Rivers of Blood speech
Encyclopedia
The "Rivers of Blood" speech was a speech criticising Commonwealth immigration
, as well as proposed anti-discrimination legislation
in the United Kingdom made on 20 April 1968 by Enoch Powell
(1912–1998), the Conservative
Member of Parliament
for Wolverhampton South West
. Though Powell referred to the speech as "the Birmingham speech", it is otherwise known as the "Rivers of Blood" speech, a title derived from its allusion to a line from Virgil
's Aeneid
. Although the phrase "rivers of blood" does not appear in the speech, it does include the line, "As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see 'the River Tiber foaming with much blood.'"
The speech caused a political storm, making Powell one of the most talked about, though divisive, politicians in the country, and leading to his dismissal from the Shadow Cabinet
by Conservative party leader Edward Heath
. According to most accounts, the popularity of Powell's perspective on race may have played a decisive contributory factor in the Conservatives' surprise victory in the 1970 general election
, and he became one of the most persistent rebels opposing the subsequent Heath government.
, to a meeting of the Conservative Political Centre. The Labour government's Race Relations Bill 1968
was to have its second reading the following Tuesday, and the Conservative Opposition had tabled an amendment
significantly weakening its provisions. The Bill was a successor to the Race Relations Act 1965
.
The Birmingham-based television company ATV
saw an advance copy of the speech on the Saturday morning, and its news editor ordered a television crew to go to the venue, where they filmed sections of the speech. Earlier in the week, Powell said to his friend Clement Jones, who was a journalist at the Wolverhampton
Express & Star
, "I'm going to make a speech at the weekend and it's going to go up 'fizz' like a rocket; but whereas all rockets fall to the earth, this one is going to stay up."
will have the whip
hand over the white man
." Powell went on:
Powell quoted a letter he received from a woman in Northumberland
, about an elderly woman living in a Wolverhampton
street where she was the only white resident. The elderly woman had lost her husband and her two sons in World War II
and had rented out the rooms in her house. Once immigrants had moved into the street she was living in, her white lodgers left. Two black men had knocked on her door at 7 am to use her telephone to call their employers, but she refused, as she would have done to any other stranger knocking at her door at such an hour, and was subsequently verbally abused. She had asked her local authority for a rates
reduction, but was told by a council officer to let out the rooms of her house. When the woman said the only tenants would be black, the council officer replied: "Racial prejudice won't get you anywhere in this country." The next part of the letter that Powell quoted went:
He advocated voluntary re-emigration by "generous grants and assistance" and he claimed that immigrants had asked him whether it was possible. Powell said that all citizens should be equal before the law, and that:
He argued that journalists who urged the government to pass anti-discrimination laws were "of the same kidney and sometimes on the same newspapers which year after year in the 1930s tried to blind this country to the rising peril
which confronted it." Powell said that such legislation would be used to discriminate against the indigenous population and that it would be like "throwing a match on to gunpowder." Powell described what he thought the position of the indigenous population would be:
Powell argued that although "many thousands" of immigrants wanted to integrate, he contended that the majority did not, and that some had vested interests in fostering racial and religious differences "with a view to the exercise of actual domination, first over fellow-immigrants and then over the rest of the population". Powell's peroration
of the speech gave rise to its popular title. He quotes the Sibyl
prophesies in the epic poem Aeneid
, 6, 86-7, of "wars, terrible wars, / and the Tiber foaming with much blood."
's World This Weekend
to defend his speech and he appeared later that day on ITN news.
The Labour MP Edward Leadbitter
said he would refer the speech to the Director of Public Prosecutions
. The Liberal Party
leader Jeremy Thorpe
spoke of a prima facie
case against Powell for incitement. Lady Gaitskell
called the speech "cowardly" and the cricketer Sir Learie Constantine
condemned it.
The leading Conservatives in the Shadow Cabinet were outraged by the speech. Iain Macleod
, Edward Boyle, Quintin Hogg
and Robert Carr
all threatened to resign from the front bench unless Powell was sacked. Margaret Thatcher
thought that although some of Powell's speech was "strong meat" she sympathised with his overall message and said to Heath when he telephoned her to inform her Powell was to be sacked: "I really thought that it was better to let things cool down for the present rather than heighten the crisis." The Conservative leader, Edward Heath
, sacked Powell from his post as Shadow Defence Secretary, telling him on the telephone that Sunday evening (it was the last conversation they would have). Heath said of the speech in public that it was "racialist in tone and liable to exacerbate racial tensions". Conservative MPs on the right of the party—Duncan Sandys
, Gerald Nabarro
, Teddy Taylor
—spoke against Powell's sacking. On Monday, 22 April Heath went on Panorama
, telling Robin Day
: "I dismissed Mr Powell because I believed his speech was inflammatory and liable to damage race relations. I am determined to do everything I can to prevent racial problems developing into civil strife… I don't believe the great majority of the British people share Mr Powell's way of putting his views in his speech."
