The head of the race relations watchdog warned yesterday that the Government's "lack of control" over immigration risks inflaming tension.

Trevor Phillips said young mothers were worried about classrooms in which teachers struggled to cope with children with "too many languages" between them, while commuters faced public transport so packed that travelling to work is a daily "hell".

The chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission also warned of increasing segregation caused by poor communication across racial or religious lines.

"We have seen the emergence of a kind of cold war in some parts of the country, where very separate communities exist side by side."

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His remarks came in an address to mark the 40th anniversary of Enoch Powell's infamous "rivers of blood" speech, which predicted grave social unrest unless mass migration was halted.

Mr Powell, then Tory defence spokesman, said Britain had to be "mad, literally mad" to allow in 50,000 dependants of immigrants each year.

He compared it to watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre. The MP for Wolverhampton South West called for an immediate reduction in immigration.

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