Rivers of Blood...Enoch Powell

[LordChaverly 10]

Well he was certainly right when he wrote (in 1968) that

 

 

Remember April 22 1998? The day we lost the 'whip hand'.

 

 

Your ‘killer fact’ about Enoch’s prediction has every advantage as a debating point except that it is untrue. The prediction you mention was made by a constituent of Powell's, not by Powell himself. Powell included it in his so called 'rivers of blood' speech in April 1968 as evidence of public anxiety within his constituency about immigration. I suggest you read the full text of the speech (and indeed others made by Powell on immigration) rather than relying on highly dubious secondary sources. A similar misunderstanding is often made about his reference to 'rivers of blood'. He was not of course advocating bloody violence (quite the reverse). He was predicting that there would indeed be serious trouble if the scale of immigration was not stemmed. He was therefore challenging the (often implicit) assumption that the UK could absorb millions of immigrants from other cultures without any serious problems.

 

As I have said before on this forum, what Powell did in his speeches and writings on immigration was to challenge the prevailing conventional wisdoms and orthodoxies of the time concerning the nature and implications of mass migration. In particular, he challenged the assimilationist doctrines which had as their central premise the idea that the new migrants would soon become assimilated into the British way of life and in effect would become 'Black British'. Powell had served as a military officer in the Indian sub continent and knew Urdu. He knew a lot more about the resilience of these indigenous cultures (particularly of Islamic cultures) than did many at the time. He actually said that it would not matter to him if the new immigrants were fully assimilated, including through inter-marriage with the indigenous population. But he knew this would not happen. Instead, he predicted that large swathes of British cities would become populated by groups with little or no interest in assimilating into the British way of life. It was indeed as he said at the time all about numbers. The larger the numbers, the less likely integration was likely to occur. His numerical predications concerning the rapid growth of the migrant population were ridiculed at the time but have subsequently proven to be if anything under-estimates.

 

Phan, Longcol and DrNeill, and I think you are all profoundly mistaken about Powell. He was much maligned in his life time and his political career and personal life suffered greatly as a consequence. Indeed, the venom directs at him tended to obscure comprehension of what he actually said about immigration, despite him being a supreme master of the English language and one of the very few examples of a genuine intellectual in politics. He was certainly no opportunist - had he been he could have had a much more peaceful life and his career would have advanced much further than it did. At some point, perhaps in the not too distant future, Powell's reputation will be reassessed and perhaps he will be viewed in a much more favourable light than hitherto (and Loncol, you are also mistaken about him never returning to the subject of immigration - he did so many times after 1968) .

 

This intellectually brilliant, morally courageous and prescient man deserves better than the ill-informed opprobrium which tends to be so casually directed at him whenever his name is mentioned.

[Aamer 10]

"Whole areas, towns and parts of towns across England will be occupied by sections of the immigrant and immigrant-descended population."

 

Enoch Powell - 1968

 

Hyperbolic nonsense? Or was he right?

 

Whole areas of spain and south of france have been occupied by brits, do you see the spanish jumping up and down

[Don_Kiddick 11]

Whole areas of spain and south of france have been occupied by brits, do you see the spanish jumping up and down

No because Brits bring wealth & standards.

 

Not just going to become spongers off the state/health service/ taxpayer etc

[Bartfarst 10]

I wonder in how many boardrooms of the FTSE 100 companies the "black man has the whip hand".

Does the black man have the whip hand in Parliament? The House of Lords? The Civil Service? The upper ranks of the armed forces?

I think a resounding no to all those.

The ethnic minorities have the whip hand through our ridiuclous laws on 'equality', and the positive discrimination and racial sensitivities that arise from those laws. The police are virtually unable to control minorities, and employers have to take on sub-standard individuals just to fill minority quotas.

It should be a source of great sadness to us all that an earlier generation of politicians were not all as gifted or visionary as Powell. If they were, we wouldn't be in this mess.

[Bartfarst 10]

Whole areas of spain and south of france have been occupied by brits, do you see the spanish jumping up and down

No, but you don't see those Brits building mosques, weiring veils, scrounging Spanish benefits or turning parts of Spanish cities into third world ghettos either.

 

Were that the case, I can guarantee that the Spaniards would have jumped up and down an awful lot, and made it very unpleasant for such Brits.

[pk014b7161 11]

look at france the trouble theve had when all the cars were torched people being attacked etc

[Don_Kiddick 11]

look at france the trouble theve had when all the cars were torched people being attacked etc

Really PK?

 

Who did that then?

[Greybeard 10]

Whole areas of spain and south of france have been occupied by brits, do you see the spanish jumping up and down

 

But the Brits in France are not torching an average of 112 cars a day, or staging "15 attacks a day on police and emergency services".

 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2414175,00.html

 

How soon I wonder before our own disaffected ethnic minorities follow the same path to glory ?

[King Rat 10]

No, but you don't see those Brits building mosques, weiring veils, scrounging Spanish benefits or turning parts of Spanish cities into third world ghettos either.

 

Were that the case, I can guarantee that the Spaniards would have jumped up and down an awful lot, and made it very unpleasant for such Brits.

 

Quite right some of us Brits in Spain just get absolutly plastered,cause trouble in clubs & bars, sell drugs & if they do get caught they just come to back to UK.

[Don_Kiddick 11]

Quite right some of us Brits in Spain just get absolutly plastered,cause trouble in clubs & bars, sell drugs & if they do get caught they just come to back to UK.

At least they do GO HOME!!!

[Bartfarst 10]

But the Brits in France are not torching an average of 112 cars a day, or staging "15 attacks a day on police and emergency services".

 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2414175,00.html

 

How soon I wonder before our own disaffected ethnic minorities follow the same path to glory ?

Yes - and those figures aren't just from when the riouts were at their worst, that's the average across the last year!!!!

 

"An average of 112 cars a day have been torched across France so far this year and there have been 15 attacks a day on police and emergency services. Nearly 3,000 police officers have been injured in clashes this year".

 

France has more Arabs than we have Pakistanis, but we're not that far behind. They have 'Rivers of Blood' NOW. When will ours start?

[King Rat 10]

At least they do GO HOME!!!

 

True, but I would rather them stop in Spain