Anti-migrant speech riles many, 50 yrs on
LONDON: It is considered the “most incendiary racist speech of modern Britain” in the context of immigration from India and the Commonwealth in the 1950s and 1960s, but 50 years after it was delivered, the enigmatic Enoch Powell’s words continue to divide and rile many.
April 20 marks five decades since Powell warned of the effects of mass immigration in the speech to the Conservative Political Centre in Birmingham in 1968, which saw him dismissed from the Conservative Party and his career blighted.
But BBC’s decision to critique the speech on Saturday and advertise it as the first time it would be broadcast in full on British radio has reopened divisions in the United Kingdom that many believe prove Powell was right, while others insist he has been proved wrong.
Facing a welter of protest against presenting the speech in full, albeit voiced by an actor, BBC insisted the programme on Radio 4 – given the context, some say appropriately presented by Indian-origin presenter Amol Rajan – will go ahead. BBC also asked critics to hear it before forming judgements.
Shirin Hirsch, an academic at the University of Wolverhampton who contributed to the programme, expressed her dismay, tweeting she “made a mistake” in being interviewed for it, and was “sick with worry since seeing the way this is being presented”.
Andrew Adonis, Labour Party member of the House of Lords, wrote to regulator Ofcom and asked it to instruct BBC to cancel the programme: “As a special tribute to the 50th anniversary of ‘rivers of blood’, the BBC is broadcasting the full text of the most incendiary racist speech of modern Britain that was not even broadcast at the time.”