Rivers of Blood speech
On April 20 1968, the British politician Enoch Powell made a controversial speech in Birmingham to the annual meeting of the West Midlands Conservative Political Centre, in which he warned his audience of what he believed would be the consequences of continued immigration from the Commonwealth to Britain. In conclusion, he said:
Here is the means of showing that the immigrant communities can organize to consolidate their members, to agitate and campaign against their fellow citizens, and to overawe and dominate the rest with the legal weapons which the ignorant and the ill-informed have provided. As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood’. That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect. Indeed, it has all but come. In numerical terms, it will be of American proportions long before the end of the century. Only resolute and urgent action will avert it even now. Whether there will be the public will to demand and obtain that action, I do not know. All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal.
Because of its allusion to Virgil saying that the Tiber would foam with blood, Powell's warning became known as the Rivers of Blood speech.
The next day, the Leader of the Opposition Edward Heath sacked Powell from his Shadow Cabinet. Powell never held another senior political post.
The speech was followed by strikes, in particular in London's docklands, both in support and in opposition. Powell gained considerable support from the public, receiving over 100,000 letters and was supported by MPs such as Sir Gerald Nabarro. Some supportive commentators attributed the surprise 1970 election victory by Edward Heath on the swing in Powell's West Midlands heartland, while other more hostile commentators have said that this speech alienated many immigrants from the Conservative Party.
Even today, the speech remains the subject of much argument and controversy, all the more so because Powell was highly regarded as one of Britain's most gifted politicians, albeit a maverick. Many since the speech have instantly – and understandably – labelled his views as racist, and condemned them as such; others have interpreted the speech not as a fear over race, but as a fear that the clash of cultures would be too much for Britain's social infrastructure (a view that the events of the Brixton, Toxteth and Handsworth riots in the 1980s suggest were not entirely wrong).
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Categories: Speeches