Enoch Powell forecast more than 30 years ago that there would be rivers of blood caused by the influx of immigrants into this country.

It hasn't happened and race relations in Britain are pretty good compared with those in many other countries.

But every now and then, there is a controversy over race and it's happened again with a Commission for Racial Equality pledge for all election candidates to sign promising they will not play the race card during the campaign.

Tony Blair, William Hague and Charles Kennedy all had no problem in signing the pledge.

Nor did most other MPs. But a few such as Nicholas Soames, who represents Mid Sussex, felt they were being bounced into silence on an issue on which they should be able to speak their mind.

There's a difference between spouting racist remarks in the hope of gaining votes and a discussion about race.

After half a century of immigration into this country by blacks, Asians and other members of ethnic minorities, we ought to be big enough to discuss these issues sensibly and soberly.

Indeed that is already happening in many parts of Sussex, notably Crawley, which has the biggest proportion of people from ethnic minorities in the county.

In Brighton, people from many different races and ethnic minorities, including Arabs and Jews, get along pretty well most of the time.

Part of this is down to the tolerant leadership shown by ethnic minority leaders such as Brighton and Hove councillor Tehmtan Framroze and the Sussex Muslim leader Imam Sajid.

They helped to ensure some issues which could have proved explosive in Sussex, such as the Gulf War, did not.

I see no reason why even a ticklish topic such as asylum seekers should not be discussed freely during the election campaign, provided that the debate does not descend into racism.

That shouldn't happen anyway since many of the people involved are white and from European countries rather than people from Africa or Asia.

Back in the Fifties it was possible for Britons to be afraid, simply through ignorance, they would be overrun by people from other countries and of other races.

We now know far more about them than we did and for the most part they have been assimilated in the same way as other immigrants in the past including the Irish and the Jews.

Even in those bad old days when I was in Notting Hill, scene of the 1958 race riots, I ran a cricket club which contained people from many countries including several Indians, Pakistanis, West Indians and a white South African.

There was never a racial remark and the only arguments were over which fast bowlers should lead the attack.

There are some racist thugs in the centres of places such as Bradford and Oldham, as shown this month, but I fancy if there were no blacks at all in Britain, these men would still be thugs.

It is detestable, mean and squalid to hate other humans on account of the colour of their skin.

But there are still problems to be resolved and a rational debate should be possible about them, election or no election.