The Times
newspaper declared it "an evil speech", stating "This is the first time that a serious British politician has appealed to racial hatred in this direct way in our postwar history." The Times went on to record incidents of racial attacks in the immediate aftermath of Powell's speech. One such incident, reported under the headline "Coloured family attacked", took place on Tuesday 30 April in Wolverhampton itself: it involved a slashing incident with 14 white youths chanting "Powell" and "Why don't you go back to your own country" at patrons of a West Indian christening party. One of the West Indians who was cut, a Mr Wade Crooks of Lower Villiers Street, was the child's grandfather. He had to have eight stitches over his left eye. He was reported as saying "I have been here since 1955 and nothing like this has happened before. I am shattered." An opinion poll commissioned by the BBC television programme Panorama in December 1968 found that 8% of immigrants believed that they had been treated worse by white people since Powell's speech, 38% would like to return to their country of origin if offered financial help, 47% supported immigration control, with 30% opposed.
On 23 April, the Race Relations Bill
had its second reading in the House of Commons. Many MPs referred or alluded to Powell's speech. For Labour, Paul Rose
, Maurice Orbach
, Reginald Paget
, Dingle Foot
, Ivor Richard, and David Ennals
were all critical. Among the Conservatives, Quintin Hogg and Nigel Fisher
were critical, while Hugh Fraser
, Ronald Bell
, Dudley Smith
, and Harold Gurden
were sympathetic. Powell was present for the debate but did not speak.
Earlier that day, 1,000 London dockers had gone on strike
in protest at Powell's sacking and marched from the East End
to the Palace of Westminster
carrying placards saying "Don't knock Enoch" and "Back Britain, not Black Britain". 300 of them went into the Palace, 100 to lobby the MP for Stepney
, Peter Shore
, and 200 to lobby the MP for Poplar
, Ian Mikardo
. Shore and Mikardo were shouted down and some dockers kicked Mikardo. Lady Gaitskell shouted: "You will have your remedy at the next election." The dockers replied: "We won't forget." The organiser of the strike, Harry Pearman, headed a delegation to meet Powell and said after: "I have just met Enoch Powell and it made me feel proud to be an Englishman. He told me that he felt that if this matter was swept under the rug he would lift the rug and do the same again. We are representatives of the working man. We are not racialists." On 24 April, 600 dockers at St Katharine's Docks voted to strike and numerous smaller factories across the country followed. 600 Smithfield
meat porters struck and marched to Westminster and handed Powell a 92-page petition supporting him. Powell advised against strike action and asked them to write to Harold Wilson
, Heath or their MP. However, strikes continued, reaching Tilbury
by 25 April and he allegedly received his 30,000th letter supporting him, with 30 protesting against his speech. By 27 April 4,500 dockers were on strike. On 28 April, 1,500 people marched to Downing Street
chanting "Arrest Enoch Powell". Powell claimed to have received 43,000 letters and 700 telegrams supporting him by early May, with 800 letters and four telegrams against. On 2 May, the Attorney-General, Sir Elwyn Jones, announced he would not prosecute Powell after consulting the Director of Public Prosecutions. Whilst a section of the white population appeared to warm to Powell over the speech, the author Mike Phillips
recalls that it legitimised hostility, and even violence, towards black Britons like himself.
The Gallup Organization
took an opinion poll at the end of April and found that 74% agreed with what Powell had said in his speech; 15% disagreed. 69% felt Heath was wrong to sack Powell and 20% believed Heath was right. Before his speech Powell was favoured to replace Heath as Conservative leader by 1%, with Reginald Maudling
favoured by 20%; after his speech 24% favoured Powell and 18% Maudling. 83% now felt immigration should be restricted (75% before the speech) and 65% favoured anti-discrimination legislation.
Powell defended his speech on 4 May through an interview for the Birmingham Post
: "What I would take 'racialist' to mean is a person who believes in the inherent inferiority of one race of mankind to another, and who acts and speaks in that belief. So the answer to the question of whether I am a racialist is 'no'—unless, perhaps, it is to be a racialist in reverse. I regard many of the peoples in India as being superior in many respects—intellectually, for example, and in other respects—to Europeans. Perhaps that is over-correcting."
Three Beatles songs reference Powell's speech: "Get Back
" and the unpublished songs "Commonwealth" and "Enoch Powell".
In November 2010, the actor and comedian Sanjeev Bhaskar
recalled the fear which the speech instilled in Britons of Indian origin: "At the end of the 1960s, Enoch Powell was quite a frightening figure to us. He was the one person who represented an enforced ticket out, so we always had suitcases that were ready and packed. My parents held the notion that we may have to leave."
and other sources, the editor of the Wolverhampton
newspaper the Express & Star
, Clem Jones (a close friend of Powell who broke off relations with him over the controversy), and his journalists failed to identify the woman.
Shortly after Powell's death, Kenneth Nock, a Wolverhampton solicitor, wrote to the Express and Star in April 1998 to claim that his firm had acted for the woman in question, but that he could not name her owing to rules concerning client confidentiality
. In January 2007, the BBC Radio Four programme Document, followed by the Daily Mail
, claimed to have uncovered the woman's identity. They said she was Druscilla Cotterill (1907–1978), the widow of Harry Cotterill, a Battery Quartermaster Sergeant with the Royal Artillery
who had been killed in World War II
. She lived in Brighton Place in Wolverhampton, which by the 1960s was dominated by immigrant families. In order to increase her income, she rented rooms to lodgers, but did not wish to rent rooms to West Indians and stopped taking in any lodgers when the Race Relations Act 1968
banned racial discrimination in housing. She locked up the spare rooms and lived only in two rooms of the house. According to those who remember the period, the many children in the street regarded her as a figure of fun, and taunted her.
