Key London mayor aide quits over race row

By Andrew Hough

LONDON (Reuters) - A senior Australian adviser to London Mayor Boris Johnson has been forced to resign in a race row after he made disparaging remarks about people from the Caribbean.

James McGrath, 34, quit after suggesting older African-Caribbean people should return to the West Indies if they did not like the new mayor.

Asked in a tape-recorded interview if Johnson's mayoral victory would trigger an exodus of immigrants from the UK to the Caribbean, he replied: "Well, let them go if they don't like it here."

McGrath, the mayor's deputy chief of staff who hails from the north Australian state of Queensland, made the comment in a meeting last month with Marc Wadsworth, a black activist and London-based journalist.

It is the latest race controversy to hit the new mayor and commentators said the row highlights how sensitive the issue is for Johnson.

After initially defending him, Johnson said McGrath, a Tory party adviser for almost a decade, was resigning to avoid "providing ammunition" to critics because the comments were "taken out of context and distorted".

Hours after his comments appeared on the Internet news site www.the-latest.com at the weekend, Johnson announced his senior advisor, who played a key role in his win over Labour's Ken Livingstone last month, had quit.

"It is with great regret ... that I have accepted the resignation of my political adviser, James McGrath," Johnson said in a statement. "Unfortunately, his remarks ... made it impossible for him to continue in that role.