A VIDEO has gone viral of a man allegedly shouting racist abuse in Swindon town centre.

The one-minute clip has had around 90,000 views, hundreds of comments and more than 1,000 shares since being posted on Facebook yesterday afternoon.

It appears to show a man in Regent Street swearing and making offensive comments directed at several members of the public who are black.

The commotion causes many shoppers to stop in their tracks and watch the man before he is then chased off in the direction of College Street between The Body Shop and Game stores.

The man who filmed the video, but does not wish to be named, told the Adver: “I only saw what was on the video I took as I was just walking down when I found myself in the middle of it.

“If I had panned the camera round to the crowd you would have seen quite a large number of very unhappy people.

“I can't say anything about how it started or what happened afterwards as I didn't witness anything else."

Police responded immediately to the report of the incident but the group had dispersed by the time they arrived.

Today police confirmed a 26-year-old man had been arrested on suspicion of racially aggravated provocation and they were appealing for witnesses to the disorder. He is currently in custody.

Sergeant Max Whyte, from the Swindon town centre policing team, said: "This was a particularly horrible incident which happened in a very public place.

"I want to reassure the people of Swindon that we will never tolerate anti-social behaviour like this nor any similar incident and any sort of behaviour like this will be dealt by us very quickly - this is never acceptable in our society.

"Also, we would like to speak to anyone who witnessed this incident; there were lots of people in town yesterday and we know many people saw what happened. If that was you please come forward and speak to me or one of my team."

Anyone who can help should contact Wiltshire Police on 101 or anonymously, via Crimestoppers, on 0800 555 111.