Enoch Powell: Look back at the Express & Star archive on eve of new play to see how 'rivers of blood' speech whipped up storm

The Tory MP's views on mass immigration were already making headlines before he gave his now notorious address which was to unleash a political storm.

In the late 1960s Wolverhampton had absorbed a large influx of immigrants, mainly West Indians and Kenyan Asians, and there were increasing fears of racial tension.

Mr Powell spoke out about this immigration, particularly the numbers of children arriving and the impact he believed it was having on schools.

At the time, it was reported that immigrant children were arriving at the rate of 25 to 30 a week.

But on February 12, 1968, the MP for Wolverhampton South-West was criticised by the National Union of Teachers for 'over-elaborating' the numbers of immigrant children in Wolverhampton schools and 'making a bad situation worse'.

Mr Powell had spoken to the Walsall Conservatives and told how an MP colleague was 'dumbfounded' when he told him of a constituent whose daughter was now the only white child in her class.

What Shadows opens at Birmingham Rep tomorrow. It features the friendship between Enoch Powell and the then editor of the Express & Star, Clem Jones. It focuses on the long-argued question of whether the racial tension stirred up by Powell's speech was calculated or unintentional. It runs until Saturday, November 12.

In response, the NUT said it knew of no school with only one white child in a class and Mr Powell was accused by its spokesman of elaborating to make his point.

Powell refused to identify the school when later asked by reporters.

Immigration was becoming a hot topic because the Government was preparing its Race Relations Bill which would prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race in certain areas, particularly housing, where many local authorities had been refusing to provide houses for immigrant families until they had lived in the country for a certain number of years.

But Mr Powell was 'going to great pains' to highlight what he believed was a growing problem of mass immigration.

On February 17, 1968, the Express & Star ran the views of Mr Powell's fellow MPs across the Midlands.

Many agreed he was correct to make a stance, some said it was only fair to control future immigration to help those who are were already living in the UK settle in and believed the current levels of immigration should not be sustained.

Fergus Montgomery

Tory MP for Brierley Hill Fergus Montgomery told the Express & Star: "I agree with Enoch Powell. So do many of my constituents who have written to me. Urgent action is called for from the Government.

"In fairness to all to absorb the present immigrant families effectively, we should call a halt to future immigration."

Sir Tatton Brinton, Conservative MP for Kidderminster, said: "Any society has a limit so far as absorbing people is concerned. The limit has been passed in Britain. Immigration should be restricted at a very low level and that should include dependants."

Labour MP for Rowley Regis and Tipton Peter Archer said: "We live in an overcrowded island.

"We shall have to consider seriously some greater restrictions but this should not distinguish on grounds of race or colour."

Others were a bit more reserved.

Julian Snow, MP for Lichfield and Tamworth and parliamentary secretary, said: "I am fully sensitive to the pressures on schools and housing, but I think the public should guard against being panicked into precipitate action."

Martin Luther King

On Saturday, April 20, 1968, 16 days after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Mr Powell delivered his now famous speech.

He tipped off Express & Star editor Clem Jones that he was going to make an address, which he expected to be explosive.

He had asked for advice on how to get the best possibly publicity for his speeches and had chosen a Saturday afternoon.

As he spoke, he warned of an inflow of 'dependants' and said it was like watching a nation 'busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre'. Calling for an immediate reduction in immigration, he said: "We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to be permitting the annual flow of some 50,000 dependents."

He told the annual meeting of the West Midlands area Conservative Political Centre, in Birmingham, that people in Wolverhampton were becoming strangers in their own country, that their wives could not get hospital beds in which to have their babies or that children would not get school places. In his shock speech, he also spoke of a pensioner who was the only white person living in a Wolverhampton street and claimed she was being harassed.

Officials at Wolverhampton Town Hall later said they knew nothing about it.

During his speech, the right-winger warned of race wars, leading to the most famous passage: "As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see 'the River Tiber foaming with much blood'."

The speech prompted huge protests and the then 55-year-old was sacked as Shadow Defence Minister the next day.

In the Express & Star, less than 24 hours after he was removed from the post, he hit out at Tory leader Edward Heath for adopting 'a Timid Ted' approach to controversial issues.

The Express & Star's editorial comment that day reads: "Already many people in the country have suffered declining property values following social changes in a neighbourhood where coloured immigrants have arrived.

"The legislation proposed in the Race Relations Bill is likely as Mr Powell says to increase this trend and with apparent injustice to the people of this country. But in dealing with the general inpracticability of the proposed legislation, Mr Powell was unnecessarily extravagant in his language."

In the days that followed the Express & Star was overwhelmed by the scale of support for Mr Powell, who was backed by the leaders of his own constituency party.

Each evening the paper carried two pages of letters, 95 per cent of which were pro-Enoch, with the editor struggling to find a few balancing letters.

While a group of steel erectors at Rugeley 'B' power station stopped work in protest at his sacking and men at Wolverhampton and Dudley Brewery Ltd also voted in favour of strike action in support of the MP. There was overwhelming support of Mr Powell elsewhere in the country as more than 1,500 dockers chanting 'We want Enoch' marched on Westminster.

The MP told the Express & Star that he was receiving hundreds of letters of day from people with only a handful 'against' him. But his speech was not the only issue making headlines.

The newspaper carried a story on a vote carried out at the North Wolverhampton Working Men's Club where members agreed 'that all coloured people be refused entry'.

The following day, April 24, 1968, trade unionists in London rallied support for Mr Powell.

As London Smithfield meat porters set out for Westminster with a 3,000-signature protest,1,000 dockers began a 24-hour strike. While in Wolverhampton marchers made for the town hall where a petition was posted to opposition leader Edward Heath.

But there were huge protests by people who opposed Mr Powell with some objectors even waving banners saying 'disembowel Powell' and he was accused of trying to stir up racial trouble.

On April 29, 1968, the Express & Star ran its 'our view' editorial expressing the newspaper's stance.

An excerpt reads: "We believe that the speech and all that happened last week should be left to last week. The task ahead is now what counts. It is to make sure that neither Mr Powell nor anyone else can have the justification for making such a speech in the future."