While the streets of Belfast were ablaze with anti-immigration protests last week, behind the scenes a group of spies, spinners and soldiers were deploying the ‘dark arts’ to try to defuse tensions.

The name of the secretive Government propaganda unit trying to manipulate events makes it sound like an innocuous back-office operation – the Research, Information and Communications Unit, or RICU.

But the dull moniker is part of the deliberate camouflage of an outfit which uses deception and skulduggery to try to manage the ‘challenges’ of multiculturalism.

Read more: How shadowy unit of government ‘thought police’ set up by ex-MI6 agent is trying to keep a lid on Britain’s simmering racial tensions