So I thought I'd bring up another old instance of British racism, which ties in a bit with the stuff against the Windrush generation before. Those familiar with British politics may know of this: Enoch Powell's "Rivers of Blood" speech. For the full speech,
go here. It's...disgusting.
For some background, Enoch Powell was a member of parliament who held various positions, Shadow Secretary of Defense being the more notable one, which he would eventually be sacked from. This speech was held in a meeting at the Conservative Political Centre in Birmingham in 1968, which would be why Powell referred to it as "the Birmingham speech". Contrary to popular belief, the "Rivers of Blood" phrase is never uttered in the speech itself...it just kind of got the name. You wouldn't believe it,
but around 70% of the population agreed with him at the time. Agreed, despite the media's unanimously negative coverage! Hell,
there was even racial violence, people would chant Powell's name and all sorts, which
this article talks about, though it's very poor quality...almost unreadable. From what I know, the article details a child having to get 8 stitches around their eye due to a cult-like attack. The amount of racism this speech promoted cannot be understated.
One thing to preface this...when introduced to a new thing, there are two ways to introduce it: positively and negatively. Both will introduce a bias into your head, almost regardless of context. The mass immigration was a very new experience for the British public at the time, and the government was handling it poorly. Keep these facts in mind when reading the speech in that link, and what I say from here on out.
So let's talk about the speech itself. He begins with citing a man he met who talked about his grievances with the growing immigration rates, which is a common criticism that's brought up even to this day in the UK. This entire thing is something you've probably overheard in conversations in the street, or pubs, really.
A week or two ago I fell into conversation with a constituent, a middle-aged, quite ordinary working man employed in one of our nationalised industries. After a sentence or two about the weather, he suddenly said: "If I had the money to go, I wouldn't stay in this country." I made some deprecatory reply to the effect that even this government wouldn't last for ever; but he took no notice, and continued: "I have three children, all of them been through grammar school and two of them married now, with family. I shan't be satisfied till I have seen them all settled overseas. In this country in 15 or 20 years' time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man."
I can already hear the chorus of execration. How dare I say such a horrible thing? How dare I stir up trouble and inflame feelings by repeating such a conversation? The answer is that I do not have the right not to do so. Here is a decent, ordinary fellow Englishman, who in broad daylight in my own town says to me, his Member of Parliament, that his country will not be worth living in for his children.
I simply do not have the right to shrug my shoulders and think about something else. What he is saying, thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking - not throughout Great Britain, perhaps, but in the areas that are already undergoing the total transformation to which there is no parallel in a thousand years of English history.
This section is important. You see how this man he talked to used "white flight" rhetoric: leaving a country that becomes more racially diverse in favour of one that is less. He then uses the quote from the man regarding some kind of role reversal to appeal to fear. It's so wrong, so blatantly racist, that it even had the audience fooled: there are rumours that the audience didn't even react...I believe it's in a biography about Powell, but I can't remember. And when Powell says that the public thinks it, well...those polls say he may well have been right. Anyway, the point is, Powell has strung together multiple fallacies and delivered it as an easily digestible point to the audience.
Powell moves into immigration figures from here, which were...grossly exaggerated from a single figure from the Registrar General's Office, played up from the fear mentioned in the previous section.
As time goes on, the proportion of this total who are immigrant descendants, those born in England, who arrived here by exactly the same route as the rest of us, will rapidly increase. Already by 1985 the native-born would constitute the majority. It is this fact which creates the extreme urgency of action now, of just that kind of action which is hardest for politicians to take, action where the difficulties lie in the present but the evils to be prevented or minimised lie several parliaments ahead.
The natural and rational first question with a nation confronted by such a prospect is to ask: "How can its dimensions be reduced?" Granted it be not wholly preventable, can it be limited, bearing in mind that numbers are of the essence: the significance and consequences of an alien element introduced into a country or population are profoundly different according to whether that element is 1 per cent or 10 per cent.
The answers to the simple and rational question are equally simple and rational: by stopping, or virtually stopping, further inflow, and by promoting the maximum outflow. Both answers are part of the official policy of the Conservative Party.
This appeal to fear is also interesting. By playing up the immigration numbers, Powell was able to turn it into a problem, encouraging pro-ethnostate and nationalist rhetoric. Note that at no point has Powell actually cited any reason to believe these people are bad, except by their numbers. The sudden surge in "different" people prompted confusion - and insecurity - in the British public, and Powell was feeding into it.
Note the use of "natural", "simple" and "rational". By repeating these words, and (wrongfully) equating it with the Conservative Party policy, he was able to turn that fear into dependence on the party. This is often believed to be part of how the Conservatives won the election 2 years later, as he pushed a racist identity onto the party that made the increasingly anxious public feel secure. He proposed a simple solution to a nonexistent problem, and the public bought it.
