One of the rules of political debate on social media is that at some point, someone is going to mention Adolph Hitler. However, there is an even more specific rule, specific to the UK and to debate about immigration and multiculturalism. It’s that at some point, someone will announce that Enoch Powell was right and that he was a prophetic voice. They are referring specifically to his so called “Rivers of Blood” speech delivered here in Birmingham in April 1968. I am seeing Christians make reference to it as well now. I’m not always convinced that those who talk about Powell and his speech have actually heard it or read it.
It is worth noting that the famous quote about “rivers of blood” comes towards the end and in fact is not, in context a prediction of actual violence. Powell says:
“For these dangerous and divisive elements the legislation proposed in the Race Relations Bill is the very pabulum they need to flourish. Here is the means of showing that the immigrant communities can organise to consolidate their members, to agitate and campaign against their fellow citizens, and to overawe and dominate the rest with the legal weapons which the ignorant and the ill-informed have provided. As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see “the River Tiber foaming with much blood.”
It is also clear that this is not intended as some long term prophecy but rather a specific response to immediate legislation. He sees the Race Relations Bill[1], which outlawed discrimination against people based on their ethnicity or the colour of their skin as giving legal powers to immigrants from the commonwealth and their descendants to dominate the white population. He sees the Act itself as enslaving.
For context, early on in the speech, Powell says:
“A week or two ago I fell into conversation with a constituent, a middle-aged, quite ordinary working man employed in one of our nationalised industries. After a sentence or two about the weather, he suddenly said: “If I had the money to go, I wouldn’t stay in this country.” I made some deprecatory reply to the effect that even this government wouldn’t last for ever; but he took no notice, and continued: “I have three children, all of them been through grammar school and two of them married now, with family. I shan’t be satisfied till I have seen them all settled overseas. In this country in 15 or 20 years’ time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man.” I can already hear the chorus of execration. How dare I say such a horrible thing? How dare I stir up trouble and inflame feelings by repeating such a conversation? The answer is that I do not have the right not to do so. Here is a decent, ordinary fellow Englishman, who in broad daylight in my own town says to me, his Member of Parliament, that his country will not be worth living in for his children.”
Note that the “horrible thing” he dares to repeat is “the black man will have the whip hand over the white man.” This is not about the threat of Islam, concerns about grooming gangs or fear of asylum seekers being jihadists or common criminals. It is specifically the fear that black immigrants from the Caribbean will achieve power in the UK.
At another point, he remarks:
“Eight years ago in a respectable street in Wolverhampton a house was sold to a Negro. Now only one white (a woman old-age pensioner) lives there. This is her story. She lost her husband and both her sons in the war. So she turned her seven-roomed house, her only asset, into a boarding house. She worked hard and did well, paid off her mortgage and began to put something by for her old age. Then the immigrants moved in. With growing fear, she saw one house after another taken over. The quiet street became a place of noise and confusion. Regretfully, her white tenants moved out. “The day after the last one left, she was awakened at 7am by two Negroes who wanted to use her ‘phone to contact their employer. When she refused, as she would have refused any stranger at such an hour, she was abused and feared she would have been attacked but for the chain on her door. Immigrant families have tried to rent rooms in her house, but she always refused. Her little store of money went, and after paying rates, she has less than £2 per week. “She went to apply for a rate reduction and was seen by a young girl, who on hearing she had a seven-roomed house, suggested she should let part of it. When she said the only people she could get were Negroes, the girl said, “Racial prejudice won’t get you anywhere in this country.” So she went home.
Note that the person she speaks to at the council office is patronised as “a young girl”. Observe too the way it is suggested that the arrival of “negroes” turns a “respectable street” into somewhere dangerous and undesirable. Spot too how Powell thought it perfectly reasonable for someone to be refused housing based on their skin colour.
He then goes on to talk about immigration leading to a significant increase in the non-white population. This was not in reality prophetic, after all, he was just reporting what was officially forecast. He adds too that this will come from birthrates as well. And so, he proposes repatriation. Or rather, he defends the policy of repatriation which was, Conservative policy at the time.
I turn to re-emigration. If all immigration ended tomorrow, the rate of growth of the immigrant and immigrant-descended population would be substantially reduced, but the prospective size of this element in the population would still leave the basic character of the national danger unaffected. This can only be tackled while a considerable proportion of the total still comprises persons who entered this country during the last ten years or so. Hence the urgency of implementing now the second element of the Conservative Party’s policy: the encouragement of re-emigration
It is worth noting that the policy was still kicking around in the 1980s and 90s. I’m not sure if Powell would have supported it for third or fourth generation citizens but it was clear that some on the right and the far right would have done.
Powell does target some South Asian migrants but he specifically has Sikhs in his sights when it comes to religious concerns. He quotes a Labour MP, John Stonehouse:
“’The Sikh communities’ campaign to maintain customs inappropriate in Britain is much to be regretted. Working in Britain, particularly in the public services, they should be prepared to accept the terms and conditions of their employment. To claim special communal rights (or should one say rites?) leads to a dangerous fragmentation within society. This communalism is a canker; whether practised by one colour or another it is to be strongly condemned.’”
It is perhaps ironic then to see current ethno-cultural nationalists commend the Sikh community and at times afro-Carribean community for their successful integration.
But let’s be clear before we start talking positively about Powell. His speech was racist and It specifically targeted Afro-Caribbean people. If Powell had got his way, then many who I delight to call brothers and sisters would not have been able to live here, work here or enjoy protection from discrimination and hatred.
I assume and hope then that those who talk of Powell as a seer and sage do so because they have never read or heard his speech. I would encourage them to do so.
Faithroots 