I liked and agreed with most of what you wrote in today's Guardian ("I may be in bad company, but this law will not work").

However, in the 4th paragraph, where you characterise what you quote from Charles Moore as "this poisonous stuff [which] might have been penned by nationalists to stir up xenophobia in any country about any minority at any time in history: we know where it leads," I couldn't disagree with you more. Rather, I share very much the attitude expressed by Mr Moore.

Does that mean that I am on my way to becoming a guard (or perhaps the commandant) of a concentration camp for exterminating blacks and Asians? Since that is what you seem to be implying, much as the Muslim Association of Britain in saying that Mr Moore "should have known better in the light of the Salman Rushdie affair" is implying that Mr Moore is risking the same Muslim response, i.e. a death threat.

You "progressives", as you like to call yourselves, with your pro-immigration, pro-multiracial and pro-multicultural ideology have deliberately destroyed the Britain that I grew up relating to and identifying with.  It makes me very angry visiting my local high street and finding myself, an ethnic Briton, an ethnic minority in my own country. It is not the immigrants that I get angry with though. I don't blame them for coming here (to a country with one of the highest levels of freedom, prosperity and social security on the planet), but the politicians and well-meaning but misguided intellectuals like yourself, who have encouraged and are still welcoming them all to come here.

Everywhere you look in the world there is ethnic conflict (not surprisingly when you consider how difficult it is even for people of the same race and culture to agree to anything and get on together!). Britain had its share of ethnic conflict in the past, as wave after wave of invaders from the continent entered the country and fought for land, advantage or outright domination (Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings,  Normans etc.). But being closely related (all ethnic Europeans) and physically virtually indistinguishable we merged (more-or-less)  into a single people with a common (some might say, very common) (Christian) culture, out of which came the humanist, scientific and technological developments that gave rise to modern western civilisation (with all its achievements, failings and horrors). Notwithstanding what we owe to the ancient Babylonians, Egyptians and Jews, and to the Arabs, of course, it was very much a European thing (in which European Jews played a disproportionately large part). Our history is, as Greg Dyke might put it, "hideously white." Asia and Africa have their own histories. I am not black or Asian, or Muslim. I'm a European, who relates to and identifies (for better and for worse) with European history and civilisation, not least because it is the history and civilisation of my own ancestors.

Polly, if it were just me and Charles Moore who you are pushing into a racist-fascist corner it wouldn't be a problem, but it is not. There are, I am sure, millions, probably 10's, perhaps 100's of millions of ethnic Europeans who quite naturally (and like so many black people, who we don't accuse of being racist when they do it) identify, not exclusively but to a large extent, with their own ethnicity, i.e. with their own race and culture. I relate to and identify with my immediate family more than with other families, and the same applies to my race . What is race if not one's super-extended family? That doesn't mean to say that I think my (super-extended) family superior to others, or nicer (quite the contrary in fact), but it is MY (super-extended) family, that contains my closest relatives and ancestors; it is the one that I most readily relate to and identify with, and as a consequence the race I most care about. Doesn't everyone tend to favour their own family and those they identify most with? If I read in the paper, for example, that an Asian or an African has been eaten by a shark (assuming I don't know them, of course), I'm far less affected than if it is someone who looks like myself and could thus be a member of my own family. It may not be the politically correct or Christian way to feel, but it's the way I do feel, and I refuse to pretend otherwise.

I find your enthusiasm for and embrace of multiracial and multicultural society incomprehensible. I accept it, just as I accept that some people are homosexual, but I cannot comprehend it, and I certainly do not wish to embrace it myself. But you self-named "progressives" are forcing me too. And because I don't like it, to you I'm a racist and a fascist, when in fact, I'm neither - quite the contrary; I'm very proud that my father spent 6 years of his life fighting fascism, but as he told me with considerable bitterness before he died, he didn't do it so that the government could let millions of immigrants (no one would have objected to a few 10's or 100's of thousands) into the country - not withstanding that one of his best mates was black. My brother's very best friend was Asian, but, like me, he is still filled with anger when we visit the part of London where we grew up, that used to be our home, and find ourselves noticing the odd (familiar!) white face among the crowd, just as in the old days we might have noticed the odd (foreign!) black or Asian face.

Sometimes I think you "progressives" get some kind of perverse pleasure in rubbing your "non-progressive" countrymen's noses in the multiracial, multicultural society you have created, like some fanatical parents insisting that their children accept and say thank you for some horrible meal (or religious belief) that they love themselves and are determined their children will (or must be taught to) love too. Only it makes me and a lot of other people just feel sick and depressed. For the time being though, you have us by the short-and-curlies. A single protest and you hit us with the cudgel (accusation) of "racist!", which we are loath to hear (because we are not, no more than a child who masturbates is wicked), so we have to grin and bear your damnation of us for our sinful ways. 

I love diversity. But I also love and need my own ethnic, cultural and historical identity - which you "progressives" are taking pleasure and satisfaction in destroying!

You will respond, no doubt, by telling me that, like you, I MUST also embrace multiracial, multicultural society. But I do not want to - not least because I am sure that far from increasing diversity, it will reduce it. Such societies quickly become just a mishmash of race and culture. Racial and cultural diversity only arose in the first place because human populations were isolated and didn't mix, except on the periphery. Modern transportation together with huge differences in wealth, social security and political freedom are resulting in migration and mixing on a scale that has never happened before. Human history indicates only too clearly (although you "progressives" are obviously blind to it) where this is likely to lead. Tragically, though ironically, it is to where you mistakenly claim that mine and Charles Moore's attitudes will lead.

It is interesting to me that so much of what you write makes such good sense. If only I could make you see where you are going wrong (or you me were I'm going wrong). Unfortunately, you are probably too old and fixed in your ways (attitudes), and like so many left and rightwingers too cleaver by half and cocksure of yourself.

Charles Moore: Is it only Mr Bean who resists this new religious intolerance?