Well, to say there wasn't a problem could be seen as a lie. Birmingham, for example, at the time, had issues with the influx of immigration. This is often called "The Birmingham Overspill", which in part due to the government's negligence and uncontrolled immigration of Commonwealth citizens, caused a bit of a housing crisis. If you remember the Windrush Generation stuff I talked about, from 1950-1965ish, many people settled in Birmingham. There are
records of politicians complaining about this (there's more sources but bleh), as the handling was very poor. This led to landlords (often illegally) evicting people and putting the rent up at a higher price for the new foreign workers aiming to settle. My dad was a victim of this as a kid if I recall correctly, but the time frame may be a bit late.
But as you can deduce from what I'm saying, this wasn't an issue with the people themselves, but the government's absurd level of negligence. Powell was pushing the blame onto the people for coming in, rather than the government failing to do its job and accommodate for the new workers...that they didn't even do the paperwork for.
So now Powell has established his played up numbers, misrepresented a problem, and hooked the anxious audience before him. Let's look at what he does with this.
Let no one suppose that the flow of dependants will automatically tail off. On the contrary, even at the present admission rate of only 5,000 a year by voucher, there is sufficient for a further 25,000 dependants per annum ad infinitum, without taking into account the huge reservoir of existing relations in this country - and I am making no allowance at all for fraudulent entry. In these circumstances nothing will suffice but that the total inflow for settlement should be reduced at once to negligible proportions, and that the necessary legislative and administrative measures be taken without delay.
I stress the words "for settlement." This has nothing to do with the entry of Commonwealth citizens, any more than of aliens, into this country, for the purposes of study or of improving their qualifications, like (for instance) the Commonwealth doctors who, to the advantage of their own countries, have enabled our hospital service to be expanded faster than would otherwise have been possible. They are not, and never have been, immigrants.
Powell now shifts his targeting to Commonwealth citizens who aren't working. I believe this is partly linked to the Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1962, which aimed to curb the mass immigration from the start of the Windrush generation's arrival. Prior to this, they had very liberal rights to enter the country...perhaps too many, given the paperwork issue. This quote, I feel, is a bit of deflection, given his massive attack on any non-British person entering the country prior. Note the ridiculous numbers he went over. He even claims they are not immigrants, which...is wrong?
This rhetoric has become very common, even today, in British politics. Many far-right individuals will always insist that any immigrant must work in the UK, and then proceed to attack the immigration rates claiming that people are "stealing their jobs". This bait and switch hypocrisy is so inconceivably common that it's kind of taken as normal by some people...it's not good.
...and, of course, we can witness it here.
Whatever drawbacks attended the immigrants arose not from the law or from public policy or from administration, but from those personal circumstances and accidents which cause, and always will cause, the fortunes and experience of one man to be different from another's. But while, to the immigrant, entry to this country was admission to privileges and opportunities eagerly sought, the impact upon the existing population was very different. For reasons which they could not comprehend, and in pursuance of a decision by default, on which they were never
consulted, they found themselves made strangers in their own country.
They found their wives unable to obtain hospital beds in childbirth, their children unable to obtain school places, their homes and neighbourhoods changed beyond recognition, their plans and prospects for the future defeated; at work they found that employers hesitated to apply to the immigrant worker the standards of discipline and competence required of the native-born worker; they began to hear, as time went by, more and more voices which told them that they were now the unwanted. They now learn that a one-way privilege is to be established by act of parliament; a law which cannot, and is not intended to, operate to protect them or redress their grievances is to be enacted to give the stranger, the disgruntled and the agent-provocateur the power to pillory them for their private actions.
So Powell now further diverts from the government's shortcomings - the first time he's come remotely close to holding them accountable in his speech, I believe - and now puts the immigrants into a position of guilt by ignorance. He provides a motive and consequence. "I'm a stranger in my own country" is a common term spun by racists in the UK, and this is certainly where it came from.
Referring to the prior quote, we now see that Powell attacks, once again, all immigrants. Taking school places, changing neighbourhoods, and most importantly, problems in the workplace due to opportunities decreasing. The bait and switch tactic has been applied, and the prior quote, already forgotten by the audience, as this is a-ways in. It was never about the non-working immigrants.
I could go on, but this post is becoming gigantic, and I encourage people to read Enoch Powell's speech in full. It's such a horrific, disgusting thing, but is also a massive part of what gave rise to racism in the UK. Its influence on politics was huge over here, and the fact people are beginning to forget about it is rather upsetting, for we soon may forget just how easy it is for another Enoch Powell to sow the seed of racism into the masses. In fact, I can name two big ones who've repeated these tactics in recent times: Nigel Farage and Donald Trump.
So, what do you think? I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on this thing. I don't think I even scratched the surface of this entire fiasco...
