Talk Elections

This should be interesting.

Arch-HP, though an unusually interesting one.

What a strange and interesting man. HP for being a racist and hating America.

Agreed. Fascinating that he was a friend of Tony Benn, who seems like a natural arch-nemesis to him in terms of political views, at least from my viewpoint over the pond.

Having personal friends from the very other side of the spectrum is not so unusual in politics. To use more recent example: Barack Obama and Tom Coburn.

Eh. Members of the tiny minority in Parliament that is actually capable of independent thought are going to be attracted to each other. Even if the results are less than stellar advertisements for independent thought.

Awful.

Brought out the worst in British society. HP.

Massively horrible person.

A true Freedom Fighter.

Something of an FF on economics and NI but overall major HP.

HP.

Couldn't have put it better. Even looked liked a stereotypical Hollywood English villain.

Watching footage from the CBC archive the other day, and in their report about Bloody Sunday (http://www.cbc.ca/player/Digital+Archives/Politics/International+Politics/ID/1865523723/?page=9) they asked various MPs and he was one of them. His response was fairly characteristic (at around the 10 minute mark).

A true FF. He was indeed a mega racist, but I admire his ability to speak his mind, even when it cost him. I think Rivers of Blood was a racist, hateful speech attacking Africans (many of whom were British to begin with, seeing as they came from the various colonies) living in Britain, but the context of it (that a national heritage was at risk of being lost instead of the immigrants assimilating) was and is great a great warning to all people in all countries that their cultures are at risk.

I think the speech is highly worth reading, regardless your opinion of Enoch Powell.

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.

I fail to imagine a way for these two attributes not to be mutually exclusive. At least not for a 20th century figure.

I suppose the part I bolded was your point; I was going to argue the whole Lincoln/White Supremacy thing (which is not proven). Even in the 20th and 21st centuries, many of our leaders are racist, but they, for political purposes, do not allow their own bias to influence decisions. It is more common than you would think, but just being called racist is automatic death in American politics these days.

I think the unfortunate Ewart Biggs had him beat in caricatured English villain look.

My opinion of Powell is low.

My point still stands. If a contemporary personality is proven a racist, there is no way I can consider it a good person.

Wrong Birmingham, lol.

A villain that possesses all the qualities I'm inclined to hate.

Racist = HP.

Now that we have a conversation going (which seems to have a consensus of at least some kind) I'd like to say that I entirely agree with Lewis Trondheim's assessment. He's the sort of person you want played by Christopher Lee in a biopic or something.

Better than Tony Benn or Harold Wilson.

Are you sure he didn't simply define the type?

•   Enoch Powell had integrity. he was a humanitarian and a man of principles. these days no one can make an opinion without being crucified. There are solutions unless the masses stay in denial about calling a spade a spade ... the brain washed PC crowd can never make a stand for or against ... only attack those who through their own reason (however flawed) have indeed come up with the courage to state a "for or against" opinion. The PC and journalists play it safe, never being for or against, but sensationalizing and making a pariah out of any one who does via dialectical thought processes come up with a definitive opinion about any subject matter.

Posted by Joe
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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.

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

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.

It isn't as bad as it was, but there's still at least one columnist in the Suppress and Slur (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Express_%26_Star) group who is rather open about such things.

If that comment is a crypto nazi comment, I guess it makes me one. I never said I was against the Muslims immigrating to the UK (or the USA), I just pointed out the fact that they seem to fit in with what Enoch was talking about, and that he seems to have been right about the fact that many have refused to assimilate. I hardly see how this comment gives you the right to insult me; I have always stayed pleasant with other members here, even when I STRONGLY disagree with what they are saying. I would be lying if I said none of the posters on here intimidate me; indeed, most do. So many have been for so long, long before I came, and I try hard to not anger them.  You, however, are not one of those people.

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.

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. Such is politics. He was certainly an interesting character and surpisingly progressive on many issues in the post-war era but by the 1970's he became exactly the stereotype that his opponents wanted him to be and a rather dismal version of his former self. It happens to most politicians in the end.

Come on, he wasn't being racist, just a little blunt. I think he was simply pointing out that Powell would probably have been more worried about Muslims than other minority groups, due to differences in culture.

First of all, Muslims are not a "race".

Sorry, miswrote (if that is a word). What I meant by race was the fact that most Muslims (although by no means all) tend to be from the same ethnic group.

There are Arab Muslims, Asian Muslims, African Muslims, white Muslims...  Muslims are not a homogeneous racial group.

Did you not read my by no means all remark. My point is that most people will not pick over such theoretical niceties of whether a Muslim is Arab or Asian, just as many people would be unable to distinguish an Irish Catholic from an English Catholic.

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.

You better stop now before you say more stupid things. For your sake.

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.

I further explained my meaning later on.

And Keir Hardie didn't?

"Dr. Johnson said God made Scotland for Scotchmen, and I would keep it so"

At the birth of the Trades Union and ILP he was both anti-Irish and anti-Lithuanian. In 1887 the Ayrshire Miners Union under his leadership wanted Lithuanian labourers removed because 'their presence is a menace to the health and morality of the place and is, besides, being used to reduce the already too low wages earned by the workmen.' In 1889 he accused the Lithuanians at Glengarnock of being 'filthy.' He then suggested that the employment of foreign workers by British employers should be prohibited, unless they were political exiles, fled from religious persecution or came from nations with like for like wage rates.

When Lithuanians finally became organised politically (under the auspices of the Lithuanian Socialist Federation) it was a Marxist outfit due to almost non-existant relations with the ILP. Lithuanians were much less forgiving than the Irish.

If you are going to charge Enoch Powell 'exploiting tensions to make things worse' then someone like Keir Hardie is guilty of exactly the same. It just so happens it happened outside of living memory and didn't come from the mouth of a Tory.

Just remember, Keir Hardie was a left-winger, and thus that washes away any black marks he had on his record.

I think Powell was a little more successful in making life difficult for black people than Hardie was in making life difficult for the Lithuanians and the Irish, but I could be wrong about that.

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


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.

As an Indian Wulfrunian myself... An overall good guy who certainly had his flaws but never strayed into actual, dictionary definition  racism. Xenophobia, maybe. His concerns about mass migration have at various points in the last 60 years been founded in modicums of reality. Any concerns he may have had were motivated either by political gain, community cultural tension (not trusting white people to accept foreigners my have been an elitist view) or managerial rescource (we're overpopulated!)politics. If he were running for office today, he'd probably get my vote, reluctantly, though I can't see even UKIP having him today, even though he would be nowhere near the BNP.