Enoch Powell

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Enoch Powell

Enoch Powell (1912—1998) was a British politician and author who is perhaps best known for his xenophobic views on immigration (especially with regard to non-white immigrants) that bordered on caricature, and for travelling by pogo stick.[1] To the shame of many rock guitar fans, Eric Clapton has on a number of occasions spoken out in support of Powell's desire to curtail the immigration of melanin-enriched people into Great Britain.[2]

Also noted for his 'mad staring eyes,' distinctive diction and being one of the few British politicians instantly recognisable by his given name.

[edit] Rivers of Blood

The banning of signs like these gave support for Powell.

Powell's "Rivers of Blood" speech railed against immigration and the anti-discrimination Race Relations Act 1968. The Act was significant at the time in that it advanced discrimination from public places to the workplace. One of the main focuses in public opinion was housing. At the time it wasn't uncommon for inns to refuse tenancy to African migrants or the Irish. To many people, banning this practice was seen as a personal attack on a person's privacy. For businesses, it was feared that the Act would actually be discriminatory towards British workers and would favour migrants rather than equalise their applications' chances of success. Powell himself made his speech - named after the mention of the river Tiber -[3] with an emotional plea to a woman from Wolverhampton who was accused of racial prejudice when she made refused to allow black lodgers (her white lodgers having left once they discovered black people lived somewhere on the street, which highlights how big xenophobia was) after an incident where she was too scared to let two black men use her telephone.

One of the most well known sections, and the source of the speech's name, is as follows:

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."

Following the speech, there were numerous strikes supporting Powell, particularly by dock-workers, and polls showed that a significant majority of the population agreed with him; however, in Parliament cooler heads prevailed, and he was sacked from all government posts and relegated to the fringes of the Conservative Party. Later, after encouraging a vote for the Labour Party in the February 1974 elections, he left the Conservatives and joined the Ulster Unionist Party, being re-elected to a different constituency in the snap election later that year. However, his days as a powerful political figure were over.[4]

Racists still whine about his relegation by the "PC police" to this day.

[edit] Footnotes

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