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The statement by Enoch Powell last May had all the inevitability, if none of the elegance, of the climax to a Greek tragedy. It was inevitable that a man who had already made frequent use of the rather tawdry rhetoric of largely fictitious statistics about the ‘flood’ of immigrants and who fancies himself as a poet should begin to talk about rivers of blood. Just as bad a parody of Greek tragedy was represented by the chorus from the respectable press. From pompous phrases about ‘dangerous nonsense’ in the Economist to the somewhat more tart strictures of The Times leader, the respectable press offered no insight into the significance of Mr Powell’s speech, but merely demonstrated its own moral rectitude and an incredible belief in the power of pure liberal reason. Many commentators appeared to believe that the fact that some of the dockers had mis-spelled their slogans proved their impotence. But many of the saints and many of the S.S. were near-illiterate. If intellectuals wish to contribute to the fight against racialism they must do so not by proving that racist myths are myths (that is old hat) but by analysing the nature of English racialism to see more clearly how it can be fought. In particular we must decide whether racialism in England is an aberration of individuals and groups or whether it is something essential to our society, whether England is or is not ‘racialist’.
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- Copyright © 1968 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 On 18th October, 1967 Mr Powell spoke of 50,000 immigrants a year, making 500,000 in a decade, a nonsensical figure since most of the 50,000 are the dependants of those who came in to escape the ‘62 Act and the number will obviously drop. On 9th February, Mr Powell claimed that official statistics showed that there would be 2,000,000 immigrants by the end of the century, three days later in another speech he raised this figure to 3,500,000 by 1985. None of the figures bear much relation to reality. ‘Immigrant’ means, of course, ’coloured immigrant' throughout. The number of immigrants remained pretty stable after 1962, but the numbers of coloured immigrants dropped, the number of white immigrants (mainly Irish) rose. This is the intention of immigrant legislation, which has nothing to do with economic necessity.
1 The concept of the ‘authoritarian personality’ has been elaborated in the USA by psychologists such as Adorno and Sanford. Attempts to relate it to measurable personality traits have not been all that successful, which would seem to indicate that it needs to be understood as much in sociological as in psychological terms.
1 Respondents are asked to state which of a series of relationships they would be prepared to accept with certain nationalities (‘would allow into my country’‘would accept as a fellow employee’‘would accept as a relative by marriage’, etc.), the idea being that the further up the scale they are prepared to go in offering affirmative answers, the more tolerant they are. Those most prejudiced against negroes, Jews, Germans, etc., have also been found to be prejudiced against non‐existent nationalities ‘negretians’ 'wallonians's etc. Eysenck found that Englishmen who were prepared to accept foreigners as member, of their club, still do not necessarily accept them as prospective citizens, a reverse of the American pattern.
1 New Society, No. 293.
2 In an article in The Spectator, December 1954 cited by Paul Foot, Immigration and Race in British Politics, p. 129, who also gives the two quotations from Peter Griffiths at pp. 46–7.
1 For an analysis of Hattersley's speech and the development of Labour policy to 1965 see Foot, esp. pp. 192–4.