Thursday, November 08, 2007
Was Powell a racist?
Former South Down MP Enoch Powell has been in the news again recently. Tim Roll-Pickering has an interesting piece on what he sees as the difference between what Powell said, and what it is often assumed that he said.
Michael Shilliday @ 01:50 PM
Any writer who quotes Simon Heffer as their main source of analyss has serious intellectual and emotional problems. The nicest thing you could say about the writer of that piece is that he may need to be psycho-analysed. The basic problem is that it fully misses the perspective of Britain’s voluminous immigrant population. What happened to them after Powell made that speech? All of the West-Indian people of that era I know in London and the Midlands - not to mention the North - remembered with dread the day Powell made that speech. Racially motivated attacks shot up. They remembered excrement posted daily through their letterboxes, being drenched in spit in the street, as well as even more abuse hurled in their direction.
Instead he riffs along on the idea that Powell loved Indians (a pretty dubius assertion in itself). What on earth does that have to do with the Rivers of Blood aftermath?
It is also fatuous and a fallacy to suggest the Labour ministers of the day ever used biblical ‘rivers of blood’ style rhetoric in relation to policy. There is not one example of a Labour figure of that time peddling phrases like that. It is one of the many absurdities propounded by Roll-Pickering.
Ted Heath, as Powell’s OWN party leader, of course did realise the implications of Powell’s bile, by removing him from the Shadow Cabinet. Heath wrote later in his autobiography that he received hundreds of letters in support of Powell ‘possessing his same wharped and malign position’. Evidently some elements of the great British public can sometimes be found wanting; along with Powell they represent the pure vermin they regard foreign peoples as.
It was a great day when Eddie McGrady ended the dinosaur’s career in the 1987 Election.
Posted by on Nov 08, 2007 @ 02:19 PMI have read it.
Powell espoused repatriation in the speech, and gave an example of the impact - that it was terrible that an old woman couldn’t pay her bills because she wouldn’t let to Black tenants and all the white ones had moved out.
Of course it was racist. There were things worthy of debate in there, like the rate and impact of immigration, but it was obliterated by the rest of it.
Posted by on Nov 08, 2007 @ 02:22 PMWas Powell a racist?
Yes. Big time. Just surprised that Benn said this speech wasn’t in itself racist. It’s a staggeringly hateful bit of racist incitement.
Perhaps what freaks out a lot of Tories is that they agree so wholeheartedly with every loathsome word.
Posted by on Nov 08, 2007 @ 02:32 PMWhether that particular speech was explicityly racist or not, it certainly encouraged racism. There is racism to be implied in the reference to the woman with the “whites only” only boarding house.
I don’t think his impact in Northern Ireland was particularly strong but he was certainly a poor day’s shopping for the UUP.
Posted by on Nov 08, 2007 @ 02:45 PMWere his words racist? Yes. Obviously.
How else could you characterise a speech where the only contribution of black people to Britain worth expanding on is putting excreta through an old woman’s door and raising grinning “picaninnies” whose only word of english is “racialist”.
Not true then, not true now.
Was he racist? Possibly but more likely he wanted make a bold move not unconnected with his own failure to reach the political heights he thought he deserved and the way there was by the acclaim of the fearful and small-minded sections of society who were unable to deal with necessary and healthy change.
No wonder he ended up an Ulster Unionist in the 1970s.
All political careers end in failure but it takes a complete egotist to end up as a pariah to all fair-minded people for two generations.
Posted by on Nov 08, 2007 @ 02:49 PMJoey wrote: ‘It was a great day when Eddie McGrady ended the dinosaur’s career in the 1987 Election’
Yes indeed. I remember a fantastic photograph from the Polling Centre - Powell with a face like thunder. Strange that when you think of Powell you place him further back in time than the late 1980s - or at least I do.
Posted by on Nov 08, 2007 @ 03:00 PMPowell gets a pass because he was patrician (in style, if not origin) and held the nation and its empire dear as so many after him: Niall Ferguson, Gordon Brown.
Had he been a leftie like EP Thompson or Terry Eagleton he’d be eternally damned as a fellow traveller, islamofascist, crypto-totalitarian etc.But then there’s this lovely and unavoidable quote:
“I am going to allow just one of those hundreds of people to speak for me:
‘… When she goes to the shops, she is followed by children, charming, wide-grinning piccaninnies. They cannot speak English, but one word they know. “Racialist,” they chant.’”
Posted by on Nov 08, 2007 @ 03:10 PMWhat about the greatest racism “Brits Out?”
Perhaps our Greener friends here could sort that one out before attacking Mr Powell and when they are at apologise for the ethnic cleansing of the border Protestant community
Posted by on Nov 08, 2007 @ 03:16 PMSam Hanna
“What about the greatest racism “Brits Out?—
Ah Sam, you committed the cardinal error. You actually began your sentence with the words: “what about....?”
