Saint Enoch

It seems to have become fashionable of late to canonise Enoch Powell drawing on the infamous “Rivers of Blood” speech. The BBC put out a “white season” to be trumped by Channel 4 who use Rageh Omaar to front their series. Not quite sure what message was intended when the programme was advertised with a park full of dogs peeing and defecating all over the place. Maybe it referred to Powell’s reference to the white pensioner who had shit posted through her letter box allegedly. Whatever the immigrants were to blame.
The programmes were high on sensationalism but short, very short, on analysis. Plenty of people sounding off on prejudice, which certainly accords with Powell. Rageh Omar’s incredulity was stretched when he found that not only whites, but black people had prejudices too. Nothing said about the manipulation of labour by those wanting the cheapest possible source and the consequent exploitation. Nothing said about government policy supporting this.
Recently it has been announced that settlers from the Asian Sub-continent may have rights curtailed or removed. The length of stay for visitors would be reduced from 6 to 3 months while £1,000 would be payable for each visitor. Lord Goldsmith has further recommended to Gordon Brown that these without British passports should lose the right to vote. No spouses under 21. Enter a new workforce from Eastern European countries with full voting rights and no such restriction.
So don’t blame the victim. If the Tiber is going to foam with much blood it’s idiot politicians who are causing the problem. Migrant labour is coming because people are doing jobs that no one else wants to and at very low rates of pay. In rural areas crops don’t get picked anymore. Birmingham people used to take their holidays down in the Worcestershire countryside and help with the harvest. Farmers have had competing supplies of labour and have gone for those they are able to control and exploit the most.


We are able to hear again the well-aired views of place-people like the director of the former CRE, Trevor Phillips. He has been condemning “multiculturalism” as a failure for far too long. Since he has the ear and tacit approvement of New Labour then that must be OK. Dangerous.
Enoch Powell’s logical mind saw no deviation from tradition. Parliament was to him essentially a “white male preserve”. When questioned about there being a woman as Prime Minister his response was “interesting”. (President Reagan saw Thatcher as “the best man in the government”!)
If anyone thinks that “the black man has the whip hand” then look no further than Dawn Butler’s view on “parliament’s dirty little secret.” Not here he ain’t. Enoch can sleep soundly.
The danger of these “reality” sensation making programmes is that they spread common prejudices widely driving the wedges home between communities. The need to divide working people has long been a capitalist ploy and elitist New Labour has joined all the others against those the Labour Party supposedly came into being to support.

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