Margaret Thatcher's phrase of 1978, 'equivalent to a town the size of Grantham' (pop 31,095).

This figure is almost exactly confirmed by your own of '50,900 immigrants in the 12 months to June 1992', of which 32,650 were from Africa and Asia.

It is indeed the case that there are many inner-city areas which are, as I stated, 'over 50 per cent immigrant' and where schools are to be found where the ethnic minorities exceed 80 per cent.

I have been heartened by the many thousands of letters I received last week, supporting my views by a ratio of 70 to 1.

Among those who have supported me have been members of the Asian community, who themselves recognise that the one serious threat to continuing good race relations in this country comes from the relentless flow of immigrants, both legal and illegal, which is transforming the character of parts of Britain, in the wake of the trebling of the ethnic minority population over the past 25 years from 1 million to 3.2 million.

Winston Churchill MP

House of Commons

London SW1