, inviting comparison of aspects of contemporary English society with the predictions made by Powell in the Rivers of Blood speech. The phrase implies criticism of racial quotas, immigration
and multiculturalism
. Badges, t-shirts and other items bearing the slogan have been produced at different times in the United Kingdom.
The English white power rock band Brutal Attack, which performed at Rock Against Communism
concerts in the 1980s, has a song entitled "Rivers of Blood" on their 1985 album, Stronger Than Before.
In November 2007, Nigel Hastilow
resigned as Conservative candidate for Halesowen and Rowley Regis
after he wrote an article in the Wolverhampton Express & Star that included the statement: "Enoch, once MP for Wolverhampton South-West, was sacked from the Conservative front bench and marginalised politically for his 1968 'rivers of blood' speech, warning that uncontrolled immigration would change Britain irrevocably. He was right and immigration has changed the face of Britain dramatically".
David Starkey
stated on Newsnight
after the London riots that Enoch Powell was right in one sense.
Immigration to the United Kingdom since 1922
Immigration to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland since 1922 has been substantial, in particular from Ireland and the former colonies and other territories of the British Empire - such as India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Caribbean, South Africa, Kenya and Hong Kong - under...
, as well as proposed anti-discrimination legislation
Anti-discrimination law
Anti-discrimination law refers to the law on people's right to be treated equally. Some countries mandate that in employment, in consumer transactions and in political participation people may be dealt with on an equal basis regardless of sex, race, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality and sometimes...
in the United Kingdom made on 20 April 1968 by Enoch Powell
Enoch Powell
John Enoch Powell, MBE was a British politician, classical scholar, poet, writer, and soldier. He served as a Conservative Party MP and Minister of Health . He attained most prominence in 1968, when he made the controversial Rivers of Blood speech in opposition to mass immigration from...
(1912–1998), the Conservative
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
for Wolverhampton South West
Wolverhampton South West
Wolverhampton South West is a borough constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament by the first past the post system of election.- Boundaries :...
. Though Powell referred to the speech as "the Birmingham speech", it is otherwise known as the "Rivers of Blood" speech, a title derived from its allusion to a line from Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
's Aeneid
Aeneid
The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter...
. Although the phrase "rivers of blood" does not appear in the speech, it does include the line, "As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see 'the River Tiber foaming with much blood.'"
The speech caused a political storm, making Powell one of the most talked about, though divisive, politicians in the country, and leading to his dismissal from the Shadow Cabinet
Shadow Cabinet
The Shadow Cabinet is a senior group of opposition spokespeople in the Westminster system of government who together under the leadership of the Leader of the Opposition form an alternative cabinet to the government's, whose members shadow or mark each individual member of the government...
by Conservative party leader Edward Heath
Edward Heath
Sir Edward Richard George "Ted" Heath, KG, MBE, PC was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and as Leader of the Conservative Party ....
. According to most accounts, the popularity of Powell's perspective on race may have played a decisive contributory factor in the Conservatives' surprise victory in the 1970 general election
United Kingdom general election, 1970
The United Kingdom general election of 1970 was held on 18 June 1970, and resulted in a surprise victory for the Conservative Party under leader Edward Heath, who defeated the Labour Party under Harold Wilson. The election also saw the Liberal Party and its new leader Jeremy Thorpe lose half their...
, and he became one of the most persistent rebels opposing the subsequent Heath government.
Background
Powell made the speech at 2.30 p.m. in the Midland Hotel (now The Burlington Hotel), on New Street in BirminghamBirmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
, to a meeting of the Conservative Political Centre. The Labour government's Race Relations Bill 1968
Race Relations Act 1968
The Race Relations Act 1968 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom making it illegal to refuse housing, employment, or public services to a person on the grounds of colour, race, ethnic or national origins. It also created the Community Relations Commission to promote 'harmonious...
was to have its second reading the following Tuesday, and the Conservative Opposition had tabled an amendment
Amend (motion)
-Explanation and Use:-Main Motions:Any main motion and any motion to amend may be amended. However, a motion to amend a motion to amend may not be amended, due to the overly complex parliamentary situation that would frequently result.-Secondary Motions:...
significantly weakening its provisions. The Bill was a successor to the Race Relations Act 1965
Race Relations Act 1965
The Race Relations Act 1965 was the first legislation in the United Kingdom to address racial discrimination.The Act outlawed discrimination on the "grounds of colour, race, or ethnic or national origins" in public places....
.
The Birmingham-based television company ATV
Associated TeleVision
Associated Television, often referred to as ATV, was a British television company, holder of various licences to broadcast on the ITV network from 24 September 1955 until 00:34 on 1 January 1982...
saw an advance copy of the speech on the Saturday morning, and its news editor ordered a television crew to go to the venue, where they filmed sections of the speech. Earlier in the week, Powell said to his friend Clement Jones, who was a journalist at the Wolverhampton
Wolverhampton
Wolverhampton is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands, England. For Eurostat purposes Walsall and Wolverhampton is a NUTS 3 region and is one of five boroughs or unitary districts that comprise the "West Midlands" NUTS 2 region...
