40 years after being told to be careful, it breaks my heart that parents are now having to say the same

MY WIFE and I have been forced to tell our teenage kids to watch their backs during the remainder of the school summer holidays.

- DARREN LEWIS

We have done the same with relatives and friends. We are also driving our children to and from summer jobs and friends' houses.

Few parents can afford to take any chances right now, with mobs over the weekend roaming the streets looking for anyone Black or Brown to assault.

Frankly, 40 years after being told to be careful by my own parents, it breaks my heart to have to do so with my kids.

It is time for a grown-up conversation about the role that sections of the broadcast media have played ahead of this past week. It's a chat we need to have.

Holding the party line isn't really an option when you witness the carnage of the last seven days. Random Black men surrounded by 10-20 menacing thugs in parks, then punched and kicked.

Mobs looking for Asian motorists, then dragging them from their cars and attacking them. Mosques pelted with missiles as Muslims take refuge inside.

Shop owners of colour, beaten up by groups of kids with zero care for the cameras recording them.

Racists in Liverpool - a city built on immigration - ramming stores which they believe are owned by minorities, shouting: "P***s out!" and: "We want our country back!"

Parents keeping their kids away from summer schools and adults thinking twice about venturing out, for fear of attracting hate.

The solution to all this remains unity. And thank God for the people of all colours and faiths across the land who stood their ground, staged the clean-ups and denounced the extremists.

However, it is still key to recognise how this happened, so that we are not back here again.

That includes a variety of established outlets owning their part in providing repeated platforms for racist Tory MPs to foment hate.