Enoch Powell and British Politics: Blood Speeches and Anniversaries
NOVANEWS
By Dr. Binoy Kampmark
Global Research
“What struck me re-reading it, and thinking back to how I felt at the time, was how in a way the ghost of Enoch Powell still stalks British politics.” – Lord Hain, BBC, April 15, 2018
Speeches are often at the mercy of their interpreters and biographers. They can incite and encourage just as they can deflate and demoralise. On April 20, 1968, Enoch Powell, a political figure who still stirs the blood of the milk-and-honey protectors of the strife free inclusive society, issued a dire warning.
In his mistermed “Rivers of Blood” speech, Powell claimed before Conservative party members in Birmingham that Britain was “busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre”, with people becoming “strangers in their own country”. He spoke o...