Express & Star
Express & Star
The Express & Star is an evening newspaper based in Wolverhampton, England, published Monday to Saturday in nine different editions covering the Black Country, Birmingham and the wider West Midlands area from Tamworth to Kidderminster. It as widely perceived as being moderately right-wing...
, "I'm going to make a speech at the weekend and it's going to go up 'fizz' like a rocket; but whereas all rockets fall to the earth, this one is going to stay up."
The speech
Powell recounted a conversation with one of his constituents, a middle-aged working man, a few weeks earlier. Powell said that the man told him: "If I had the money to go, I wouldn't stay in this country… I have three children, all of them been through grammar school and two of them married now, with family. I shalln't be satisfied till I have seen them all settled overseas." The man finished by saying to Powell: "In this country in 15 or 20 years' time the black manBlack people
The term black people is used in systems of racial classification for humans of a dark skinned phenotype, relative to other racial groups.Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and often social variables such as class, socio-economic status also plays a...
will have the whip
Whip
A whip is a tool traditionally used by humans to exert control over animals or other people, through pain compliance or fear of pain, although in some activities whips can be used without use of pain, such as an additional pressure aid in dressage...
hand over the white man
White people
White people is a term which usually refers to human beings characterized, at least in part, by the light pigmentation of their skin...
." Powell went on:
Powell quoted a letter he received from a woman in Northumberland
Northumberland
Northumberland is the northernmost ceremonial county and a unitary district in North East England. For Eurostat purposes Northumberland is a NUTS 3 region and is one of three boroughs or unitary districts that comprise the "Northumberland and Tyne and Wear" NUTS 2 region...
, about an elderly woman living in a Wolverhampton
Wolverhampton
Wolverhampton is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands, England. For Eurostat purposes Walsall and Wolverhampton is a NUTS 3 region and is one of five boroughs or unitary districts that comprise the "West Midlands" NUTS 2 region...
street where she was the only white resident. The elderly woman had lost her husband and her two sons in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and had rented out the rooms in her house. Once immigrants had moved into the street she was living in, her white lodgers left. Two black men had knocked on her door at 7 am to use her telephone to call their employers, but she refused, as she would have done to any other stranger knocking at her door at such an hour, and was subsequently verbally abused. She had asked her local authority for a rates
Rates (tax)
Rates are a type of property tax system in the United Kingdom, and in places with systems deriving from the British one, the proceeds of which are used to fund local government...
reduction, but was told by a council officer to let out the rooms of her house. When the woman said the only tenants would be black, the council officer replied: "Racial prejudice won't get you anywhere in this country." The next part of the letter that Powell quoted went:
He advocated voluntary re-emigration by "generous grants and assistance" and he claimed that immigrants had asked him whether it was possible. Powell said that all citizens should be equal before the law, and that:
He argued that journalists who urged the government to pass anti-discrimination laws were "of the same kidney and sometimes on the same newspapers which year after year in the 1930s tried to blind this country to the rising peril
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
which confronted it." Powell said that such legislation would be used to discriminate against the indigenous population and that it would be like "throwing a match on to gunpowder." Powell described what he thought the position of the indigenous population would be:
Powell argued that although "many thousands" of immigrants wanted to integrate, he contended that the majority did not, and that some had vested interests in fostering racial and religious differences "with a view to the exercise of actual domination, first over fellow-immigrants and then over the rest of the population". Powell's peroration
Peroration
In classical rhetoric, a peroration was the final part of a speech. It was one of the four or five traditional components in the ordo of a speech....
of the speech gave rise to its popular title. He quotes the Sibyl
Cumaean Sibyl
The ageless Cumaean Sibyl was the priestess presiding over the Apollonian oracle at Cumae, a Greek colony located near Naples, Italy.The word sibyl comes from the ancient Greek word sibylla, meaning prophetess. There were many Sibyls in different locations throughout the ancient world...
prophesies in the epic poem Aeneid
Aeneid
The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter...
, 6, 86-7, of "wars, terrible wars, / and the Tiber foaming with much blood."
Reaction
According to C. Howard Wheeldon, who was present at the meeting where Powell gave the speech, "it is fascinating to note what little hostility emerged from the audience. To the best of my memory, only one person voiced any sign of annoyance." The day after the speech Powell went to Sunday Communion at his local church and when he emerged there was a crowd of journalists and a local plasterer (Sidney Miller) said to Powell: "Well done, sir! It needed to be said." Powell asked the assembled journalists: "Have I really caused such a furore?" At midday Powell went on the BBCBBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
's World This Weekend
The World This Weekend
The World This Weekend was launched on 17 September 1967. It is a weekly news and current affairs programme broadcast from 1pm to 1:30pm on BBC Radio 4 every Sunday, essentially the Sunday version of The World at One....
to defend his speech and he appeared later that day on ITN news.
The Labour MP Edward Leadbitter
Edward Leadbitter
Edward Leadbitter, known as Ted Leadbitter, was a British Labour politician.Leadbitter was a teacher and served as a councillor on West Hartlepool Borough Council....
said he would refer the speech to the Director of Public Prosecutions
Director of Public Prosecutions
The Director of Public Prosecutions is the officer charged with the prosecution of criminal offences in several criminal jurisdictions around the world...
