A ‘chorus of execration’? Enoch Powell's ‘rivers of blood’ forty years on
2008; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 42; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/00313220701805927
ISSN1461-7331
Autores Tópico(s)Irish and British Studies
ResumoABSTRACT Enoch Powell's ‘rivers of blood’ speech, delivered forty years ago, in April 1968, had a significant impact on British politics. Commentators are divided between those who have defended Powell's remarks and those who have condemned them. Hillman evaluates the responses, and reassesses the speech. He focuses on five key issues: Powell's motives; whether the speech was racist and/or racialist; the relationship between the speech and Conservative Party policies; Powell's electoral impact; and his forecasts with regard to numbers of people with minority ethnic backgrounds within the population. Keywords: BirminghamConservative PartyEdward HeathEnoch Powellimmigrationracialismracismrivers of blood Acknowledgements The author would like to thank Professor John Ramsden of Queen Mary, University of London, and John Plowright for their advice, and the Bodleian Library (Oxford), the Churchill Archives Centre (Cambridge) and the Public Record Office (Kew) for help in accessing documents. Notes 1‘Speech at Birmingham’, in Enoch Powell, Freedom and Reality (Kingswood, Surrey: Elliot Right Way Books 1969), 283, 289. 2 Gallup Political Index, nos 97–9, May 1968, 52. 3Samuel Bonhomme, Enoch Powell and the West Indian Immigrants (London: Afro-American and West Indian Publishers 1971); Paul Foot, The Rise of Enoch Powell: An Examination of Enoch Powell's Attitude to Immigration and Race (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1969); Bill Smithies and Peter Fiddick, Enoch Powell on Immigration (London: Sphere 1969); Tom Stacey (ed.), Immigration and Enoch Powell (London: Tom Stacey 1970). 4Patrick Cosgrave, The Lives of Enoch Powell (London: Bodley Head 1989); Simon Heffer, Like the Roman: The Life of Enoch Powell (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1998); Foot, The Rise of Enoch Powell; Smithies and Fiddick, Enoch Powell on Immigration. 5T. E. (‘Peter’) Utley, Enoch Powell: The Man and His Thinking (London: William Kimber 1968); Robert Shepherd, Enoch Powell: A Biography (London: Pimlico 1997). 6‘Speech at Birmingham’, 281, 290. 7Quoted in Nicholas Tomalin, ‘Britain’, Sunday Times Magazine, 29 December 1968, 23. 8Heffer, Like the Roman, 456. 9Nicholas Jones, Sultans of Spin: The Media and the New Labour Government (London: Gollancz 1999), 6. 10‘Speech at Birmingham’, 282. 11Powell on Frost on Friday, broadcast on ITV, 3 January 1969, quoted in Smithies and Fiddick, Enoch Powell, 112. 12‘If there are traitors in the civil service name them’, transcript of an interview with Enoch Powell by Robin Day broadcast on Twenty-Four Hours (BBC1, 11 June 1970), 12 June 1970, 7: Public Record Office (hereafter PRO), Kew, Home Office (hereafter HO) 376/173. 14Andrew Roth, Enoch Powell: Tory Tribune (London: Macdonald 1970), 349; Utley, Enoch Powell, 19. 13Anna Marie Smith, New Right Discourse on Race and Sexuality: Britain 1968–1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1994), 140. 15Enoch Powell, ‘Integration is the only way—over many years’, Express and Star (Wolverhampton), 10 October 1964, 13; Foot, The Rise of Enoch Powell, 66. 16Quoted in Foot, The Rise of Enoch Powell, 66. 17Iain McLean, Rational Choice and British Politics: An Analysis of Rhetoric and Manipulation from Peel to Blair (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2001), 136. 18John Campbell, ‘The doom of the prophet’, Independent, 23 November 1996, 7. 19Powell on Frost on Friday, quoted in Smithies and Fiddick, Enoch Powell, 97; Enoch Powell, ‘Fears that have not changed’, The Times, 19 April 1988, 12; Valerie Grove, ‘A plumber who has Latin is a better plumber than one who does not’, The Times, 6 August 1993, 15. 20Anne Scott-James, ‘This man of passion and danger’, Daily Mail, 11 July 1968, 8. 