Long ago when black people were as rare in Britain as home wins for West Ham are now, my mother took in a lodger at our home.

She immediately incurred the wrath of the major living next door who came round and declared in capitals that we were Lowering The Tone Of The Neighbourhood.

The fact our lodger was black raised alarm bells with the major, normally a kindly soul. Despite this, within a few days they were chatting amiably and the tone of the neighbourhood appeared to have been restored.

More recently I was accosted by another neighbour for writing a story which said opinion was divided in our road in Hove over whether a home for people with learning difficulties should be established there. He said everyone was against it. I pointed out a friend and I were in favour.

The neighbour claimed I must be a communist and that I did not own my own home because, otherwise, I would have to object. I pointed out I was neither. Hove councillors, to their credit, passed the plan unanimously. The home has been there for some years with the residents well integrated into the community.

Both these reactions were prompted by fear and ignorance, which is what is happening with neighbours of the asylum seekers who may or may not be housed at the Grand Ocean Hotel in Saltdean. I imagine some residents are worried the respectable suburb will be overrun by gun-toting terrorists concocting ricin in their rooms and threatening the area.

While there will always be some villains among any community, I doubt if their proportion is any greater among asylum seekers. We simply do not know at present who they might be or even the countries they will come from. The point is they will all be assessed while they are here.

Britain has gained a reputation for fairness and tolerance over the years. Brighton and Hove, which includes part of Saltdean, is generally the most broad-minded of cities.

Many immigrants have made great contributions to the country in the past as successive waves of foreigners, be they Irish, Jewish, Indian or West Indian, have been assimilated here.

We have become such a polyglot society there are few families who could claim to be completely Anglo-Saxon. This process will inevitably continue as people become more mobile.

A century ago few Brightonians had been outside Sussex. Now the trend is for residents, especially the young, to travel widely.

Only a tiny minority of the Saltdean protesters have been racist. Many people in the community, including leaders of the residents' association and the three local Tory councillors, have been measured in the concern they have expressed.

But there is some xenophobia elsewhere and this will be exacerbated the longer the delay continues.

The Home Office has behaved in the most abject manner possible over this. First, it denied asylum seekers might come to the hotel and then it said they would.

It never carried out proper consultation or undertook any work to see if the hotel was a fit place to receive asylum seekers or whether the services in Saltdean would be strained if they arrived.

Nationally, the system of dealing with asylum seekers is also a complete mess and the Government urgently needs to take action to show it is in charge and knows what it is doing.

It may well be true too many asylum seekers are coming into this country and that Saltdean is totally unsuitable to receive any who arrive. We simply do not know at the moment and, amid the fog of confusion, fear and bigotry can easily grow unchecked.