It was forty years yesterday since Enoch Powell made "Rivers of Blood" speech. It is forty years today since the misunderstanding and misinterpretation began - and it has continued pretty much unabated since, starting with with The Times reporting it under the title ‘An Evil Speech’:

This was not a speech that deviated much from Powell's previous speeches, just using more direct turns of phrase. The only real difference was the media's reaction, and the impact this created.

The effects of this speech were peculiarly divided. From journalists and politicians he got almost nothing bar attacks, but from the people he got much support. He got huge levels of public support in opinion polls, which were between 67% and 82% in his favour; he received a deluge of letters, with very few (six out of about 4,000) concurring with the public espousals of the journalists and politicians against Powell. Powell’s ratings grew in all directions. The polls also showed a rise in support for Powell to be the leader of the Conservative Party, to 24%, from a figure as long as 1%. Not only in the opinion polls was there evidence of public support, but there were great demonstrations of popular support for him, such as the docker’s march on parliament, with placards demanding ‘Don’t knock Enoch’ and ‘Back Britain, not Black Britain’.

For Powell, the issue was not as s often claimed the immigration of people per se, but their integration within the existing community. In a newspaper article in the Sunday Times four years prior to the "Rivers of Blood" speech, Powell wrote that:
They are a part of the community. They do have importance. They are people who deserve and have rights on the same basis as any other citizen of the United Kingdom. And Powell also declares, in another newspaper article in the same year, that “I have set and always will set my face like flint against making any difference between one citizen of the country and another on the grounds of his origin.”

It was the lack of integration that was the cause of "the River Tiber foaming with much blood" in Powell's speech, not the amount of immigration. And this quote from Virgil’s Aenied that formed much of the “part-prophecy” quality of the speech has constantly been misattributed to Powell himself, and misunderstood as referring to immigration being the cause of violence.

Trevor Phillips obviously hasn't actually read up on Powell, and his researchers deserve to be sacked for idiocy. In his recent speech, he said:
They obviously missing this quote from Powell:
Oh, and the other so-called "three key propositions" supposedly "at the heart" of Powellism? Utterly wrong. So, CRE: buck-up your ideas, and your research.

I challenge every reader of this blog to read the speech without the pre-conceptions that have been beaten in to them. Read it properly, and you will understand that it isn't racist or even anywhere close.

I have recently joined the Wardman Wire as a guest columnist, and my first column is the first of a new weekly column on the biggest political issue of the past week:

Read the first column, focusing on the Nigel Hastilow/Enoch Powell story, here.

I agree with Simon Heffer:

Far more so than with Daniel Finkelstein:
Whilst what Powell said in his speech was inflammatory, it was not racist. Every single quote that critics drag from his speech - such as "charming, wide-grinning piccaninnies" or "[i]n this country in fifteen or twenty years time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man" - were not his own words, but those of the people who spoke to him. Maybe he could or should have made the point that these were, as Danny Finkelstein says "unpleasant or unacceptable", but Powell was the sort of man who would assume that others would understand that point without prompting.

Also, he never actually said "as I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see "the River Tiber foaming with much blood." But instead he said the phrase in Latin, but wrote it in the transcript, a choice of which he later said:
If he had, it is quite likely that the speech never would have generated such a resonance.

Was Powell racist? No, he wasn't. I wrote my entire undergraduate dissertation on that subject, which you can read here. My conclusion, after a year of study, is this:

The reason that it has been claimed that Enoch Powell was racist is because he spoke on the issues of race and immigration, and was opposed to the continued entry of immigrants into Britain, and the voluntary repatriation of those who failed to integrate into British society. But Powell was not opposed to immigrants because of the colour of their skin, their racial origins, or their nationality. But what he was concerned about – and what motivated his articles and speeches on the issue – was whether or not they were, or could become, a part of the British nation through integration.

What are the biggest political misjudgements? Paul Linford has listed his top 10 in a very good post, all of which make sense - bar one. The political misjudgement that he lists as the second biggest is actually the utter opposite. Paul says:

Unfortunately, Paul has got it wrong. Completely and utterly wrong. Enoch's "Rivers of Blood" speech was the very reason he could ever have been elected leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister, not the reason he wasn't.

Until he made that speech, in any leadership election he would have been nothing more than an also-ran - just like he had been in 1965, when Edward Heath was elected Conservative leader, and Powell polled just 5% of the vote, with just 15 votes. It was after his infamous speech that Powell's reputation with the people and his profile began to rise. It was precisely because of the speech for which he was widely criticised, but ultimately vindicated by shifts policy shifts across all parties, that he became well known.

Before 20 April 1968, Enoch was nothing more than just another mid-level politician - generally regarded quite well, but nothing more. After his speech and the reactions he got, that all changed. He rose in the opinion polls personally and as a potential leadership candidate should Heath step down, becoming far more well known and liked than others of his party.

But then Enoch made his big misjudgement - he stepped down as the MP for Wolverhampton South West at the February 1974 general election, and called for the electorate to vote Labour instead [primarily because the Tories had taken Britain in the EEC and Labour promised a referendum on the issue - at least they gave one that time]. That election ended with a hung parliament with Labour the largest party, and was followed by Labour winning a Commons majority of 3 in October of the same year.

Had Enoch remained a Conservative MP in February 1974, it is very likely that he would have been asked to replace Heath as leader, and is unlikely to have faced any opposition for the position. The last part of Paul's "what might have happened" could have. But without making his "Rivers of Blood" speech - the very speech which Paul considers to have been Enoch's political misjudgement - he would never have been any more than an also-ran in any leadership race. That speech in 1968 was the one thing that could have led him to be Prime Minister, not the one thing that stopped him. That distinction undoubtedly goes to his decision is stand down as a Conservative MP in February 1974.