Not only Savile: It is almost impossible to quantify how much damage the BBC may have done in pursuing its decades-long diversity agenda

The Sunday after the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby, I walked the few hundred yards from my flat in Woolwich to the spot where he had been savagely cut down, and which was now marked by a mountain of flowers, flags and poignant written messages: patriotism mingled with sorrow and deep sympathy. By this time, the national media was in full multicultural control mode, making much of the united response to this act of barbarism, their photos and footage emphasising the different ethnicities of those who had come to pay their respects. But on that day at least, around three-quarters of the large crowd at the scene were white working-class, of all ages, many of them families. I can't remember the last time I saw such a crowd in Woolwich, and it took me aback.

Woolwich is one of those outer-London boroughs that have been transformed by years of mass immigration; in the past decade alone the white population has shrunk by 10 per cent. Seeing the people that day was briefly to see the Woolwich of my youth, a working-class military town with a significant immigrant population which was for the most part happily accepted. Now it is home to everybody and nobody. It is more common than not for me to walk from home to the station in the mornings and not hear English spoken once. Unity or not, in reality it no longer has any definable identity at all.

There was, therefore, a slightly surreal quality to the scene: the people and the flags gave one the impression of an identity gone underground, but one which still had a remarkably intact sense of itself. It displayed itself in public that morning, and in doing so formed a little cultural pocket of the familiar amid now unfamiliar surroundings.

These people showed little interest or excitement at the presence of TV cameras. I think they have become wary of being stitched up, of being condemned by their own words. They see the media, like the political class, as being on the other side, and it is hard to blame them. They can now sense when they are being handled, and the handling in the aftermath of any atrocity such as this has become so predictable you can set your watch by it.