Enoch Powell: Scholar, Politician, and the Legacy of the “Rivers of Blood” Speech
John Enoch Powell was born on 16 June 1912 in Stechford, within the city of Birmingham. He was baptised at St Nicholas’s Church in Newport, Shropshire. Powell graduated from Cambridge and stayed on at Trinity College. He was eager to start the war with Germany after Adolf Hitler had come to power in 1933. He told his father in 1934, “I want to be in the army.” In 1937, Powell was appointed Professor of Greek Manuscripts at the University of Sydney at the age of 25.
In October 1939, Powell enlisted in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. As a private during the Phoney War, Powell was posted to Cairo in the Kingdom of Egypt. He was promoted to Major, then to Lieutenant Colonel, and played a role in the Second Battle of El Alamein. Powell was appointed a Member of the British Empire (MBE) for his military service.
Powell voted for the Labour Party in the 1945 landslide victory; he wanted to punish the Conservative Party for the Munich Agreement. He later joined the Conservatives and worked for the Conservative Research Department (CRD) under Rob Butler.
Powell gave his speech in Birmingham, warning what he believed would happen if unchecked mass immigration from the Commonwealth to Britain continued. Powell said:
“As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood. That tragic and intractable phenomenon, which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic, but which is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect. Indeed, it has all but come. In numerical terms, it will be of American proportions long before the end of the 20th century. Only resolute and urgent action will avert it even now. Whether there will be the public will to demand and obtain it, I do not know. All I know is that to see and not to speak would be a great betrayal.”
On the British Empire, he argued:
“It is of the essence of Toryism to view the British nation as something natural and organic; from such a Britain, the Tory cannot look upon a world merely divided into two—democratic or Communist, free or not free, Western or Eastern. He sees instead a wide scene peopled with various individual nations, each obeying the laws of their being. Nations, to him, like national sovereignties, so far from being artificial barriers, are the inevitable framework within which mankind lives and associates.”
What Powell said about the alignment between the Soviets, the Warsaw Pact, and North America:
“We may start from the assumption that the antithesis between the USA and USSR is fundamental—as polar neighbours, as technological competitors on the highest plane, and as mutually incomprehending ideologies. If Western Europe and China are both to be placed in the American pan of the balance, it must follow that between America and Europe in the Western hemisphere will be called into existence by sheer necessity.
The result of following this reasoning through is to produce a picture which is historically familiar in the West and more novel in the East. Historically, the existence of Russia has been the ultimate guarantee of the survival of Britain as an independent nation—in 1812, in 1914, in 1942. Russia has always been, for Britain, the greatest power beyond her continental enemy, the only nation possessing the inexhaustible resources of manpower and reserves of space which render her superior to any land army in its ability to survive.
The fundamental fact of geopolitics has nothing to do with political or any other kind of affinity. In the last decades of the twentieth century, necessity restored an understanding between Britain and Russia. The entente will not be cordiale, but entente it will still be. But what of the Eastern aspect? The rise of China adumbrates for Japan a relationship with Asiatic Russia not radically different from that of Britain with European Russia.”
Powell on the New World Order: Powell saw changes coming in the balance of power. He believed the United States would no longer be the protector of Western and Southern Europe and spoke about the decline of the American Empire by 1989. Powell’s stance toward Russia was becoming more favourable; he argued that Britain’s oceanic position, together with Russia’s Asiatic position, meant they would be supportive in the construction of Europe and the Middle East.
Powell said:
“As a fighting party in opposition, we must concentrate on areas of politics which are live, which are automatically news, and where the antithesis between ourselves and our opponents is at its maximum. If we do that, we shall find that a very simple and plain theme runs through it all. The secret of political success is to present a single, simple, coherent theme that everyone can interpret in their own terms. That was the secret of the rise of Socialism—state control was given as the answer to everything. We can present the same simplicity and consistency.”
Powell argued that immigration was making it difficult to be productive:
“It is a mistake to think that because immigrants are willing to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, they are increasing productivity by setting other workers free to do more productive tasks. The actual effect is probably that some mechanisation, reorganisation, and capital investment which would otherwise take place does not happen, and consequently our productivity all round is lower than it would have been. Britain is not an underdeveloped colonial country with untapped natural resources waiting to be exploited by immigration, nor is it an economy like that of Switzerland with a superabundance of capital and cheap power that can be turned to advantage with a selected and imported workforce.”
Powell said:
“A week or two ago, I fell into conversation with a constituent, a middle-aged, quite ordinary working man employed in one of our nationalised industries. After a sentence or two about the weather, he suddenly said, ‘If I had the money to go, I wouldn’t stay in this country.’ I made some deprecatory reply to the effect that even this government wouldn’t last forever, but he took no notice and continued: ‘I have three children, all of whom have been through grammar school, and two of them are married now with families. I shan’t be satisfied till I have seen them all settled overseas. In this country, in fifteen or twenty years’ time, the black man will have the whip hand over the white man.’”
Enoch Powell was presenting neo-liberal ideas in British politics and worked closely with the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA). His approach to international relations viewed Britain as a maritime power with interests in the European continent. He believed that every country pursues its own interests.
Powell’s analysis was a reason not to get involved in Rhodesia in the 1960s or Yugoslavia in the 1990s, due to his doubts about the United Nations. Powell was a historian and a policy analyst. He argued that the immigrant population would reach 5.7 million, which is one-tenth of the whole population, by 2001.
In England, the non-white and mixed-race group consists of 9.1 per cent of the population of Great Britain, compared to 8.1 per cent (4.63 million of 57.1 million). Powell’s forecast of racial violence did not occur. I do not think Powell was a racist; he wanted a clear definition of UK citizenship.
Powell said:
“I was waiting for a book to be written. He [Wiener] proves beyond peradventure that, at any rate since the middle of the nineteenth century, the British have not really put economic achievement at the head, or anywhere near the head, of their national or social values. Throughout the political spectrum, the British have been dubious or downright condemnatory of the consequences of the industrial revolution and the capitalist market system. Their ideal Britain has not been the workshop of the world; their values have been aristocratic, professional, and above all, rural.”
Powell supported the idea of a nation that is English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish. He was dedicated to the cause of neo-liberalism.
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivers_of_Blood_speech
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Enoch-Powell
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/14/enoch-powell-rivers-blood-legacy-wolverhampton
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Enoch-Powell
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enoch_Powell
This article is based on a longer Opinomail analysis of Enoch Powell, his political career, and the lasting debate surrounding the "Rivers of Blood" speech.
Read the full article on https://matthewjlittle.substack.com/p/enoch-powell-scholar-politician-and
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