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The River In Londonistan
Enoch Powell (1912-1998) was probably the most controversial British politican of the past fifty years. In 1968, he made a speech which sealed his reputation as a prophet of the anti-immigrant extreme right - and a bogeyman for all shades of respectable opinion, from embarrassed centrists on his own Tory party to the broad left.
In his speech, later known as the "Rivers of Blood Speech" because of one of its central images, Powell warned of the dire results of anti-discrimination legislation designed to protect immigrants. He warned that the Race Relations Bill would allow immigrant communities to organise, to "agitate and campaign against their fellow citizens", "to overawe and dominate the rest with the legal weapons which the ignorant and the ill-informed have provided."
Looking forward, he echoed Virgil, imagining that the river would "foam with much blood."
He was promptly sacked from the shadow cabinet and spent much of the remainder of his life on the political fringes, despite topping polls as one of Britain's most admired politcal figures during the early 70s. Right wingers striving to appear respectable distanced themselves from Powell: Maverick Tories, like columnist Simon Heffer, polished their anti-establishment credentials by attempting to rehabilitate him.
Off the scene he might have been, but Powell remained a persistent folk devil in British cultural life. In certain pubs (and some homes), the grumble "Enoch was right" would be muttered every time a non-white was accused of crimes from shoplifting to murder. This tendency was immortalised in the character of Alf Garnett, an absurd London racist from the TV comedy "TIll Death Do Us Part" - though the show's writer later claimed he was unnerved by the number of viewers who appeared to sympathise with his unpleasant creation.
Powell's speech, which was intended to illustrate the dangers of multiculturalism, came to represent a warning against immigration of any sort. He himself claimed his prophecy was complete following a series of race riots in Brixton and Toxteth in the 1980s.
On his death, it appeared that he had been proved comprehensively wrong. Millions of immigrants and their families live happily in Britain. The riots in London and Liverpool, which Powell claimed demonstrated his prophetic powers, injured many but claimed few lives. Britain's capital had become widely admired as one of the world's great multicultural cities. Perhaps most importantly, the expected "silent majority backlash", when Powell's white admirers would flock to extremist demagogues because their opinions were ignored by the political mainstream, happily failed to emerge: British far right parties failed to score anything like the results French anti-immigrants gained across the channel.
So strongly was it believed that Powell's dark vision had come to nothing that the Guardian felt it could grant him an unusually even-handed obituary, concentrating on his academic achievements and his political life beyond his infamous speech.
However, Powell's notoriety persists even today. His Rivers of Blood "prophecy" was unearthed following last year's Tube bombings: All but one bomber, and all of the failed "second wave" attacks, came from British Muslim families. Last month's apparent plot to bomb ten airliners might have caused thousands of deaths over London - and once again, all the alleged attackers were British. Ten packed aeroplanes blown out of the sky over London - it is difficult to imagine a more apocalyptic vision. A group of leading Muslims, including three MPs, responded with an open letter to the government which critics claimed "(gave) some comfort to the kind of people who say: 'Well, change your foreign policy or we'll blow you up'".
Melanie Phillips, in her new book Londonistan, paints a picture of elite appeasement and separatist fanaticism that Powell would recognise. The cry of "Islamophobia" that accompanies criticism of religious violence - and the willingness of some in government and the media to indulge this - seems to qualify as a "legal weapon" to block debate.
The far left/Islamist RESPECT coalition's election victory in a London constituency last year was described as a victory for communalism in the left-wing blog Harry's Place. "Communalism" was Powell's preferred term for multiculturalism. Where far-right racists like the BNP failed, Islamist demagogues striving to organise votes along ethnic lines succeeded.
Even senior BBC hacks are on the case, arguing that separate cultures leads to a form of apartheid where fanaticism breeds.
Add to this the staggering results of some opinion polls conducted among the Muslim community - where nearly a quarter claim the 7/7 atrocities were "justified" and close to half profess to believe 9/11 was a plot between the US and Israel, and the picture begins to emerge of a society within a minority, cut off from Britain's cultural mainstream, and willing to support the most horrific attacks on their fellow citizens.
In an article in the Times, Magnus Linklater commented on a Radio Four discussion which asked the quesion "Was Powell Right?"
Britain is once again in the grip of one of its regular immigration panics. Despite the overwhelmingly negative reponse on some public sites to further immigration from Eastern Europe, Linklater gives all the right reasons why Brits have nothing to fear from Powell's prophecies - at least not concerning those immigrants from Eastern Europe. He argues that much of the hysteria is to blame on "red top" newspapers stoking up ancient fears of outsiders, and points out that immigration "has helped to transform our economy, enrich our cultural life, support our public services and improve our image abroad."
It is difficult to take issue with any of this.
However, he skims over the issue of Islamism, noting (correctly) that most Islamists in Britain are home grown and (more contentiously) that their beliefs owe more to external issues than British diversity. Concerns about the number of Poles mending pipes in Britain can and should be tackled with patient explanation of the benefits of free movement of trade. The fear that some in our country hope to kill as many of us as possible, and have come close to achieving their goals on several occasions, is of a different order and is a separate issue.
Because of this, Linklater's views on Islamists are unconvincing: There may or may not be an ongoing war which threatens our civilisation, but if even half the real and alleged plots by Islamists to kill Britons over the past five years had succeeded, the country might be a very different place.
Powell was wrong. Immigration has been successful. British race relations, while often strained, are largely peaceful. Terrorists are no closer to their vision of Britain under Islamic law. However, it would be foolish to ignore the fact that a small minority does aim to force its will upon society at large, and is willing to use the most horrific violence to do so.
Powell was wrong: But that doesn't mean that there aren't hundreds of maniacs out there, trying to prove him right.
