Fans of the classic BritCom “Dad’s Army” will remember the catchphrase of private James Frazier. He was the lugubrious and wild-eyed Scottish undertaker in the platoon of elderly gentlemen called the “Home Guard” — who were charged with defending Britain from a possible German invasion during World War II.
When something went wrong (which it frequently did in every episode for comedic effect), Frazier would exclaim loudly, “We’re doomed — doomed, I tell ya.”
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The late British politician Enoch Powell, who died in 1998, was described by Margaret Thatcher as “the best parliamentarian I ever knew.” He was a “Frazier-like” figure in my childhood and growing-up years. Since all we had were black and white TVs then, I can still see in my mind’s eye Powell in black and white — almost a metaphor for his alleged political positions.
Although not wild-eyed, his gaze was penetrating, and if not lugubrious, he was an extremely serious man. Considered one of the finest speakers in the House of Commons, he had rhetorical skills that he crafted, in good part, during his academic career before entering Parliament.
The youngest professor of Greek in the British Empire at the University of Sydney, he then had a distinguished wartime career before entering the Commons as a Conservative — and later Unionist — MP.
Although appointed to the cabinet, he never reached the high office his talents deserved or that his admirers expected. Many would argue this was principally because of one speech he gave in 1968, not in Parliament. A more generous assessment would be that, as a man of principle and integrity, high office was never a possibility.
Enoch Powell’s fate was to be a prophet and a statesman, and it is for that dual role that his speech should be revisited.
The speech that conventional wisdom says scuppered his political future was delivered to the annual meeting of the West Midlands Conservative Political Centre, in Birmingham, on April 20, 1968.
Immediately called the “Rivers of Blood” speech, although that phrase was actually never used in his delivery, Powell’s word meant to address what he believed would be the grave dangers to the United Kingdom caused by continued immigration, particularly by people from entirely different cultures.
An intellectually honest reading of the speech, nearly 50 years after it was given, would acknowledge three things: some of the language used was perhaps too dramatic or fiery, which negatively affected its desired outcome. Second, his dire warning of bloodshed has, to a great extent, largely not happened, although the ‘new normal’ of radical Islamist terrorism is changing that situation rapidly. Third, his prediction of the total transformation of towns and cities in Britain because of mass immigration has not only come to pass, but has far surpassed anything that he predicted.
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A confirmation of Powell’s warnings, and a factual and immensely troubling account of what mass immigration from alien cultures has done to Western Europe — and the potential for true “rivers of blood” — can be found in Douglas Murray’s “The Strange Death of Europe.” It’s possibly the most important book of the first quarter of this century. (go to page 2 to continue reading)[lz_pagination]
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