Enoch Powell was right
News article filed by BNP news team
The late Conservative MP Enoch Powell was sacked from his position in the opposition front bench in 1968 after his famous “rivers of blood” speech criticising mass immigration.
39 years on and the Conservative leadership remains apoplectic towards any Conservative official who talks about immigration in a forthright manner, echoing the concerns of millions of voters. It shows the true spineless nature of the Conservative leadership on this issue.
Nigel Hastilow is a prospective parliamentary candidate for Halesowen and Rowley Regis in the West Midlands and now faces a grilling from Party Chairman Caroline Spelman later today (4th) after Party bosses were angered by his comments which appeared in a local newspaper.
The candidate wrote: “When you ask most people in the Black Country what the single biggest problem facing the country is, most say immigration. “Many insist: ‘Enoch Powell was right’. Enoch, once MP for Wolverhampton South-West, was sacked from the Conservative front bench and marginalised politically for his 1968 ‘rivers of blood’ speech, warning that uncontrolled immigration would change our country irrevocably.
“He was right. It has changed dramatically.”
Mr Hastilow also wrote: “They have more or less given up complaining about the way we roll out the red carpet for foreigners while leaving the locals to fend for themselves.”
Out of touch
Anyone outside the ivory towers of Parliament will know that this is the widespread and firmly held sentiment yet it seems that Conservative leaders simply cannot understand that millions of British voters are angered, frustrated and worried about the levels of immigration and the impact that immigration ha son jobs, schools, crime, housing and the quality of life.
David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, told ITV1’s Sunday Edition Mr. Hastilow’s comments were “very unwise”.
A Conservative spokesman said Mr. Hastilow, a former editor of the Birmingham Post, would be told in “clear terms” that politicians had to be careful not to use inflammatory language in the debate on immigration.
Mr. Hastilow’s is just the latest in a long line of his colleagues who have faced the inquisition; Norman Tebbit was chastened by William Hague 30 years his junior over the “cricket test” speech, John Townend, Patrick Mercer, Ann Winterton have all been rebuked for comments about immigration.
Double standards
Conservative leaders are not always so coy on the subject, especially when it means winning votes. If the same rules applied to the Conservative leaders as they do to minions then Margaret Thatcher would have in theory to explain herself to the Chairman after her “swamping” speech in 1979. Fearing a haemorrhage of support to the National Front which was growing rapidly due to its robust stance on immigration she told an election campaign meeting, on the subject of immigration:
“It means that people are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture…”
Thatcher went on to win the election on May 4th.
Enoch Powell’s speech was given to fellow Conservatives on 20th April 1968 at the Midland Hotel in Birmingham. His concern about 50,000 migrants should be seen in context of today’s estimated annual inflow of 480,000.
“Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependants, who are for the most part the material of the future growth of the immigrant descended population. It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre. So insane are we that we actually permit unmarried persons to immigrate for the purpose of founding a family with spouses and fiancées whom they have never seen”.