. The Liberal Party
Liberal Party (UK)
The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties of the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a third party of negligible importance throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, before merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the present day...
leader Jeremy Thorpe
Jeremy Thorpe
John Jeremy Thorpe is a British former politician who was leader of the Liberal Party from 1967 to 1976 and was the Member of Parliament for North Devon from 1959 to 1979. His political career was damaged when an acquaintance, Norman Scott, claimed to have had a love affair with Thorpe at a time...
spoke of a prima facie
Prima facie
Prima facie is a Latin expression meaning on its first encounter, first blush, or at first sight. The literal translation would be "at first face", from the feminine form of primus and facies , both in the ablative case. It is used in modern legal English to signify that on first examination, a...
case against Powell for incitement. Lady Gaitskell
Anna Gaitskell, Baroness Gaitskell
Dora Gaitskell, Baroness Gaitskell , was a British Labour Party politician....
called the speech "cowardly" and the cricketer Sir Learie Constantine
Learie Constantine
Learie Nicholas Constantine, Baron Constantine MBE was a West Indian cricketer who played 18 Test matches before the Second World War. He took West Indies' first wicket in Test cricket and was the team's leading all-rounder and opening bowler for the entirety of his career...
condemned it.
The leading Conservatives in the Shadow Cabinet were outraged by the speech. Iain Macleod
Iain Macleod
Iain Norman Macleod was a British Conservative Party politician and government minister.-Early life:...
, Edward Boyle, Quintin Hogg
Quintin Hogg, Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone
For the businessman and philanthropist, see Quintin Hogg Quintin McGarel Hogg, Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone, KG, CH, PC, QC, FRS , formerly 2nd Viscount Hailsham , was a British politician who was known for the longevity of his career, the vigour with which he campaigned for the Conservative...
and Robert Carr
Robert Carr
Leonard Robert Carr, Baron Carr of Hadley, PC is a British Conservative politician.Robert Carr was educated at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge where he read Natural Sciences, graduating in 1938....
all threatened to resign from the front bench unless Powell was sacked. Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...
thought that although some of Powell's speech was "strong meat" she sympathised with his overall message and said to Heath when he telephoned her to inform her Powell was to be sacked: "I really thought that it was better to let things cool down for the present rather than heighten the crisis." The Conservative leader, Edward Heath
Edward Heath
Sir Edward Richard George "Ted" Heath, KG, MBE, PC was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and as Leader of the Conservative Party ....
, sacked Powell from his post as Shadow Defence Secretary, telling him on the telephone that Sunday evening (it was the last conversation they would have). Heath said of the speech in public that it was "racialist in tone and liable to exacerbate racial tensions". Conservative MPs on the right of the party—Duncan Sandys
Duncan Sandys
Edwin Duncan Sandys, Baron Duncan-Sandys CH PC was a British politician and a minister in successive Conservative governments in the 1950s and 1960s...
, Gerald Nabarro
Gerald Nabarro
Sir Gerald David Nunes Nabarro was a Conservative Party politician of the 1950s and 1960s. Nabarro had a flamboyant public profile and a reputation for taking maverick political stances.-Early life:...
, Teddy Taylor
Teddy Taylor
Sir Edward MacMillan Taylor, usually known as Teddy Taylor , is a British Conservative Party politician who was a Member of Parliament from 1964 to 1979 for Glasgow Cathcart and from 1980 to 2005 for Rochford and Southend East.He was a leading member and sometime Vice-President of the Conservative...
—spoke against Powell's sacking. On Monday, 22 April Heath went on Panorama
Panorama (TV series)
Panorama is a BBC Television current affairs documentary programme, which was first broadcast in 1953, and is the longest-running public affairs television programme in the world. Panorama has been presented by many well known BBC presenters, including Richard Dimbleby, Robin Day, David Dimbleby...
, telling Robin Day
Robin Day
Sir Robin Day, OBE was a British political broadcaster and commentator. His obituary in the Guardian stated that "he was the most outstanding television journalist of his generation...
: "I dismissed Mr Powell because I believed his speech was inflammatory and liable to damage race relations. I am determined to do everything I can to prevent racial problems developing into civil strife… I don't believe the great majority of the British people share Mr Powell's way of putting his views in his speech."
The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
newspaper declared it "an evil speech", stating "This is the first time that a serious British politician has appealed to racial hatred in this direct way in our postwar history." The Times went on to record incidents of racial attacks in the immediate aftermath of Powell's speech. One such incident, reported under the headline "Coloured family attacked", took place on Tuesday 30 April in Wolverhampton itself: it involved a slashing incident with 14 white youths chanting "Powell" and "Why don't you go back to your own country" at patrons of a West Indian christening party. One of the West Indians who was cut, a Mr Wade Crooks of Lower Villiers Street, was the child's grandfather. He had to have eight stitches over his left eye. He was reported as saying "I have been here since 1955 and nothing like this has happened before. I am shattered." An opinion poll commissioned by the BBC television programme Panorama in December 1968 found that 8% of immigrants believed that they had been treated worse by white people since Powell's speech, 38% would like to return to their country of origin if offered financial help, 47% supported immigration control, with 30% opposed.
