04/20/2008
Today is the 40th anniversary of Enoch Powell’s famous speech, known as the "Rivers of Blood" speech, although that phrase appears nowhere in it. Read the whole thing, courtesy of VDare.com. I'll have more to say later.
Another person who noticed this is Trevor Phillips, the United Kingdom "race czar"
The Press Association: UK need to shed ’shadow' of Powell
Britain needs to shed the "40-year shadow" of Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech and begin a renewed debate on immigration, the head of Britain’s race watchdog has said.Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), said the infamous speech had left the country with suppressed political debate on the subject.
Speaking to a crowd of about 200 people at the same Birmingham hotel Enoch Powell gave his speech, Mr Phillips was speaking 40 years after the Wolverhampton South West MP’s notorious pronouncements
He said: "For 40 years we have, by mutual consent, sustained a particular silence on the one issue where British people most needed articulate political leadership. Powell so discredited any talk of planning that we have plunged along with an ad hoc approach to immigration."[More]
First of all, Britain is not in the shadow of Enoch Powell, it’s in the shadow of Trevor Phillips, the man who can prosecute you if you say the wrong thing. A large part of Powell’s speech concerned not mass immigration itself, but the nascent Race Relations Act, which could put people in jail for speaking out against immigration, which is why there’s a "particular silence" on this subject.
Addressing representatives from local authorities, police, and a range of equality groups present at the MacDonald Burlington Hotel, Birmingham, Mr Phillips said he thought Mr Powell’s dire predictions had not been fulfilled.
Tell that to the victims of the London Bombings, of the riots, and the crime, and of the EHRC itself. Powell was right.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.