Rose tinted Rivers of Blood

‘Rivers of Blood’ was a deplorable attempt to inflame hostility to outsiders for political gain. Its author deserves condemnation not exaltation.

I am sorry to comment twice on the same speech in as many days but I am really angry. I have just read Simon Heffer’s latest rant in the Telegraph and it has left me with smoke billowing from my ears. Heffer's attempts to paint Enoch Powell as a visionary hero trying to save Britain from being destroyed by immigrant hordes is by turns laughable, infuriating and outrageous. He angrily instructs us to ‘Read the speech. Make up your own mind.’ Well I have and I am at a loss to see how anyone else, who has could be in any doubt that it is a truly shameful speech.

Heffer starts off with familiar claim that ‘Enoch was right’ not only about immigration but also about ‘the British peoples irreconcilability to the EU’ and ‘the destruction of the United Kingdom if devolution was allowed.’ Well last time I checked the UK was still united and still a member of the EU, so I am not quite clear why Mr Heffer thinks this demonstrates insight on Powell’s part. When it comes to immigration, Powell’s apparent Clairvoyance is not much more convincing. ‘We have 52 dead in attacks by Islamist fanatics in 2005 to prove how integration has failed’ exclaims Heffer. 7/7 was a horrendous event but we must bear in mind that it was carried out by just four people. There appalling actions should not and must not overshadow the fact that millions of people from ethnic minorities live peacefully in Britain, following the law and paying taxes. We are still very far from Powell’s predictions of the death of our nation.

Heffer goes on to claim Powell ‘had merely been highlighting the danger of the racism of others’ and to deny that Powell was a racist. For what it is worth I agree that it is unlikely that Powell was himself a racist for the reasons that Heffer presents. What he did do was deliver a speech that set out quite deliberately to associate him with racist sentiments for political gain. It is striking that at no point does Powell condemn racism and in many places he seems to actually condone it. A man who says that ‘in 15 or 20 years' time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man’ is described by Powell as ‘decent.’ The most powerful section of the speech deals with the persecution of an elderly woman by her black neighbours. It is a very emotive story and Powell lingers on it for a while. Yet when he adds in the little detail that she had refused to have black tenants, he does not pause for a second to suggest that this is anyway wrong. Such tricks inevitably left Powell open to charges of racism and justifiably so. Powell must have known this yet he left them in. The only conceivable reason to do so was that he hoped to be associated with racist sentiments and to derive some kind of political gain from that fact.

Probably the most bizarre claim in the entire article comes in a short paragraph towards the end. Heffer writes that: ‘In a smug observation last week, the equality tsar Trevor Phillips congratulated David Cameron on "de-racialising" the immigration question. But who racialised it in the first place? It wasn't Powell. It was the Left, whose aim of destroying our nation state not least by destroying our culture was furthered by attacks on Powell for telling the unpalatable truth.’ This comment moves Heffer from being simply misguided into the realms of the tin foil wearing nut jobs. The left is not on a mission to obliterate Britain or its culture. While you can quite legitimately oppose left wing ideas and policies, doing so on the basis that your political adversaries are the servants of some sinister plot is to lower yourself to Naomi Kleinesque levels of absurdity.

To compound the error he includes no evidence to support the notion that the left are to blame for the connection between race and immigration and he fails to mention that Powell most certainly did contribute to the blurring of the debates about race and immigration. He devotes as much of the speech to talking about racial discrimination laws as to immigration. Heffer tries to bolster his case by pointing out that Powell never says the word race in the speech, when in fact he does. For example, in the section about the harassed pensioner he says that: “When the new Race Relations Bill is passed...” He also talks about skin colour and ‘Negroes’. So to claim that the speech is not about race is bizarre.

It is entirely possible to talk about immigration with talking about race. If you want to see examples then look no further than David Cameron’s speech on immigration last week. The contrast between this and the hateful, provocative rhetoric of ‘rivers of blood’ could not be clearer. The Conservative leader certainly deserves the praise he has received for tackling the immigration debate in such a responsible way.

