FORMER Cowley car worker Mark Robins became the victim of a race hate campaign in Northern Ireland - because he was an Englishman.

He has now won £3,000 compensation and become the first person to win a racial discrimination case in the province.

Mr Robins, 35, who was brought up in Stonesfield, moved to make a new life after two serious accidents.

He was awarded the cash after an industrial tribunal ruled he had been tormented for being English in a Northern Ireland factory.

He said he had first dismissed the harassment on the factory floor as "good-natured banter". But he told the tribunal in Belfast: "It really went downhill and became very bad."

The tribunal heard his bosses at the textiles firm Norfil, in Antrim, did nothing to stop the campaign of racial abuse.

Derogatory comments about him were scrawled on lavatory walls and in log books.

Mr Robins left Oxfordshire to live in Ulster after two serious accidents. He lost an eye in an assembly line accident at Rover, Cowley, where he worked from 1984 to 1988 in E Block.

He went on to start his own business, National Vacuum Cleaner Services, in Witney, but gave it up after a car accident near Heyford. The tribunal heard he had been taunted about his disability.

Mr Robins, who lives in Larne, said: "The majority of people here are very friendly. It is a beautiful country."

Mr Robins, who went to Spendlove Secondary School, Charlbury from 1974 to 1979, is still employed by Norfil and returned to work yesterday.

The tribunal was the first racial harassment case of any kind to be heard in Northern Ireland under new regulations introduced last year that made discrimination illegal in the province, 20 years after the rest of the UK.

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