On 23 April, the Race Relations Bill
Race Relations Act 1968
The Race Relations Act 1968 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom making it illegal to refuse housing, employment, or public services to a person on the grounds of colour, race, ethnic or national origins. It also created the Community Relations Commission to promote 'harmonious...
had its second reading in the House of Commons. Many MPs referred or alluded to Powell's speech. For Labour, Paul Rose
Paul Rose (UK politician)
Paul Bernard Rose was a British Labour Party politician and a leading campaigner against the politics of the National Front....
, Maurice Orbach
Maurice Orbach
Maurice Orbach was a British Labour Party politician.-Life:Orbach was born to a Jewish family.Orbach was educated at technical college in Wales and as an extramural student at New York University...
, Reginald Paget
Reginald Paget, Baron Paget of Northampton
Reginald Thomas Guy Des Voeux Paget, Baron Paget of Northampton, PC, QC, , also known as Reginald Guy Thomas Du Voeux Paget was a British lawyer and Labour politician....
, Dingle Foot
Dingle Foot
Sir Dingle Mackintosh Foot, Q.C. was a British lawyer and politician, born in Plymouth, Devon.-Education and career:...
, Ivor Richard, and David Ennals
David Ennals, Baron Ennals
David Hedley Ennals, Baron Ennals PC was a British Labour Party politician and campaigner for human rights...
were all critical. Among the Conservatives, Quintin Hogg and Nigel Fisher
Nigel Fisher
Sir Nigel Thomas Loveridge Fisher MC was a Conservative Party politician in the United Kingdom.Fisher was educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was in the Welsh Guards of the British Army during World War II, serving as a major in north west Europe. He was awarded the...
were critical, while Hugh Fraser
Hugh Fraser (politician)
Major Sir Hugh Charles Patrick Joseph Fraser MBE was a British Conservative politician and first husband of the author Lady Antonia Fraser.-Youth and military career:...
, Ronald Bell
Ronald Bell (UK politician)
Sir Ronald McMillan Bell, , QC , Knight Bachelor , was a Conservative Party Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom representing South Buckinghamshire from 1950 to 1974 and Beaconsfield from 1974 to 1982.-Family and education:The younger son of John Bell, Ronald was educated at Cardiff High...
, Dudley Smith
Dudley Smith
Sir Dudley Gordon Smith is a British Conservative politician.Smith was educated at Chichester High School and became a journalist. He was elected a councillor on Middlesex County Council in 1958, then the youngest councillor, and became chief whip of the majority party.Smith contested Peckham in...
, and Harold Gurden
Harold Gurden
Harold Edward Gurden was a British Conservative Party politician.Gurden was educated in Birmingham at Lyttelton School and Birmingham University. He married Lucy Isabella, née Izon, on the 16th April, 1929...
were sympathetic. Powell was present for the debate but did not speak.
Earlier that day, 1,000 London dockers had gone on strike
Strike action
Strike action, also called labour strike, on strike, greve , or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became important during the industrial revolution, when mass labour became...
in protest at Powell's sacking and marched from the East End
East End of London
The East End of London, also known simply as the East End, is the area of London, England, United Kingdom, east of the medieval walled City of London and north of the River Thames. Although not defined by universally accepted formal boundaries, the River Lea can be considered another boundary...
to the Palace of Westminster
Palace of Westminster
The Palace of Westminster, also known as the Houses of Parliament or Westminster Palace, is the meeting place of the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom—the House of Lords and the House of Commons...
carrying placards saying "Don't knock Enoch" and "Back Britain, not Black Britain". 300 of them went into the Palace, 100 to lobby the MP for Stepney
Stepney (UK Parliament constituency)
Stepney was a parliamentary constituency centred on the Stepney district of the East End of London. It returned one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, elected by the first past the post system.-History:...
, Peter Shore
Peter Shore
Peter David Shore, Baron Shore of Stepney PC was a British Labour politician and former Cabinet Minister, noted in part for his opposition to the United Kingdom's entry into the European Economic Community. His idiosyncratic left-wing nationalism led to comparison with the French politician...
, and 200 to lobby the MP for Poplar
Poplar (UK Parliament constituency)
Poplar was a parliamentary constituency centred on the Poplar district of the East End of London. It returned one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.-History:...
, Ian Mikardo
Ian Mikardo
Ian Mikardo , commonly known as Mik, was a British Labour and Co-operative politician. An ardent socialist and a Zionist, he remained a backbencher throughout his four decades in the House of Commons...
. Shore and Mikardo were shouted down and some dockers kicked Mikardo. Lady Gaitskell shouted: "You will have your remedy at the next election." The dockers replied: "We won't forget." The organiser of the strike, Harry Pearman, headed a delegation to meet Powell and said after: "I have just met Enoch Powell and it made me feel proud to be an Englishman. He told me that he felt that if this matter was swept under the rug he would lift the rug and do the same again. We are representatives of the working man. We are not racialists." On 24 April, 600 dockers at St Katharine's Docks voted to strike and numerous smaller factories across the country followed. 600 Smithfield
Smithfield, London
Smithfield is an area of the City of London, in the ward of Farringdon Without. It is located in the north-west part of the City, and is mostly known for its centuries-old meat market, today the last surviving historical wholesale market in Central London...
meat porters struck and marched to Westminster and handed Powell a 92-page petition supporting him. Powell advised against strike action and asked them to write to Harold Wilson
Harold Wilson
James Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx, KG, OBE, FRS, FSS, PC was a British Labour Member of Parliament, Leader of the Labour Party. He was twice Prime Minister of the United Kingdom during the 1960s and 1970s, winning four general elections, including a minority government after the...
