Enoch Was Right!
I agree with Simon Heffer:
The insult to Powell consists in this unsustainable idea that the Birmingham speech was “racist”.
There is a long tradition in the party of not reading the speech… Oddly enough, Powell did not use the word “race” in the speech at all (this often surprises people who are convinced it is an order to the masses to vilify black people for the sole reason that they happen to be black). (The Telegraph)
Far more so than with Daniel Finkelstein:
First, he talked in alarmist terms of matches being thrown onto gunpowder and rivers foaming with blood. This was hardly a sober or responsible way of talking of a sensitive issue. It was also wrong. The rivers are not foaming with blood.
Second, he quoted at length extraordinarily offensive, racist comments made to him and never attempts to suggest that these are unpleasant or unacceptable. (Comment Central)
Whilst what Powell said in his speech was inflammatory, it was not racist. Every single quote that critics drag from his speech - such as “charming, wide-grinning piccaninnies” or “[i]n this country in fifteen or twenty years time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man” - were not his own words, but those of the people who spoke to him. Maybe he could or should have made the point that these were, as Danny Finkelstein says “unpleasant or unacceptable”, but Powell was the sort of man who would assume that others would understand that point without prompting.
Also, he never actually said “as I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see “the River Tiber foaming with much blood.” But instead he said the phrase in Latin, but wrote it in the transcript, a choice of which he later said:
If he had, it is quite likely that the speech never would have generated such a resonance.
Was Powell racist? No, he wasn’t. I wrote my entire undergraduate dissertation on that subject, which you can read here. My conclusion, after a year of study, is this:
The reason that it has been claimed that Enoch Powell was racist is because he spoke on the issues of race and immigration, and was opposed to the continued entry of immigrants into Britain, and the voluntary repatriation of those who failed to integrate into British society. But Powell was not opposed to immigrants because of the colour of their skin, their racial origins, or their nationality. But what he was concerned about – and what motivated his articles and speeches on the issue – was whether or not they were, or could become, a part of the British nation through integration.
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I call upon you to resign from your blog and apologise post-haste! tut tut.
Hear hear! Though actually I do think the Fink was right.
Powell was a very bright man and he knew pretty much exactly how his speech would be reported. He could have repeated remarks from constituents without what is considered as such consent and approval. He was a scare monger, a dog whistler and in effect a hate monger too. He is a great hero of the hard right, the UVF etc.
Repatriation = loathsome; zero or near zero immigration policy = economic madness (vide Australia); overall = wrong.