THE British National Party must be rubbing its collective hands, if not with glee then with something approaching "We told you so" satisfaction, following the death of a Special Branch police officer in the raid on a house in Crumpsall, North Manchester.

The arrest of a number of men of North African origin in the wake of that tragic and shocking event; the fears of the general public amid renewed Government warnings about terrorist attacks on the UK mainland; the discovery of the deadly poison ricin in London; and the raid on the mosque in Finsbury Park, North London, where the radical Islamic cleric Abu Hamza operates, are stuff on which the BNP thrives.

Around the same time the news that asylum seekers were to be placed in a three-star hotel in Kent created such a collective howl of protest that Home Secretary David Blunkett admitted the Government had been wrong not to consider the opinions and reactions of local people.

It's worth mentioning here that the French, who for some reason don't have a great deal of love for the "Brits", believe our attitude towards asylum seekers is at best lax, at worst completely barmy.

Apparently, and again this is a Government admission, French intelligence services have for years been warning their UK counterparts about Islamic militants masquerading as asylum seekers.

In other words, we've been importing terrorists "off the shelf" as it were, and offering them accommodation and a few quid to tide them over as well!

All this does genuine asylum seekers no good at all. Nor does it lessen the undercurrent of anti-Muslim feeling which runs through certain sections of the indigenous population.

That was the subject of a televised phone-in programme I heard the other day, when references were made, quite correctly, to the fact that the vast majority of Muslims in the UK want only to live peacefully and in harmony with their British neighbours, making the point that not every follower of Islam, although diametrically opposed to Western culture and ideals, is prepared to use violence against the West.

That point was stressed in particular by a woman whose parents were Irish and who, in the 1970s when the IRA campaign on the British mainland was at its height, had lived in mortal fear of a backlash against her family and other immigrants from the Emerald Isle.

I remember those days very well and concede that I never once felt animosity towards nor harboured suspicions about any of my Irish acquaintances, close pals, as many were, or otherwise.

That may well have been because they were the same colour, worshipped the same God, wore the same kind of clothes, used the same pub and/or betting shop and seamlessly integrated into our society.

Muslims can't do that as their culture and religion is different and therefore, willingly or otherwise, their's is a society within society. The BNP will continue to press that point and any more incidents like the death of Det Con Stephen Oake will merely add fuel to the flames.