All-too-typically, members of the public failed to challenge the images shown in the ads. The next day the CRE re-launched the posters with an additional message: What was worse, this advert or your failure to complain? Racism, condemn it or condone it - there's no in-between.

This apathy is at odds with the protests that greeted the case of Stephen Lawrence, an 18 year old black student who was stabbed to death at a bus stop by a racist gang in London five years ago. Five white youths were arrested in connection with his murder, but police and prosecutors decided they didn't have enough evidence to charge them. The Lawrence family were infuriated by this decision and brought about a private prosecution themselves. But the trial of the five white defendants collapsed when the judge ruled that there wasn't enough evidence to convict them. Throughout the affair, London's Metropolitan Police have been heavily criticized for failing to recognize Stephen's killing as a racist murder.

The failure of the private prosecution brought about a public inquiry into the Stephen Lawrence case. Set up to identify the lessons to be learnt in prosecuting and investigating racial crimes in Britain, the inquiry started in London and is travelling around the country. It's been quite a public spectacle provoking further controversy, especially when members of the Nation of Islam attended the hearings and were accused by the Lawrence family of deflecting attention away from their son's death. And more recently, in his evidence to the inquiry the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Condon fueled the anger of the black community when he refused to admit that racism was rife within his force. However, a move to Manchester, a city in the North of England that also has a large racial mix, brought the admission from the local police Chief Constable David Wilmot that institutionalized racism did exist in the Greater Manchester force. But he also said that had Stephen's murder occurred in Manchester it would have been treated as a racist crime from the start.

However, ordinary people in Manchester worry about reporting racial attacks to police. Even though Mr Wilmot's testimony was welcomed there is a feeling of indifference that announcements made by the top ranks don't always filter down to officers on the street.. The fear of reporting racist crimes led to the creation of a special unit where trained officers visit people so that they don't have to go to a police station to report racist incidents. Racial crimes in Manchester have increased three times over the last year. A similar unit has been set up in my home city of Cardiff after two young black men were attacked and phoned the police only to be arrested themselves.

In response to the Lawrence inquiry the Government has set new targets for the recruitment of thousands of black and Asian officers. At the moment only 2 percent of Britain's police officers are from these communities which make up 5.6 percent of the nation's population. The Government has also said that recruitment is not enough in itself, saying the police have to promote its ethnic officers more fairly as well.