21Donley T. Studlar, ‘British public opinion, colour issues, and Enoch Powell: a longitudinal analysis’, British Journal of Political Science, vol. 4, no. 3, 1974, 371–81 (381). 22‘Speech by the Rt Hon. J. Enoch Powell, MP, to the City of London Young Conservatives, 112 Canon St, EC4’, 6 April 1966, 2: Churchill College, Cambridge, Powell Archive (hereafter POLL) 4/1/2. 23‘Speech at Birmingham’, 281–2 and 287–8. 27Quoted in John Slim, ‘“Am I a racialist? No!” says Enoch Powell’, Birmingham Post, 4 May 1968, 8. 24Quoted in Heffer, Like the Roman, 957. 25‘Statement about the Rt. Hon. Enoch Powell, M.P.’, Conservative Central Office News Service press release, 21 April 1968, 1: Bodleian Library, Oxford, Conservative Party Archive, Party Political Broadcasts and Speeches (hereafter PPB) 16. 26David Wood, ‘Tories plan positive line over Bill’, The Times, 23 April 1968, 1. 28Scott-James, ‘This man of passion and danger’. 29Enoch Powell, ‘The enemy within’, 13 June 1970, in John Wood (ed.), Powell and the 1970 Election (Kingswood, Surrey: Elliot Right Way Books 1970), 109. 30Michael Cockerell, ‘Odd man out: a portrait of Enoch Powell’, BBC television documentary, broadcast 11 November 1995. 31Foot, The Rise of Enoch Powell, 114–15; Paul Foot, ‘Beyond the Powell’, Socialist Review, March 1998, 12. 32Stuart Hall, ‘A torpedo aimed at the boiler-room of consensus’, New Statesman, 17 April 1998, 15. 33Margaret Thatcher, The Path to Power (London: HarperCollins 1995), 146. 34Heffer, Like the Roman, 450; Cosgrave, The Lives of Enoch Powell, 254. 35‘Speech at Birmingham’, 281. 36Powell on Frost on Friday, quoted in Smithies and Fiddick, Enoch Powell, 111; see also ‘This week: the world of Enoch Powell’, 4 July 1968, in Enoch Powell, Reflections of a Statesman: The Writings and Speeches of Enoch Powell (London: Bellew 1991), 380. 37Cockerell, ‘Odd man out’. 38Stacey (ed.), Immigration and Enoch Powell, 48–9. 39Utley, Enoch Powell, 27; Heffer, Like the Roman, 773. 40Hansard (HC), vol. 763, col. 75, 23 April 1968. 41James Prior, A Balance of Power (London: Hamish Hamilton 1986), 52. 42Shepherd, Enoch Powell, 359. 43‘Speech at Birmingham’, 289. 44James Hampshire, Citizenship and Belonging: Immigration and the Politics of Demographic Governance in Postwar Britain (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2005), 45–78; Gallup Political Index, nos 97–9, May 1968, 52. The poll shows that 74 per cent of respondents agreed with the speech, 15 per cent disagreed and 11 per cent did not know. 45 Gallup Political Index, nos 97–9, May 1968, 52. 46Cockerell, ‘Odd man out’. 47‘Speech at Birmingham’, 283. 48Powell, ‘Fears that have not changed’. 49‘New measures on immigration needed: Sir Alec Home's proposals’, The Times, 4 February 1965, 12. 50Letter from Alec Douglas-Home to Enoch Powell, 28 January 1965: Churchill College, Cambridge, POLL 1/1/14; Heffer, Like the Roman, 376. 51Hansard (HC), vol. 707, cols 1132–40, 2 March 1965. 52‘Action not words: the new Conservative programme’, in Iain Dale (ed.), Conservative Party General Election Manifestos, 1900–1997 (London: Routledge 2000), 161–73 (171). 53‘Speaking at the Gaumont Theatre Ipswich’, Conservative Central Office News Service press release, 29 September 1967: Bodleian Library, Oxford, Conservative Party Archive, PPB 16. 54Edward Heath, ‘Getting to the root of the problem’, News of the World, 21 April 1968, 12. 56Thatcher, The Path to Power, 147. 55‘Two men one policy’, Daily Express, 25 April 1968, 10. 57Robert Blake, The Conservative Party from Peel to Major, revd edn (London: William Heinemann 1997), 306; Thomas Fanshawe Lindsay and Michael Harrington, The Conservative Party, 1918–1979 (London: Macmillan 1979), 257. For Powell's own defence, see his ‘Speech to London Rotary Club, Eastbourne’, 16 November 1968, in Powell, Freedom and Reality, 299. 58Humphry Berkeley, The Odyssey of Enoch: A Political Memoir (London: Hamish Hamilton 1977), 81. 59Shepherd, Enoch Powell, 347; John Campbell, Edward Heath: A Biography (London: Pimlico 1994), 243. 60Smithies and Fiddick, Enoch Powell, 25–6, 47–8. 61‘Speech at Birmingham’, 284. 62‘If there are traitors in the civil service name them’, 6. 