OTHERS may have dealt it to him, but Mr Aziz Chaudhry, director of Burnley and Pendle Racial Equality Council, does his cause a disservice, we think, when he plays the race card over spot- check safety swoops by police and Department of Transport officials on taxis.

It is alleged that Asian taxi drivers were singled out - even "hunted down" - when a safety drive was launched in Nelson. So Mr Chaudhry demands evidence that the swoop was balanced by similar action against white-owned cabs.

Fine, but then he admits that 99 per cent of the cab drivers in Pendle are of Asian origin!

It would seem to us that what really may be afoot - with Mr Chaudhry either a stooge or an unwise activist in the process - is an unwholesome bid to make the Asian-driven cab a no-go area for police and safety inspectors through fear of them being hit by just the sort of racism allegations we are hearing now.

And what rot those claims are - when the fact is, as the numbers show, they could hardly avoid netting Asian drivers in their swoop.

Let's not forget that more than half the taxis checked had safety defects, and a quarter were not fit for the road.

That's the real issue - and it should not be hidden under the cover of disingenuous sensitivity about skin colour.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.