, Heath or their MP. However, strikes continued, reaching Tilbury
Port of Tilbury
The Port of Tilbury is located on the River Thames at Tilbury in Essex, England. It is the principal port for London; as well as being the main United Kingdom port for handling the importation of paper. There are extensive facilities for containers, grain, and other bulk cargoes. There are also...
by 25 April and he allegedly received his 30,000th letter supporting him, with 30 protesting against his speech. By 27 April 4,500 dockers were on strike. On 28 April, 1,500 people marched to Downing Street
Downing Street
Downing Street in London, England has for over two hundred years housed the official residences of two of the most senior British cabinet ministers: the First Lord of the Treasury, an office now synonymous with that of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and the Second Lord of the Treasury, an...
chanting "Arrest Enoch Powell". Powell claimed to have received 43,000 letters and 700 telegrams supporting him by early May, with 800 letters and four telegrams against. On 2 May, the Attorney-General, Sir Elwyn Jones, announced he would not prosecute Powell after consulting the Director of Public Prosecutions. Whilst a section of the white population appeared to warm to Powell over the speech, the author Mike Phillips
Mike Phillips (writer)
Mike Phillips is a British writer of Guyanese descent. He was born in Georgetown, Guyana and came to Britain in 1956 as a child. He graduated from the University of Essex....
recalls that it legitimised hostility, and even violence, towards black Britons like himself.
The Gallup Organization
The Gallup Organization
The Gallup Organization, is primarily a research-based performance-management consulting company. Some of Gallup's key practice areas are - Employee Engagement, Customer Engagement and Well-Being. Gallup has over 40 offices in 27 countries. World headquarters are in Washington, D.C. Operational...
took an opinion poll at the end of April and found that 74% agreed with what Powell had said in his speech; 15% disagreed. 69% felt Heath was wrong to sack Powell and 20% believed Heath was right. Before his speech Powell was favoured to replace Heath as Conservative leader by 1%, with Reginald Maudling
Reginald Maudling
Reginald Maudling was a British politician who held several Cabinet posts, including Chancellor of the Exchequer. He had been spoken of as a prospective Conservative leader since 1955, and was twice seriously considered for the post; he was Edward Heath's chief rival in 1965...
favoured by 20%; after his speech 24% favoured Powell and 18% Maudling. 83% now felt immigration should be restricted (75% before the speech) and 65% favoured anti-discrimination legislation.
Powell defended his speech on 4 May through an interview for the Birmingham Post
Birmingham Post
The Birmingham Post newspaper was originally published under the name Daily Post in Birmingham, England, in 1857 by John Frederick Feeney. It was the largest selling broadsheet in the West Midlands, though it faced little if any competition in this category. It changed to tabloid size in 2008...
: "What I would take 'racialist' to mean is a person who believes in the inherent inferiority of one race of mankind to another, and who acts and speaks in that belief. So the answer to the question of whether I am a racialist is 'no'—unless, perhaps, it is to be a racialist in reverse. I regard many of the peoples in India as being superior in many respects—intellectually, for example, and in other respects—to Europeans. Perhaps that is over-correcting."
Three Beatles songs reference Powell's speech: "Get Back
Get Back
"Get Back" is a song by The Beatles, composed by Paul McCartney and frequently attributed to Lennon–McCartney. The song was originally released as a single on 11 April 1969, and credited to "The Beatles with Billy Preston." A different mix of the song later became the closing track of Let It Be ,...
" and the unpublished songs "Commonwealth" and "Enoch Powell".
In November 2010, the actor and comedian Sanjeev Bhaskar
Sanjeev Bhaskar
Sanjeev Bhaskar, OBE is a British Indian comedian, actor and broadcaster, best known for his work in the BBC Two comedy series Goodness Gracious Me and as host of The Kumars at No. 42...
recalled the fear which the speech instilled in Britons of Indian origin: "At the end of the 1960s, Enoch Powell was quite a frightening figure to us. He was the one person who represented an enforced ticket out, so we always had suitcases that were ready and packed. My parents held the notion that we may have to leave."
Identity of the woman mentioned in the speech
After Powell delivered the speech, there were attempts to locate the constituent whom Powell described as being victimised by non-white residents. Despite combing the electoral registerElectoral register
The electoral roll is a listing of all those registered to vote in a particular area. The register facilitates the process of voting, helps to prevent fraud and may also be used to select people for jury duty...
and other sources, the editor of the Wolverhampton
Wolverhampton
Wolverhampton is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands, England. For Eurostat purposes Walsall and Wolverhampton is a NUTS 3 region and is one of five boroughs or unitary districts that comprise the "West Midlands" NUTS 2 region...
newspaper the Express & Star
Express & Star
The Express & Star is an evening newspaper based in Wolverhampton, England, published Monday to Saturday in nine different editions covering the Black Country, Birmingham and the wider West Midlands area from Tamworth to Kidderminster. It as widely perceived as being moderately right-wing...
, Clem Jones (a close friend of Powell who broke off relations with him over the controversy), and his journalists failed to identify the woman.