63Enoch Powell, ‘Facing up to Britain's race problem’, Daily Telegraph, 16 February 1967, 16; Enoch Powell, ‘Can we afford to let our race problem explode?’, Sunday Express, 9 July 1967, 12; ‘Speech at Walsall, 9th February 1968’, in Powell, Freedom and Reality, 290–1. 64Edward Heath, ‘Why I sacked him’, Daily Express, 25 April 1968, 1. Later, in his memoirs, Ted Heath argued that Powell's speeches concealed a hidden agenda: ‘The argument he consistently put forward must lead inexorably to the mass expulsion of all coloured people from the United Kingdom’; Edward Heath, The Course of My Life: My Autobiography (London: Hodder and Stoughton 1998), 293. 65John Ramsden, The Winds of Change: Macmillan to Heath, 1957–1975 (London: Longman 1996), 294. 66Campbell, Edward Heath, 245. 67Randall Hansen, Citizenship and Immigration in Postwar Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2004), 182. 68Thatcher, The Path to Power, 147. 69‘Speaking at a Public Meeting at St. George's Hall, York’, Conservative Central Office News Service press release, 20 September 1968, 6: Bodleian Library, Oxford, Conservative Party Archive, PPB 17. 70W. F. Deedes, ‘The real trouble with Enoch’, The Spectator, 18 August 2001, 20–2; W. F. Deedes, Dear Bill: A Memoir (London: Pan 2006), 215–24. 71Nicholas Hillman, ‘“Tell me chum, in case I got it wrong. What was it we were fighting during the war?”: the re-emergence of British fascism, 1945–58’, Journal of Contemporary British History, vol. 15, no. 4, 2001, 1–34. 72Hansard (HC), vol. 735, cols 1256–7, 8 November 1966; ‘Conservative Party Policy on Immigration and Race Relations’, August 1967, 2: Churchill College, Cambridge, POLL 3/2/1/17. Powell had called for all immigrants to be treated alike in a speech in May 1965; see ‘Extract fro m speech by the Rt Hon. J. Enoch Powell, MP to the Conservative Women's Coffee Morning, Reynold's Cafe, Wolverhampton, 11am’, 21 May 1965, 1: Churchill College, Cambridge, POLL 4/1/1. 73‘Speaking at a Public Meeting, at Walsall Town Hall’, Conservative Central Office News Service press release, 25 January 1969, 3: Bodleian Library, Oxford, Conservative Party Archive, PPB 17. 74‘A better tomorrow: the Conservative programme for the next 5 years’, in Dale (ed.), Conservative Party General Election Manifestos, 175–98 (193). 75Hampshire, Citizenship and Belonging, 42. 76Hansen, Citizenship and Immigration in Postwar Britain, 253. 77Smith, New Right Discourse on Race and Sexuality, 173. 78Margaret Thatcher, ‘When Powell was right’, Daily Telegraph, 23 November 1998, 20. 79‘If there are traitors in the civil service name them’, 7. 80Shepherd, Enoch Powell, 400; Heffer, Like the Roman, 565. 81Cockerell, ‘Odd man out’. 82Richard Rose, ‘Analysis of the swing to the Conservatives’, The Times, 20 June 1970, 11; David Butler, ‘Swings without roundabouts’, Sunday Times, 21 June 1970, 11. 83Michael Steed, ‘Appendix II: an analysis of the results’, in David Butler and Michael Pinto-Duschinsky, The British General Election of 1970 (London: Macmillan 1971), 405. 84Michael Steed, ‘Appendix II: an analysis of the results’, in David Butler and Michael Pinto-Duschinsky, The British General Election of 1970 (London: Macmillan 1971)., 407. 85David Butler and Donald Stokes, Political Change in Britain: Forces Shaping Electoral Choice (London: Macmillan 1969), 349–54; Nicholas Deakin and Jenny Bourne, ‘The minorities and the general election, 1970’, Race Today, vol. 2, no. 2, 1970, 205–6; Nicholas Deakin and Jenny Bourne, ‘Powell, the minorities and the 1970 election’, Political Quarterly, vol. 41, no. 4, 1970, 399–415. 86David Butler and Donald Stokes, Political Change in Britain: The Evolution of Electoral Choice (London: Macmillan 1974), 303–8. 87David Butler and Donald Stokes, Political Change in Britain: The Evolution of Electoral Choice (London: Macmillan 1974), 415. 89R. W. Johnson and Douglas E. Schoen, ‘The “Powell effect”: or how one man can win’, New Society, 22 July 1976, 170. 88Douglas E. Schoen, Enoch Powell and the Powellites (London: Macmillan 1977), 57 and 62. 