London Mayor's Aide Quits After Comment on Caribbean Immigrants

London Mayor Boris Johnson said his political adviser, James McGrath, resigned after saying in an interview that Caribbean Londoners who opposed Johnson's election should return to their homelands.

``His remarks in a conversation with an Internet journalist, published this weekend, made it impossible for him to continue,'' Johnson said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. ``James is not a racist'' and his comment ``was taken out of context and distorted,'' the mayor said.

The departure of McGrath is a first for the new administration led by Johnson, a Conservative former member of Parliament and a newspaper columnist. Johnson defeated two-term incumbent Ken Livingstone, a member of Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Labour Party, in a May 1 election.

In an interview published on the Web site the-latest.com, McGrath was asked about the ``bad press'' Johnson was getting in two of the city's black newspapers, New Nation and the Voice, and whether his election might trigger an exodus from London of older Caribbean immigrants.

``Well, let them go if they don't like it here,'' McGrath said, according to the account on the-latest.com.

Johnson has apologized for a 2002 Daily Telegraph newspaper column in which he referred to Africans as ``piccaninnies'' in a piece that mocked then-Prime Minister Tony Blair's visit to Africa.

The Labour group in the city's legislative assembly criticized Johnson's handling of the resignation.

``You have to question Boris Johnson's judgment first in appointing someone with these views and second by only acting against him when pressured to do so,'' the group said today in an e-mailed statement.