Quite literal whataboutery! Textbook stuff.
Posted by on Nov 08, 2007 @ 03:22 PMSam
If they ever get round to giving prizes for whataboutery I’ll nominate you. That was a cracker.
Posted by on Nov 08, 2007 @ 03:25 PMWhat in sod’s name has this got to do with ‘Brits out’ politics? Some people are so narcissitic they reduce every issue the world over to something pertaining to the Troubles. If there were flamingo-dancing communists in Peru on strike that idiot would link it in some way to ‘Brits Out’.
And to begin with ‘what about’, oh Lord.
Posted by on Nov 08, 2007 @ 03:44 PMSam H
You’re right - the provisionals were about ethnic cleansing in the border areas.
Doesn’t stop Powell being a racist.
Posted by on Nov 08, 2007 @ 03:49 PMWas Powell a racist?
No, Gerry adams is a racist. He demands all Brits out!, and dictates the island is just for the Irish
Posted by on Nov 08, 2007 @ 03:52 PMGerry Adams and SF generally have gone out of their way to welcome the new-Irish, and the largest contingent of new-Irish are the many British who have moved here.
Hard to reconcile that behaviour with accusations of racism.
Posted by on Nov 08, 2007 @ 04:02 PMDear Jesus. If you think that English people are a different race fair play to you. No harm in being wrong. And if you take it one further, (Brits out refers to the soldiers usually) then you think that Soldiers are a race of their own.
Posted by on Nov 08, 2007 @ 04:10 PMUlster’s etc.,
Ah right. Adams is a racist so Powell wasn’t one? Can there only be one racist at a time or did Adams take over from Powell?
To make a serious point, the Brits and the Irish are of the same race as far as I am aware. Furthermore, British and Irish nowadays describes people from more than one racial background.
Posted by on Nov 08, 2007 @ 04:14 PMGerry Adams and SF generally have gone out of their way to welcome the new-Irish, and the largest contingent of new-Irish are the many British who have moved here.
lib2016, now that did tickle my ribs, New Irish lol
Posted by on Nov 08, 2007 @ 04:21 PMDear Jesus. If you think that English people are a different race fair play to you. No harm in being wrong.
nmc, the Irish national anthem describes the English as Saxons, are they racist because they are generalising?
Posted by on Nov 08, 2007 @ 04:26 PMPlease do on and tell us what you find funny about the expression ‘new-Irish’. It has always seemed to me to be an excellent way of describing the newcomers brightening up the place in the last few years but I’m quite prepared to listen to your point of view.
Posted by on Nov 08, 2007 @ 04:32 PMPlease do on and tell us what you find funny about the expression ‘new-Irish’. It has always seemed to me to be an excellent way of describing the newcomers brightening up the place in the last few years but I’m quite prepared to listen to your point of view.
Liberal elitism at its finest. Sounds like something New Labour would have come up with pre 7/7.
Posted by on Nov 08, 2007 @ 04:40 PMPlease do on and tell us what you find funny about the expression ‘new-Irish’. It has always seemed to me to be an excellent way of describing the newcomers brightening up the place in the last few years but I’m quite prepared to listen to your point of view.
lib2016, why can’t you allow these ‘new-Irish’ the privilege to their past identity, just in the same way the Irish migrant of old insisted on becoming Irish-American when they settled in the new world?
If it was good enough for the Irish of old to decide their identity, why can’t you let these new immigrants decide their own identity? are you afraid it will dilute the Irish nationality to an identity?
Posted by on Nov 08, 2007 @ 04:44 PMCould we get back to Powell-bashing? I remember hearing a story once that when the UK decided to proceed with independence for the Indian sub-continent, Powell spent the night walking the streets of London in total despair. I don’t know if it is true and couldn’t be bothered finding out. Anyway, what a twit, I thought when I heard the story and I never thought he was anything but a twit.
Posted by on Nov 08, 2007 @ 04:53 PMThe ironic thing is that the first five paragraphs of the speech itself are spot on - that politicians must be willing to buck the consensus in the cause of right. For instance, paragraphs 2 and 3 would be very apt in describing the Bush administration’s view of climate change.
Powell’s speech bucked the consensus all right, just not in a right cause. He failed because he did not provide leadership to the constituents who contacted him by putting forward an alternative course such as how Commonwealth citizens could reasonably adopt British societal norms without invalidating their heritage - instead he called for shipping overseas any immigrant not staffing the NHS.
Posted by on Nov 08, 2007 @ 04:58 PMAlways liked the mention of Enoch Powell in the famous Christy Moore song!
The name change is just to annoy that previous poster.Posted by on Nov 08, 2007 @ 04:58 PMNo substantial disagreement with the term ‘new-Irish’ then? Or were the Irish, particularly the Famine Irish, not new Americans?
Pith.
It would seem that his followers live right down to his standards.
Posted by on Nov 08, 2007 @ 05:02 PM
