Opinion of Enoch Powell

[Filuwaúrdjan]

On the one hand his racism and race-baiting does have to be seen in context (by the standards of Midlands Tories he wasn't even particularly racist; Frank Griffin - leader of Birmingham City Council in the late 1960s - once proposed officially segregating new housing developments in the city according to 'race', to say nothing of other Black Country Tories like the charming Peter Griffiths and the delightful John Heydon Stokes) but on the other he was rather articulate and helped to make racism respectable in the Midlands, at least for a couple of decades.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

You know, normally, when people try to make arguments for folks like Powell being FFs, they, you know, downplay or at least don't focus on the whole 'rivers of blood' thing.

You should have a read of a local newspaper in the Midlands sometime.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Rivers of Blood was racist against the wrong race, if you think about it. The Muslim population in Britain seems to be more fitting to what Enoch was scared of. Whether he was right or night, I cannot objectively judge, as I am not British, but on the surface, he seems right. I hate to admit it, but it seems to me that he was.

What a vile little crypto-nazi you are.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I think I shouldn't have, actually, but I understand your point, and it's greatly depressing.

It isn't as bad as it was, but there's still at least one columnist in the Suppress and Slur group who is rather open about such things.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

If you're going to be a racist fyckwit then I am going to call you a racist fyckwit. If you don't like that, then don't be a racist fyckwit. It's not difficult or complicated or anything even vaguely resembling Russian Formalism, diddums.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It is demanded that we dislike him because he was racist towards blacks in a manner in which we are not demanded to hate say Keir Hardie for being racist towards the Irish.

Oh nonsense. Nonsense. The issue with Powell isn't his personal racism (which, of course, wouldn't be something to ignore entirely given that this was no longer a period in which the existence of 'race' - and of the subsequent superiority of the British -  was taken for granted), but the fact that he exploited tensions caused by mass immigration for political purposes, and that he did so in such a way that made the situation worse as he legitimised popular racist sentiment in the West Midlands, at least as far as many people in the region were concerned, and that's without considering any damaging effects on national political discourse.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Just as a matter of record, emigration from Pakistan (well, mostly Azad Kashmir, but let's ignore that can of worms for now) to Britain was well underway in the late 60s. At the very least let's try to avoid the classic internet horror of assuming that 'Muslim immigration' to European countries is something that only happened yesterday...

Also, and just as a matter of random interest, Indians were by far the largest group of immigrants in 1960s Wolverhampton.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

And Keir Hardie didn't?

Are you seriously stooping to whataboutery? I'm at least mildly disappointed.

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What do the unpleasant but comparatively minor (especially when compared to other mining areas abroad) ethnic tensions seen in many British coalfields during that period (hell, it was one of main reasons for the failure of the South Wales Miners to organise effectively until surprisingly late) have to do with the orchestrated backlash against mass immigration in the 1960s and 1970s? Or, rather, what do a couple of ugly statements from a local trade unionist and fringe political agitator in the 1880s* have to do with the decision of a popular, articulate and locally powerful member of the Shadow Cabinet (ffs) to feed the fears and legitimise the prejudices of millions of people in the late 1960s? If we can't criticise recent (or recent-ish) racist sentiments because someone might have said something a bit racist in the 19th century, then we are in trouble because in the 19th century everyone was a racist. The existence of 'race' was accepted without question and we 'knew' that our 'race' was the best of 'races' - and that this had been proven by Science. This was not so in the 1960s.

*What he was to become later (including the bit about opposing the Imperial machine abroad) doesn't really matter. I seem to remember that at this stage in his career Hardie still believed that most poverty (as then understood) in Britain was caused by the deficient moral character of the poor, especially regarding alcohol.