History HubΒ permalink
On this day: 20 April
This discussion has been closed.
-
Message 1.Β
Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Wednesday, 20th April 2011
•1968: British politican Enoch Powell makes his notorious 'rivers of blood' speech against immigration.Β
Did Enoch Powell mention the phrase 'rivers of blood' in his speech? -
Message 2
Posted by somewhatsilly (U14315357) on Wednesday, 20th April 2011
Not as such; being a classicist, he referred to the Sibylline prophesy about seeing ' the Tiber foaming with blood' saying he could envisage something similar. The tabloids of the day took this up, and without delving into Virgil, expressed it as 'rivers of blood'.
-
Message 3
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 20th April 2011
Is it not the case that like so many Oxbridge classicists Powell went into the Indian Civil Service and went through the trauma of witnessing either at first hand- or perhaps more frustratingly at a remove- the blood-letting that is now estimated as having killed two million people in a few weeks in 1947?
Cass -
Message 4
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 20th April 2011
Correction-- after a quick Google check
I knew he had gone as a young Classic Professor to Sidney.
He rushed back to to join the British Army, and was sent to Delhi with the Army in 1943 rising to be a the youngest Brigadier, having been the youngest professor.
He did not see front line service, so I wonder whether he got sucked into the violence with which the Quit India campaigns were suppressed or the great Bengal Famine of the last years of the war.
But Wikipedia says that though he voted Labour in 1945 he formed a very close connection with R.A.B Butler whose father had been in the ICS- and whose only childhood home was in the India that he visited in the academic holidays..
Wikipedia writes:
"Powell's ambition to be Governor-General of India crumbled in February 1947, when Prime Minister Clement Attlee announced that Indian independence was imminent. Powell was so shocked by the change of policy that he spent the whole night after it was announced walking the streets of London.[22] He came to terms with it by becoming fiercely anti-imperialist, believing that once India had gone the whole empire should follow it. This logical absolutism explained his later indifference to the Suez crisis, his contempt for the Commonwealth, and his urging that Britain should end any remaining pretence that it was a world power"
***
Powell is often accused of being a racist. But in so far as the so-called "rivers of blood" speech reflected what he saw as a continuum of human experience from classical antiquity, through the British Empire to contemporary Britain he was bringing out what he saw as a universal principle that attempts to force people together, or even to marry people from very different strands that are imbued with their own organic and life-sustaining features are likely "to end in tears".
My own view- having always enjoyed listeing to the intellectual vigor of his thinking- is that while his view of common humanity was a sustainable one, and his logic was usually very powerful once he had been granted his openning assumptions- what he failed in was that crucial element of leadership which is the only way that people are encouraged to rise above the worst that they can so easily be, and aspire to be the best..
Churchill "No! I told Herr Hitler. You do your worst. We will do our best."
In some strange way Powell saw it as his job as a politician to be a spokesman for the vile sentiments and prejudices in his consituents,who knew no better, where he would have done them a greater service had he enlisted them, like for example, M L King on a journey engaging all people of goodwill to progress towards a promised land.
Cass
Cass -
Message 5
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Wednesday, 20th April 2011
It comes from the opening of Book VI of Virgil's "Aeneid" when Aeneas and his fellow exiles from the fall of Troy consult the Sybill at Cumae to see if their where they might find refuge:
Oh, you who are done with all the perils of the sea,
(yet greater await you on land) the Trojans will come
to the realm of Lavinium (put that care from your heart):
but will not enjoy their coming. War, fierce war,
I see: and the Tiber foaming with much blood.
You will not lack a Simois, a Xanthus, a Greek camp:
even now another Achilles is born in Latium,
he too the son of a goddess: nor will Juno, the Trojans’ bane,
be ever far away, while you, humbled and destitute,
what races and cities of Italy will you not beg in!Β
Powell transposed this into the sentence:
Like the Roman, I seem to see the Tiber foaming with much bloodΒ
meaning that waves of continued mass immigration would eventually provoke a violent reaction from the host community. The "Roman" in question was, of course, Virgil, not the Sybil, who wasn't Roman but Greek. It is interesting that Powell spoke in his speech about an annual rate of 50,000 immigrants being unacceptable. I wonder what he would have felt about the entry of 2 million immigrants in the last 13 years? An annual rate of 50,000 immigrants would be greeted by the present government as a triumph. -
Message 6
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Wednesday, 20th April 2011
Is it not the case that like so many Oxbridge classicists Powell went into the Indian Civil Service and went through the trauma of witnessing either at first hand- or perhaps more frustratingly at a remove- the blood-letting that is now estimated as having killed two million people in a few weeks in 1947?
