Posted on 04/21/2018 2:38:26 PM PDT by Twotone
Half-a-century ago today, Enoch Powell gave the speech that ended his political ambitions within the British Conservative Party, but ensured that he would be a more consequential figure than any of the hack timeservers who prospered in the Tory cabinets of Edward Heath. It's known to history as "the 'Rivers of Blood' speech", which is a slight misrendering of a characteristically Powellite classical allusion - even then, in the pre-soundbite era, a risky business for a politician seeking to curry favor with the media. To mark the anniversary, BBC Radio, controversially, aired a re-enactment of the speech, read by Ian McDiarmid, best known for playing Emperor Palpatine in the Star Wars movies. Notwithstanding the casting, the absurdly named "Lord Adonis", who sounds like a minor character in Waugh's Vile Bodies, demanded the broadcast be canceled.
The performance, in fact, is well worth your time. Powell's speech on race and the future of Britain was prescient, although not always adequately so. As my old boss Charles Moore wrote last year about Douglas Murray's book on The Strange Death of Europe:
One telling point he makes is how even the most 'bigoted' predictions of demographic change have been exceeded by reality. Suppose, says Murray, that Enoch Powell, in his incendiary 'Rivers of Blood' speech in 1968, had predicted that, in the 2011 census, in 23 of London's 33 boroughs, people describing themselves as 'white British' would have been in a minority. He would have been pilloried for his alarmism. Yet it is so.
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
“even the most ‘bigoted’ predictions of demographic change have been exceeded by reality”
As Britain was white for the previous 30,000 years, and is now on its way to being minority white just 50 years later, that’s not a small statement.
The same happened in the United States, a country founded by British people. We were told in 1965 that the loosening of our immigration laws would not result in ethnic change.
On the contrary, a radical shift in ethnicity and race started that is ongoing and will of course never end until the hated whites are outnumbered and become a minority in what was an overwhelmingly white majority country.
And anyone who predicted that in 1965 was shouted down with accusations of alarmism and bigotry.
But of course, they were right.
from the comments to Mark’s Post;
“Like Trump today, Enoch had the overwhelming support of the “common” people, therefore the LibLabCon Establishment decided to replace the electorate.”
Why does anyone think the democrats so vehemently need the illegals support!?
Is there a link to the Micdirmon reading?
I found it on YouTube. Yikes.
“Grinning Pick-a-nnies”? Who talks like that?
The British never got a vote on entering the EU and they had to at last force a vote on leaving. Time will tell how their one vote will be yet arrogated.
I suppose then, that for someone without a sense of time and place, a discussion of Golliwogs is out of the question?
I guess the saddest thing is that because of language, his speech does sound racist when in reality he is complaining about culture. The people Enoch is discussing have just a tenuous connection to Britain. They are not British in any sense of the word, despite having come from British colonies.
That’s the problem that liberals will not see here today. The illegals coming in are going to change the US. And the change will not be a happy one. For conservatives OR liberals.
By 1968, any politician talking about “pickannnies” should have been drummed out of their party in disgrace.
Ping.
I realize that; but that coward's "PC" view of the subject does not change the ultimate result : cultural destruction, replaced with something never likely to be a happy destination for anyone actually living it.
A nightmare of good intentions and human nature at the bottom of the cliff of reality
You write well.
He complained that the immigrants didn’t integrate, but argued for the right of businesses and landlords to discriminate based on skin color.
The guy was steeped in a racist world view like a tea bag in a tea pot at tea time. So much so that he was probably incapable of understanding how vile a person he was.
Small minds confuse race and culture.
L
Enoch Powell was very confused on just that.
I don’t understand why the UK nees to spend a hay penny to leave the EU...
Skin color is an easy thing to latch onto when the real underlying cause of racism is behavior. In one of Thomas Sowell’s books he talks about how even middle class blacks in northern cities moved out as poor southern blacks moved into the area. Who would not ‘discriminate’ against slovenly, undisciplined people? Would you want them for an employee? A renter? Yes, the language is racist. But there is a legitimate reason, & that’s the thing that no one wants to come to grips with. One individual may be assimilated quickly, maybe a few at a time. But when an area is overwhelmed with a population that has no cultural or behavioral comity with the locals, THEY are going to continue as is. And everyone else is going to be unhappy about them. Which is why there are so many no-go areas throughout Europe now. These people are not changing their culture. They’re keeping their culture & expecting the locals to accept it.
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