Posted on 11/04/2007 11:17:26 AM PST by Pikamax
The Conservative candidate who declared that Enoch Powell was “right” in his warnings on the effects of immigration has resigned, the party announced today.
Nigel Hastilow, the Tory running for the marginal seat of Halesowen and Rowley Regis in the West Midlands, had been summoned to a meeting with Caroline Spelman, the party’s chairman, over remarks he made to a local newspaper.
He was asked to explain an article in the Express and Star newspaper in Wolverhampton in which he appeared to praise Mr Powell’s stance.
“When you ask most people in the Black Country what the single biggest problem facing the country is, most say immigration,” he wrote.
He added: "Many insist: ’Enoch Powell was right’. 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 our country irrevocably. He was right. It has changed dramatically.”
He also wrote: “They have more or less given up complaining about the way we roll out the red carpet for foreigners while leaving the locals to fend for themselves.”
But after meeting Ms Spelman, the candidate announced he was resigning, despite being supported by his constituency chairman earlier in the day.
He said: “I am very sorry that any remarks of mine have undermined the progress David Cameron has made on the issue of immigration, as on so many other issues.” A Conservative spokeswoman confirmed the party had accepted his resignation.
Peter Hain, the Work and Pensions Secretary, said Mr Hastilow’s remarks in a newspaper column showed the “backward, reactionary” tendencies of the Tory grassroots.
Mr Hain told BBC One’s Andrew Marr show: “This Conservative candidate really exposes the racist underbelly of the Tory party.”
But Mary Docker, the chairman of the Halesowen and Rowley Regis Conservative association, had given warning of a backlash if Mr Hastilow, a former editor of the Birmingham Post, was sacked.
“I’d be very surprised if that happened. He’s a very strong local candidate who’s got the Labour Party scared,” said Ms Docker, who added that she “concurred” with her candidate’s views as expressed in the article.
The rapid departure of Mr Hastilow echoes the sacking from the front-bench by David Cameron of Patrick Mercer. The Tory leader once boasted that it had taken less than a quarter of an hour to sack the former Tory spokesman for homeland security after he used a term of racial abuse in an interview with Times Online.
David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, told ITV1’s Sunday Edition this morning that Mr Hastilow’s comments were “very unwise”.
But he rejected claims that it showed the Tories were a “nasty party” or inherently racist. “I do not agree with that at all and even in the case of Mr Hastilow I suspect this is unwisdom rather than anything else,” he said.
George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, said that all politicians had to be careful with their language - hitting out at Gordon Brown’s own vocabulary.
“I think phrases like ’British jobs for British workers’ are particularly nasty and are trying to play to a particular court,” he told BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show.
There is no more freedom of speech in Britain. It has been sacrificed to the Religion of PC. And the same thing CAN happen here.
I read the whole article. Nobody ever defined specifically what it was that Powell said that was untrue.
So I guess the British equalivant of an Al Sharpton remains nameless in their press?
Romney is right, Britain is lost.
Tp paraphrase another statement: In an ere of PC, telling the truth is itself a revolutionary act.
This gutless wonder should have told them to go XXXX themselves. He probably would have won.
Sad, since both Enoch and he are right...
or
I defy anyone to convincingly argue that this is a racist speech. Anyone, that is, who is educated, informed, aware and has a firm grasp of the English language...
Or not factual.
Or not chillingly confirmed by subsequent events.
All bad.
Everything Powell said was true. The PC forces which control England know this, which is why they can't permit open discussion. Any real discussion of what Powell said would lead any thinking person to conclude that he was right. So there can be no discussion.
The suicide of Britain continues apace.
They should stop defining themselves as Tory and Labour, and just say ‘PC’ and ‘Normal’.
The PC party and the Normal Party.
It is unclear what exactly Nigel Hastilow, the Tory running for the marginal seat of Halesowen and Rowley Regis in the West Midlands, "resigned" from.
It is equally unclear if voters are barred from voting for him anyway, a scenario in which he is still very much likely to win election, and prove his cowardly colleages wrong. The pussy, cowardly, ignorant, politically-correct bunch of them.
I wonder if any of them ever read the speech? and, if they did, exactly what parts of the substance and warnings of that speech have proven wrong?
Nitpicking a phrase or two 40 years out of context is hardly a political or cultural intellectual tour de force...
Enoch Powell was a classics scholar who did a well-regarded lexicon to Herodotus. I suppose that if you looked up a word in the lexicon and then muttered, “Enoch Powell was right,” you could get in trouble, if you did it in England.
Wait until Bonnie Prince Foppy gets the Crown.
“Wait until Bonnie Prince Foppy gets the Crown”...
Yeah. It will be the first time the Limeys have had a king *AND* a queen in the same person...
Multiculture Nazi’s have destroyed Great Britian, evidence of destruction is the muslim doctors blowing up the patience.
Muslim alleged citizen blowing up the underground train.
The lunatic Multiculture Nazi’s are dangerous to the Western Culture
Enoch Powell was seriously educated. Great Britain has been bought by the Wealth of Saudi Arabia.
The multicultural Nazi’s will not accept anything other than total Annihilation of Western Culture.
I am amazed that the native Anglo Saxons and Celts continue to kowtow to the lunatics.
America is following in the foot steps
“It is unclear what exactly Nigel Hastilow, the Tory running for the marginal seat of Halesowen and Rowley Regis in the West Midlands, “resigned” from.”
He resigned as Conservative candidate for the seat at the next election.
“It is equally unclear if voters are barred from voting for him anyway”
There has been no election called at this point. When one is called Nigel Hastilow will not be the Conservative candidate, someone else will be. If he wanted to stump up the cash, run as an independent and ask people to vote for him of course he could, as could anyone.
“a scenario in which he is still very much likely to win election”
No. He’d be very unlikely to get enough votes to have his deposit refunded in that scenario.
“They should stop defining themselves as Tory and Labour, and just say ‘PC’ and ‘Normal’.”
Which is which?
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