90Donley T. Studlar, ‘Policy voting in Britain: the coloured immigration issue in the 1964, 1966, and 1970 general elections’, American Political Science Review, vol. 72, no. 1, 1978, 46–64 (61). 91William Lockley Miller, What Was the Profit in Following the Crowd? The Effectiveness of Party Strategies on Immigration and Devolution (Glasgow: University of Strathclyde 1979), 15–18, 28. 92Shepherd, Enoch Powell, 407. 93Cosgrave, The Lives of Enoch Powell, 290. 94Steed, ‘Appendix II’, 332. 95Schoen, Enoch Powell and the Powellites, 130. 96Schoen, Enoch Powell and the Powellites, 139. 97McLean, Rational Choice and British Politics, 142. 98Alastair Smith, Election Timing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2004); Douglas Hurd, An End to Promises: Sketch of a Government 1970–74 (London: Collins 1979), 127–30. 99‘Any Questions, BBC Radio’, 29 November 1968, in Powell, Reflections of a Statesman, 394. 100Powell, ‘Integration is the only way—over many years’; ‘Extract from speech by the Rt Hon. J. Enoch Powell, MP to the Conservative Women's Coffee Morning, Reynold's Cafe, Wolverhampton, 11am’, 1; ‘Extract from speech by The Rt. Hon. J. Enoch Powell, at St. Jude's Schools, Riches Street, Wolverhampton at 7.30pm’, 25 March 1966, 1–2: Churchill College, Cambridge, POLL 4/1/2. 101Powell, ‘Facing up to Britain's race problem’. 102‘Speech at Birmingham’, 282. 103‘Speech to London Rotary Club, Eastbourne’, 308–9. 104Enoch Powell, ‘Immigration’, 11 June 1970, in Wood (ed.), Powell and the 1970 Election, 98–9. 105Sir Philip Allen, ‘S. o S.—Note’, note to the Secretary of State of a conversation with Enoch Powell, 2 November 1970, 2: PRO, HO 376/173. 106‘To the Carshalton and Banstead Young Conservatives, Carshalton Hall, Surrey, 15 February 1971’, in Enoch Powell, Still to Decide (Kingswood, Surrey: Elliot Right Way Books 1972), 200–1. 107Tony Geraghty, ‘Did his rhetoric run away with his arithmetic’, Sunday Times, 21 April 1968, 2. 108‘The Powell affair’, Daily Telegraph, 22 April 1968, 14. 109Smithies and Fiddick, Enoch Powell, 148; Conservative Party, The Campaign Guide 1970 (Westminster: Conservative and Unionist Central Office 1970), 473. 110Robert Rhodes James, Ambitions and Realities: British Politics, 1964–1970 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1972), 183; Smithies and Fiddick, Enoch Powell, 46–7, 141–50; Shepherd, Enoch Powell, 365; ‘Speech at Birmingham’, 282. 111Powell, ‘Can we afford to let our race problem explode?’. 112Allen, ‘S. o S.—Note’. 113‘Extract from speech by the Rt Hon. J. Enoch Powell, MP to the Conservative Women's Coffee Morning, Reynold's Cafe, Wolverhampton, 11am’, 1–2; ‘New measures on immigration needed: Sir Alec Home's proposals’, The Times, 4 February 1965, 12. 114Hansard (HC), vol. 748, col. 338, 22 June 1967. 115Various documents: PRO, Registrar General 26/435. 116Hansard (HC), vol. 754, cols 516, 570–1, 15 November 1967. Powell referred to both figures during his Eastbourne speech; ‘Speech to London Rotary Club, Eastbourne’, 306–9. 117Patrick Cosgrave, ‘. . . and statistics’, The Spectator, 10 January 1976, 5. 119Enoch Powell, ‘Britain's ethnically divided peoples’, The Times, 20 April 1993, 18; Heffer, Like the Roman, 939–40. 118Heffer, Like the Roman, 525. 120‘A review of 1991’, Population Trends, no. 71, 1993, 1–14 (3); Andy Teague, ‘Ethnic group: first results from the 1991 Census’, Population Trends, no. 72, 1993, 12–17 (13). 121Powell, ‘Britain's ethnically divided peoples’. 122National Statistics, Census 2001: Key Statistics for Local Authorities in England and Wales (London: The Stationery Office 2003), Tables KS06 (England) and KS06 (Wales); General Register Office for Scotland, Scotland's Census 2001: Key Statistics for Council Areas and Health Board Areas Scotland (Edinburgh: General Register Office for Scotland 2003), Table KS06; Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, Northern Ireland Census 2001 Theme Tables (Belfast: The Stationery Office 2004), Table T36. 123National Statistics, Social Trends 2006 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2006), Table A.2.
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