°δ²Ή²υ²υΜύ Powell was never a member of the Indian Civil Service. He was in India during WWII with the British Army. He resigned his commission (as a Brigadier) at the beginning of 1946 and returned to the UK and joined the Conservative Research Department (overseen by R.A.Butler). In 1947 he unsuccessfully contested the mining seat of Normanton in Yorkshire as a Conservative candidate.
He never witnessed the partition of India but the reports probably persuaded him against the idea that, given time, ethnic minorities would eventually integrate as the separate religious communities in India had been living in situ for hundreds of years before being violently displaced. Also a private visit to the United States in the mid-1960s and the sight of the inner cities that were to erupt with violence in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King in the same month as he made his speech to the West Midlands Conservative Political Centre at the Mayfair Centre in Birmingham probably prompted his interest in immigration, to which he had hitherto paid little attention, -
Message 7
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 20th April 2011
Allan D
Thanks as ever for informative posts.. I recall that somewhere- probably in the collection of pieces Julian Huxley published in 1944 under the heading "On Living In A Revolution" there was the observation that the history of the USA "melting pot" showed that the process could only function properly as long as the proportion being integrated did not become significant enough to significantly change the whole nature of the host culture.. He was writing here as a Darwinian evolutionist not as a racist, or even a racialist- The pieces included one on "Race in Europe" 1939 that was obviously conceived as a counter-blast to Nazi race theories.
I have to say - as someone teaching in Brixton by this time- that I thought that Powell was an exceptional able- but tragically misguided- man..
Cass -
Message 8
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Wednesday, 20th April 2011
I was in the audience when he returned to the Bull Ring Centre in Birmingham in February 1974 to deliver his equally famous, or infamous, "Vote Labour" (although like "rivers of blood" he never used those words) speech to a more public audience fronted by a phalanx of TV cameras from around the world.
Along with Aneurin Bevan, Iain Macleod, Michael Foot, Tony Benn and Michael Heseltine he was probably one of the best platform orators since Churchill, an art that has gone into sad decline with the onset of television and the "sound-bite". He delivered perhaps the best speech I have ever heard attacking Britain's membership of what was then the EEC to a meeting in Islington, London during the Referendum campaign the following year.
He could be said to have been a major influence on Ted Heath's surprise victory in 1970 and his equally surprise defeat in 1974. He has often been compared to Joseph Chamberlain, who split both the Liberal Party over Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Rule in 1886 and the Conservatives over Tariff Reform in 1903. However Powell himself disliked the comparison, even more so after he co-wrote a book on hamberlain in the course of which he found Chamberlaiin more opportunist than principled.
Powell himself was a paradox - he loved Parliament yet was able to appeal directly to the ordinary voter out of exasperation with the temporizing of the front benches. His period of maximum influence was relatively short - probably 1968-74. During the Heath Government of 1970-74 he fulfilled the role of a one-man opposition over the economy, Europe and Northern Ireland as the Labour Party was either divided or shared the government's viewpoint.
His analysis of inflation as a purely monetary phenomenon fuelled by low interest rates and government over-spending is now largely accepted. He was not a standard reactionary and had liberal positions on the abolition of capital punishment, the abolition of nuclear weapons, and the withdrawal of Britain's defence role east of Suez.
The left continue to denigrate him as a bogeyman figure just as they do Mrs Thatcher even though most of them never heard him speak and only have a vague, incoherent and mostly uninformed idea of his views but that legacy is probably why they are both so significant in Britain's post-war political history.
Certainly I believe without Enoch Powell there would have been no possibility of a Margaret Thatcher premiership. -
Message 9
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 20th April 2011
Allan D
I pretty much agree with all of that.. I think that the basic thrust of his economic analysis was ahead of its time.. and as I have already said it was always a pleasure to hear a point of view expressed so clearly and intelligently, whether you agreed with him or not.. So long ago now, but there was a special chemistry for me when Powell got together with Quentin Hogg and Robin Day on TV.
Cass
About this Board
The History message boards are now closed. They remain visible as a matter of record but the opportunity to add new comments or open new threads is no longer available. Thank you all for your valued contributions over many years.
or Β to take part in a discussion.
The message board is currently closed for posting.
The message board is closed for posting.
This messageboard is .
Find out more about this board's
Search this Board
Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ iD
Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ navigation
Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ links
Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Β© 2014 The Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read more.
This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so.