Think Powell was right? Read what he said
No one would ever have objected if Enoch Powell simply said mass immigration puts pressure on housing, schools and hospitals, writes Dudley North Labour MP Ian Austin.
Or that large numbers of migrants change an area's make up.
It is not racist to be worried about immigration and its impact on public services. I've just sent a survey on these issues to 30,000 people in Dudley and I raise constituents' concerns about them regularly.
He called black children "wide-eyed piccaninnies" and accused them of harassing an elderly constituent when she went to the shops.
He didn't talk about community tensions. He predicted race wars. "Wars, terrible wars, and the Tiber foaming with much blood."
He quoted "a decent, ordinary fellow-Englishman" saying "in 15 or 20 years' time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man." He complained his constituents were strangers in their own country, their wives could not get hospital beds to give birth in and their children school places. He wanted immigrants to leave the country.
He claimed he'd had a letter from someone saying an elderly lady had become the street's only white resident and was being harassed by black neighbours. He said windows were broken and she'd had 'excreta pushed through her letterbox'.
He'd not spoken to her. He'd not even checked she actually existed. A man of huge integrity, Clem Jones, editor of the Express & Star searched all records and sent journalists out to establish the truth, but found no evidence to support Powell's inflammatory claims.
Just a few weeks before, Powell made a speech in Walsall claiming a constituent complained his daughter was the only white child in her class. Jones checked and it wasn't true. He'd received similar anonymous complaints which had been traced back to members of the National Front. Powell wouldn't listen, boasting instead about the letters he'd received in support.
Whatever Powell claimed later, he was appealing to the worst prejudices and he knew exactly what he was doing. He told Jones he would be making another speech the following Saturday: "This speech is going to go up like a rocket, and when it gets to the top, the stars are going to stay up."
Ten days later, the Times reported on a black family in Wolverhampton attacked by a gang chanting 'Powell' and 'go back to your own country'. The grandfather was slashed in the face.
He'd been here 13 years and said: "Nothing like this has happened before. I am shattered."
This is what his apologists need to understand: excusing or minimising what Powell said gives the green light to abuse and racism.
Despite the prejudice his speech encouraged, black people being attacked because of his speech, and all the challenges Britain has faced since, the race wars he predicted have not happened.
The Black Country is a place in which people from different countries, backgrounds and cultures work and live together harmoniously. In Britain today what matters is not where you or your parents were born, the colour of your skin, but the contribution you make, the way you behave and what you believe.
So if people describe Powell as a visionary or hero or tell you 'Enoch was right', tell them to read what he said and tell them the truth: he was completely and utterly wrong.