Heffer suggests that Cameron has ‘wilfully misunderstood Powell’ when in reality it is Heffer with his desire to exonerate his hero, who his mistaken. As Enoch Powell knew all too all well, words are weapons. And on April 20 1968 he unleashed a verbal arsenal against Britain’s vulnerable immigrant communities and the consequences of that callous decision are still with us today.

Anyway must be off, I’ve got nation states and cultures to be destroying....

Enoch was right

What Enoch Powell got right does as much to undermine the arguments of his imitators as his mistakes.

This summer, like much of the rest of Britain’s political class; I spent an awful lot of time pounding the pavements of Southall. The by-election that followed the tragic death of Piara Khabra could not have happened in a more interesting place. It did not take me long to realise that this corner of West London was far from ordinary. The local McDonalds sells Halal burgers, while the cinema appeared to show only Bollywood films and the pub by the station proudly declares that it was the first pub in Britain to accept Rupees. The most striking thing though was not the shops but the people. They were with a striking degree of uniformity, well, not white. It became a running joke amongst campaigners that you could spot other activists because they were the only Caucasians you would ever see.

A short visit to Southall should be enough to make anyone greet the statement, ‘immigration has changed Britain dramatically,’ with a dismissive exclamation of: WELL DUHHH! That the inflow of millions of people into Britain has had a big impact on this country is really beyond dispute, yet this is one of the comments that has got Conservative parliamentary candidate, Nigel Hastilow into a spot of bother.

I raise this because Mr Hastilow’s sin was to suggest that what Enoch Powell said in his notorious ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech was correct. This provides as good an opportunity as any other to test Powell’s predictions against what actually took place.

So was Powell right? In many important respects he was. But rather than vindicating his argument, that Powell got right a lot of things right serves only to demonstrate how fundamentally wrongheaded the case against immigration is.

An article in the Economist on racial conflict in Britain noted that: ‘In 1985, the MP Enoch Powell issued a prognostication of doom. By the end of the 20th century, he claimed, fully 8% of Britain's population would be black or brown-skinned, and a third of the residents of some cities would be non-white... Few took Powell's forecast seriously. He had been a familiar anti-immigrant bugbear since 1968, when he was exiled from the Conservative front bench for fulminating against “wide-grinning piccaninnies” and seeming to anticipate race war between blacks and whites. Powell's later prediction was almost spot on, though. At the time of the 2001 census, the ethnic minority population of Britain was, indeed, 8.1%. White Britons made up less than two-thirds of the populations of Leicester and Birmingham (and accounted for barely half of all children in those cities).’

What has not materialised are the rivers foaming with blood, the nations on funeral pyres and the other images of doom that Powell conjured up to support his case. Ever the sceptical conservative, he underestimated the basic decency of the British people. Rather than engaging in racial warfare, we have come not only to tolerate but to value these new Britains. While racial violence does exist, it is without a doubt the exception rather than the rule.

To boil this all down to a sentence, Powell was right that vast numbers of people would come to this small island but he wrong that this would lead to disaster. In other words, high levels of immigration have not and will not end in catastrophe.

This should put into perspective recent projected population figures that Powell's present day heirs have predicatably tried to use to portray us as on the road to ruin. Yes, we may see lots of inward migration but if immigration benefits Britain this is something to celebrate rather than fear.

Doomsayers, like Enoch Powell, will always be with us but when it comes to the questions that really matter, they are seldom right.

The vulcan attack on fairness

In an earlier post on inheritance tax, I suggested that we would need to decide: 'do we want a meritocracy or an aristocracy?' I am pleased to see that the Conservative party has made up its mind.

The changes in the tax system proposed by John Redwood's economic competitiveness task force do very little for those on low or average incomes. Instead they are focused on helping the small wealthy minority that pays a considerable amount of inheritance tax or stamp duty on shares. This not only fails to promote social justice but fails to achieve the committees stated aim of increasing 'economic competitiveness.'

