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Enoch Powell: The Speech They Can't Forget
April 19, 2008
Eds: Pinch yourself. The Daily Telegraph, Britain’s largest circulation daily, just ran the following article by Simon Heffer, in praise of the late Enoch Powell's famous "rivers of blood" speech. Is the tide starting to turn on immigration? (Notice the many comments at the end.)
Simon Heffer
Daily Telegraph (London)
April 19, 2008
... [Enoch] Powell reported in his speech what he found to be the alarmingly strong views some of his constituents in Wolverhampton had about mass immigration, the way it was affecting their lives and the strain it was putting on local public services. He said he knew there would be "a chorus of execration" that he could say such things. But he asked a more important question as an MP whose electors bring him a deeply unsettling problem: by what right, instead, would he have remained silent? ...
Many of our immigrants have assimilated over the past 40 years. Equally, many have chosen not to. Four of them murdered 52 innocent people on London's public transport network nearly three years ago. Others, according to the police and the security services, are busily engaged in trying to repeat the incident. So far they have been thwarted: but for how long?
This is all the legacy of those who refused to take Powell seriously; of militant Leftists who mischievously cry "racism" to avoid any sensible debate on immigration; of well-heeled politicians who saw no harm in driving millions of poor immigrants into ghettos, with a perfect disregard for their welfare and for that of the people already living in those places; and of ministers in this very Government who for years saw no reason to enforce immigration controls at all, in the interests of deliberately destroying our national identity.
Powell was the greatest Conservative thinker in political life in living memory. He foresaw what were then unimaginable tensions caused by forcibly altering the character of a country. We should remember him tomorrow with enhanced respect. For he was right. [
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