LONDON: Almost two out of three Britons fear race tensions could spill over into violence and half the population want immigrants to be encouraged to leave, a poll showed on Friday.

In a country where the last serious race riots erupted seven years ago between white and Asian youths, the head of Britain’s equality watchdog called the poll findings “alarming”.

“What worries me is if that friction starts to catch fire if people genuinely believe it’s going to catch fire then we’re in trouble,” said Equality and Human Rights Commission head Trevor Phillips.

Of the 1,000 people sounded out by Mori pollsters for the BBC, 60 per cent said Britain had too many immigrants.A quarter of those polled said their area did not feel like Britain anymore because of immigration. Just 20 per cent admitted to being racially prejudiced.

Immigration is a sensitive political issue in Britain where hundreds of thousands of people have come to work in recent years, many from eastern European countries joining the European Union.

The main political parties agree immigration has boosted Britain’s economy but critics argue that migration has undercut British-born workers and strained public services.

The threat from radical Islam, rammed home by the 2005 London bombings that killed 52 people, sparked a debate about just how successful Britain has been as a multicultural society and provoked calls for greater integration of ethnic minorities.

The BBC poll marked the 40th anniversary of an infamous “rivers of blood” speech by Conservative politician Enoch Powell who expressed fears about levels of immigration and how the indigenous population felt “a sense of alarm and resentment”.

“As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding, like the Roman, I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood,” he said.—Reuters