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Rivers of Blood speech
The "Rivers of Blood" speech was made by the British politician Enoch Powell on 20 April 1968 to a meeting of the Conservative Political Centre in Birmingham. In it Powell, who was then Shadow Secretary of State for Defence in the Shadow Cabinet of Edward Heath, strongly criticised the rates of immigration from the Commonwealth of Nations (mostly former colonies of the British Empire) to the United Kingdom since the Second World War. He also opposed the Race Relations Bill, an anti-discrimination bill which upon receiving royal assent as the Race Relations Act 1968 criminalised the refusal of housing, employment, or public services to persons on the grounds of colour, race, or ethnic or national origin. Powell himself called it "the Birmingham speech"; "Rivers of Blood" alludes to a prophecy from Virgil's Aeneid that Powell (a classical scholar) quoted:
As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see 'the River Tiber foaming with much blood'.
The speech was a national controversy, and it made Powell one of the most talked-about and divisive politicians in Britain. Heath, the leader of the Conservative Party at the time, dismissed him from the Shadow Cabinet the day after the speech. According to most accounts the popularity of Powell's views on immigration might have been a decisive factor in the Conservative Party's unexpected victory at the 1970 general election, although he became one of the most persistent opponents of the subsequent Heath ministry.
Powell, the member of Parliament (MP) for Wolverhampton South West and Shadow Secretary of State for Defence for the Conservative Party, was addressing the general meeting of the West Midlands Area Conservative Political Centre. The Labour government's 1968 Race Relations Bill was to have its second reading three days later, and the Conservative Opposition had tabled an amendment significantly weakening its provisions. The bill was a successor to the Race Relations Act 1965.
The Birmingham-based television company ATV saw an advance copy of the speech on the Saturday morning, and its news editor ordered a television crew to go to the venue, where they filmed sections of the speech. Earlier in the week, Powell had said to his friend Clem Jones, a journalist and then editor at the Wolverhampton Express & Star, "I'm going to make a speech at the weekend and it's going to go up 'fizz' like a rocket; but whereas all rockets fall to the earth, this one is going to stay up."
In preparing his speech, Powell had applied Jones's advice that to make hard-hitting political speeches and short-circuit interference from his party organisation, his best timing was on Saturday afternoons, after delivering embargoed copies the previous Thursday or Friday to selected editors and political journalists of Sunday newspapers. This tactic could ensure coverage of the speech over three days through Saturday evening bulletins, then Sunday newspapers, thus the coverage would be picked up in Monday newspapers.
Powell's critics suspected he fabricated some of his stories. In later years, the veracity of elements of the speech – namely, within the story about the widow – have been questioned, with the Express & Star claiming evidence suggests "the most controversial speech in post-war British politics was a web of lies, involving a vulnerable, mentally-ill woman, Druscilla "Trudy" Cotterill".[citation needed]
In the speech Powell recounted a conversation with one of his constituents, a middle-aged working man, a few weeks earlier. Powell said that the man told him: "If I had the money to go, I wouldn't stay in this country... I have three children, all of them been through grammar school and two of them married now, with family. I shan't be satisfied till I have seen them all settled overseas." The man finished by saying to Powell: "In this country in 15 or 20 years' time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man".
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Rivers of Blood speech
The "Rivers of Blood" speech was made by the British politician Enoch Powell on 20 April 1968 to a meeting of the Conservative Political Centre in Birmingham. In it Powell, who was then Shadow Secretary of State for Defence in the Shadow Cabinet of Edward Heath, strongly criticised the rates of immigration from the Commonwealth of Nations (mostly former colonies of the British Empire) to the United Kingdom since the Second World War. He also opposed the Race Relations Bill, an anti-discrimination bill which upon receiving royal assent as the Race Relations Act 1968 criminalised the refusal of housing, employment, or public services to persons on the grounds of colour, race, or ethnic or national origin. Powell himself called it "the Birmingham speech"; "Rivers of Blood" alludes to a prophecy from Virgil's Aeneid that Powell (a classical scholar) quoted:
As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see 'the River Tiber foaming with much blood'.
The speech was a national controversy, and it made Powell one of the most talked-about and divisive politicians in Britain. Heath, the leader of the Conservative Party at the time, dismissed him from the Shadow Cabinet the day after the speech. According to most accounts the popularity of Powell's views on immigration might have been a decisive factor in the Conservative Party's unexpected victory at the 1970 general election, although he became one of the most persistent opponents of the subsequent Heath ministry.
Powell, the member of Parliament (MP) for Wolverhampton South West and Shadow Secretary of State for Defence for the Conservative Party, was addressing the general meeting of the West Midlands Area Conservative Political Centre. The Labour government's 1968 Race Relations Bill was to have its second reading three days later, and the Conservative Opposition had tabled an amendment significantly weakening its provisions. The bill was a successor to the Race Relations Act 1965.
The Birmingham-based television company ATV saw an advance copy of the speech on the Saturday morning, and its news editor ordered a television crew to go to the venue, where they filmed sections of the speech. Earlier in the week, Powell had said to his friend Clem Jones, a journalist and then editor at the Wolverhampton Express & Star, "I'm going to make a speech at the weekend and it's going to go up 'fizz' like a rocket; but whereas all rockets fall to the earth, this one is going to stay up."
In preparing his speech, Powell had applied Jones's advice that to make hard-hitting political speeches and short-circuit interference from his party organisation, his best timing was on Saturday afternoons, after delivering embargoed copies the previous Thursday or Friday to selected editors and political journalists of Sunday newspapers. This tactic could ensure coverage of the speech over three days through Saturday evening bulletins, then Sunday newspapers, thus the coverage would be picked up in Monday newspapers.
Powell's critics suspected he fabricated some of his stories. In later years, the veracity of elements of the speech – namely, within the story about the widow – have been questioned, with the Express & Star claiming evidence suggests "the most controversial speech in post-war British politics was a web of lies, involving a vulnerable, mentally-ill woman, Druscilla "Trudy" Cotterill".[citation needed]
In the speech Powell recounted a conversation with one of his constituents, a middle-aged working man, a few weeks earlier. Powell said that the man told him: "If I had the money to go, I wouldn't stay in this country... I have three children, all of them been through grammar school and two of them married now, with family. I shan't be satisfied till I have seen them all settled overseas." The man finished by saying to Powell: "In this country in 15 or 20 years' time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man".