One of the big drags on our economy at the moment is the incredibly high rates of marginal taxation that many low income family face due to a vicious combination of paying income tax and seeing the amount of tax credits they can claim drop of as they earn more. This prevents people from moving into higher paying jobs in which they would contribute more to the economy. This would problem seem to suggest that the best way to make our economy more competitive would be to reduce the amount of income tax paid by those on low incomes. Well at least someone has thought of that.

Why the Tories lose again and again

There's a fascinating article in today's Guardian about the role of emotion in politics. It looks at how the Democratic presidential candidates have failed to understand that voters react much more strongly to stories that politicians tell than to the arguments they make. Clinical logic is not enough, a successful vote winner requires something else. As the author puts it: 'the data is crystal clear: people vote for the candidate who elicits the right feelings, not the candidate who presents the best arguments.' You can watch the author discuss his ideas here.

In Britain it is not on the left but on the right that we find the people, who do not understand the emotional side of politics. The Labour party has successfully created a narrative, first around the idea that it was time for a change and then around providing successful, stable leadership. By contrast, the Conservatives have made a similar mistake to the Democrats. They looked at opinion polls, saw that the public appeared to share their hostility to immigration and the EU, went out and argued for their positions on those issues and were trounced. What they had failed to appreciate was that by carping on about those two issues without presenting any kind of positive vision, that voters would construct their own story about the Conservative party. Instead of being the heroes, the voters made them into negative thinking villains obsessed with foreigners. This was not the kind of party that anyone wants to vote for.

David Cameron understood the need to change the story and when it comes to convincing the public that he is a nice guy, he has succeeded. Opinion polls show that the public believe that Cameron is an affable, non threatening individual. The visits to the arctic and the hoody hugging have served their purpose. However, his attempt to construct a broader narrative about it being a time for a change and him being the man to deliver it has failed. This failure is at the heart of his recent trouble and it has come about for two very good reasons. Firstly, few people believe that he is really that different from the Government he is seeking to replace. It is not for nothing that his political opponents have seized on the similarity between him and Blair. A more significant problem stems from his reluctance to articulate policies, which means that he is unable to tell people what changes he wants. Unless he can produce a more convincing vision for Britain then like his unfortunate predecessors he will carry on losing.

As for the narrative that will propel British politics other perpetual losers back into power, uhh, can I get back to you on that one...

On ya Boat!

When I am asked, as all 'economic liberals' are occasionally: 'why don't you p*ss off and join the Tories?' My answer usually is 'immigration.' It makes a mockery of their claim to be the supporters of ambition, enterprise and the market.

To see just how badly a belief in the need for immigration controls fits with the values they are supposed to uphold consider the phrase that has come to sum up one of the Conservative parties most controversial politcians: 'On ya Bike.'

In the aftermath of the Brixton riots Norman Tebbit made a speech Legend has it that in this speech he told the unemployed to get on their bikes. This is actually a misrepresentation of what he said. He was not telling the unemployed to get lost but to look for work. The full quote is:

"I grew up in the 1930s with an unemployed father. He did not riot. He got on his bike and looked for work, and he went on looking until he found it."

The issue this raises for me, is why then does Tebbitt condemn those migrants who get on a boat or plane and come looking for work here in the UK. Surely these are exactly the kind of hard working, entrepreneurial people that Conservatives would want in this country.

I imagine that Lord Tebbitts response to this argument would probably be to claim that immigrants do not come here to work but to claim benefits. But this is simply not the case. Immigrants are generally speaking of working age and are excluded from claiming many benefits, so far from being a drain on British taxpayers they are infact net contributers to the treasury's coffers.

This is not the only way we gain from immigration. The newcomers are likely to bring with them new skills and new ideas that will enrich the nation they are arriving in. This is not just an economic phenomenon: there is a strong link between cultural diversity and cultural dynamism. If it were not for immigrants cities like London and New York would be far less interesting places.

Immigration controls reduce opportunities for migrants and their potential destinations are poorer for their absense. We should lament their existense not demand their stengthening. They are one of the great injustices of our time and they need to go.