Shortly after Powell's death, Kenneth Nock, a Wolverhampton solicitor, wrote to the Express and Star in April 1998 to claim that his firm had acted for the woman in question, but that he could not name her owing to rules concerning client confidentiality
Client confidentiality
Client confidentiality is the principle that an institution or individual should not reveal information about their clients to a third party without the consent of the client or a clear legal reason...
. In January 2007, the BBC Radio Four programme Document, followed by the Daily Mail
Daily Mail
The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...
, claimed to have uncovered the woman's identity. They said she was Druscilla Cotterill (1907–1978), the widow of Harry Cotterill, a Battery Quartermaster Sergeant with the Royal Artillery
Royal Artillery
The Royal Regiment of Artillery, commonly referred to as the Royal Artillery , is the artillery arm of the British Army. Despite its name, it comprises a number of regiments.-History:...
who had been killed in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. She lived in Brighton Place in Wolverhampton, which by the 1960s was dominated by immigrant families. In order to increase her income, she rented rooms to lodgers, but did not wish to rent rooms to West Indians and stopped taking in any lodgers when the Race Relations Act 1968
Race Relations Act 1968
The Race Relations Act 1968 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom making it illegal to refuse housing, employment, or public services to a person on the grounds of colour, race, ethnic or national origins. It also created the Community Relations Commission to promote 'harmonious...
banned racial discrimination in housing. She locked up the spare rooms and lived only in two rooms of the house. According to those who remember the period, the many children in the street regarded her as a figure of fun, and taunted her.
Right-wing support for the speech
In the United Kingdom, particularly in England, "Enoch [Powell] was right" is a phrase of political rhetoric, sometimes employed by the far rightFar right
Far-right, extreme right, hard right, radical right, and ultra-right are terms used to discuss the qualitative or quantitative position a group or person occupies within right-wing politics. Far-right politics may involve anti-immigration and anti-integration stances towards groups that are...
, inviting comparison of aspects of contemporary English society with the predictions made by Powell in the Rivers of Blood speech. The phrase implies criticism of racial quotas, immigration
Immigration
Immigration is the act of foreigners passing or coming into a country for the purpose of permanent residence...
and multiculturalism
Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism is the appreciation, acceptance or promotion of multiple cultures, applied to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the organizational level, e.g...
. Badges, t-shirts and other items bearing the slogan have been produced at different times in the United Kingdom.
The English white power rock band Brutal Attack, which performed at Rock Against Communism
Rock Against Communism
Rock Against Communism started out as series of white power rock concerts in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s, and is also a name for the subsequent music genre. Despite its name, RAC song lyrics rarely focus on the specific topic of anti-communism...
concerts in the 1980s, has a song entitled "Rivers of Blood" on their 1985 album, Stronger Than Before.
In November 2007, Nigel Hastilow
Nigel Hastilow
Nigel Hastilow is a journalist, author, businessman and politician. He is a former editor of the Birmingham Post and was Conservative Party candidate for Birmingham Edgbaston in the 2001 general election...
resigned as Conservative candidate for Halesowen and Rowley Regis
Halesowen and Rowley Regis
Halesowen and Rowley Regis is a borough constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament by the first past the post system of election.- Boundaries :...
after he wrote an article in the Wolverhampton Express & Star that included the statement: "Enoch, once MP for Wolverhampton South-West, was sacked from the Conservative front bench and marginalised politically for his 1968 'rivers of blood' speech, warning that uncontrolled immigration would change Britain irrevocably. He was right and immigration has changed the face of Britain dramatically".
David Starkey
David Starkey
David Starkey, CBE, FSA is a British constitutional historian, and a radio and television presenter.He was born the only child of Quaker parents, and attended Kendal Grammar School before entering Cambridge through a scholarship. There he specialised in Tudor history, writing a thesis on King...
stated on Newsnight
Newsnight
Newsnight is a BBC Television current affairs programme noted for its in-depth analysis and often robust cross-examination of senior politicians. Jeremy Paxman has been its main presenter for over two decades....
after the London riots that Enoch Powell was right in one sense.
See also
- Criticism of multiculturalismCriticism of multiculturalismCriticism of multiculturalism questions the multicultural ideal of the co-existence of distinct ethnic cultures within one nation-state. Multiculturalism is a particular subject of debate in certain European nations that were once associated with a single, homogeneous, national cultural identity...
- Demographics of the United KingdomDemographics of the United KingdomThis article is about the demographic features of the population of the United Kingdom, including population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population....
- Protests of 1968Protests of 1968The protests of 1968 consisted of a worldwide series of protests, largely participated in by students and workers.-Background:Background speculations of overall causality vary about the political protests centering on the year 1968. Some argue that protests could be attributed to the social changes...
External links
- Rivers of Blood Speech
- BBC Radio 4 Document – 'The Woman Who Never Was?'
- Fiona Barton, 'Widow in Enoch Powell's Rivers of Blood speech really did exist', The Daily Mail, 2 February 2007
- Radio Interview on Immigration Powell interviewed shortly after his controversial "Rivers of Blood" speech. (Audio clip, 3:31 mins, Requires RealPlayer to listen)
- Press reaction from the Birmingham Post
- Rivers of Blood, The Real Source BBC Radio 4