THE TELEGRAPH: I wanted to be shocked by the removal of Nigel Hastilow from his parliamentary candidacy for having said that Enoch Powell was right about immigration, but it was impossible.
One Tory MP, Bernard Jenkin, has already been removed from his position in the party simply for warning an Asian candidate that she might encounter racism.
Another, Patrick Mercer, was booted off the front bench for retailing the fact that some NCOs in our Armed Forces have racist attitudes towards black people.
We are inches away from anyone who admits to having read Noddy Goes To Toyland, or to having collected Robertson's jam golliwog badges as a child, being barred from the party. Just as we thought we had grown up on the issue of immigration, the Conservative Party proves the contrary is true. More of that later.
I am, in the first instance, genuinely outraged at the insult the Hastilow affair throws at the memory and reputation of Enoch Powell.
Powell was, quite simply, the most influential politician of the post-war period. He predicted the need for the monetarist policies now followed by Gordon Brown as long ago as 1958. He predicted the British people's irreconcilability to the EU as long ago as 1969. He predicted the destruction of the United Kingdom if devolution was allowed to happen as long ago as 1974.
Oh, and he foresaw correctly that there would be terrible tensions if immigration were allowed to carry on unchecked in that famous speech - called, by a phrase he never uttered, the "Rivers of Blood" speech - in April 1968. It is for reminding the public that what Powell predicted has come to pass that Mr Hastilow is now an ex-candidate.
The insult to Powell consists in this unsustainable idea that the Birmingham speech was "racist".
There is a long tradition in the party of not reading the speech. Heath, who sacked Powell as defence spokesman, certainly had not. Nor had the two close colleagues who urged him on, his chief whip, Willie Whitelaw, and the hysterical Quintin Hogg.
Oddly enough, Powell did not use the word "race" in the speech at all (this often surprises people who are convinced it is an order to the masses to vilify black people for the sole reason that they happen to be black).
He did talk about areas being changed beyond recognition and without any consultation. He did talk about inevitable tensions arising from mass immigration. He did say that immigration would work if the immigrants could be integrated into existing social mechanisms, but warned that the numbers coming were so large that integration would be impossible.
Quoting Virgil, he said that if this situation were not rectified there would be trouble: "As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood." When will Tories admit that Enoch was right? (more) By Simon Heffer
THE TELEGRAPH:
Enoch Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speech: This is the full text of Enoch Powell's so-called 'Rivers of Blood' speech, which was delivered to a Conservative Association meeting in Birmingham on April 20 1968
Mark Alexander
