Diana Brittan: 'I want to rise above this sort of vicious attack'

Diana Brittan, who chairs the National Lottery Community Fund, spoke yesterday of her anguish at the hate campaign waged against her and her colleagues, but said she would "never give in to the pressure".

She and her family had been greatly distressed by the personal abuse she had suffered and were taking extra security precautions after anonymous death threats.

Lady Brittan said her husband, the former Tory home secretary Leon Brittan, had helped her deal with the anti-Semitism in many of the letters because, being Jewish, "he has lived with it for some time".

She said she resented the personal nature of the campaign and the effect it has had on her family, who had also been targeted in abusive letters.

She drew attention to one letter which expressed the hope that a female relative would be brutally raped.

"It's the first time I have been the target of a campaign of this intensity and ferocity," she said. "The level has been very, very personal. It is not easy dealing with such a vicious attack. I suppose you have to take this on the chin.

"But what about my family? My daughter? This sort of campaign shouldn't be spread to families. Families shouldn't be put under this pressure. It's so unfair."

Despite having been so upset this week, Lady Brittan said she had tried to "rise above" the abuse for the sake of her staff, who were trying to cope with the piles of racist and anti-Semitic letters.

"I can't say I have not been upset but I have to be strong. You have to summon up inner strength from somewhere," she said.

"What I try to do is rise above it because I cannot chair an organisation under this kind of pressure. Inner strength has to come to you, otherwise you cannot deal with it."

Lady Brittan criticised the Daily Mail for encouraging the campaign by urging its readers to write to her personally and vent their justified "anger" over a grant she had approved for an organisation working with asylum-seekers.

"It's the Daily Mail's right to say what they want, but they should think about the unintended consequences of what they are doing," she said.

"If they had said, 'Please write in and give your views', not naming me, that is justifiable. But I think using terms such as 'venting anger' is beyond what responsible journalists should be doing."

Lady Brittan defended the work of the fund and said organisers would not be deterred. "I don't think it's right that an organisation trying to do reasonable things with money should be pilloried in quite this way," she said.

Lady Brittan, who is not Jewish, said she found the anti-Semitic letters sent to her particularly hurtful and vile. "I feel quite strongly about abuse of a racist nature. It is not only unpleasant, it is also very divisive. I dislike anti-Semitism whether or not it is targeted against me personally. Anti-Semitism is extremely insidious."