You have to pity the poor race relations professionals.

Britain is such an overwhelmingly tolerant nation – certainly compared with our European neighbours – that they have to work ever harder to find examples of racism to complain about.

They have to convince us this is a serious and growing problem, despite evidence of harmonious community relations all around us, and that lots of taxpayers’ money has to be spent to sort it out.

The stakes are high. On this desperately shaky premise ride thousands of cushy jobs, research grants, expense account lunches and conferences in luxury hotels.

This week for example, the National Children’s Bureau, funded by £12 million of your taxes every year, uncovered a previously unknown reservoir of hatred and racist bigotry – among pre-school age children.

The evidence for this absurd suggestion? Well, explained the NCB, if you put a plate of unfamiliar, spicy food in front of a three-year-old and the response is “Yuk!” that is clearly racism and the toddler-bigot responsible should be singled out and condemned in forthright terms.

If you try to defend the poor child that simply demonstrates that you are a racist too, according to the NCB. The argument is perfectly circular and admits no dissent, nor even logic.

The NCB has produced a 366-page guide, Young Children and Racial Justice, which urges nursery school teachers and childminders to be zealous in cracking down on the mini-racists among their charges.

Every “racist incident” - a definition that as we’ve seen is so broad as to mean virtually anything - must be logged and reported and the children responsible reprimanded.

Even babies don’t escape the attentions of the gauleiters of the race relations Gestapo. They can be racist too because they can “recognise different people in their lives”, says the NCB. So if a baby fails to recognise an unfamiliar face that is because he or she is a racist.

Nurseries are encouraged to report as many “racist incidents” as possible. “Some people think that if a large number of racist incidents are reported, this will reflect badly on the institution. In, fact the opposite is the case”, says the NCB.

You can see where this is going can’t you. Nurseries reporting high levels of “racist incidents” will earn brownie points – and no doubt funding – from local councils, while those who fail to report any will be accused of racism themselves.

What next? Are we going to drag bewildered toddlers off to state re-education camps to be force-fed chicken tikka masala?

This sort of thing is often described as the soft authoritarianism of the Left, but there is nothing soft about it.

I can think of few acts more despicable than state-sanctioned bullying of innocent youngsters just to justify a few meaningless jobs in the race relations lobby.