Critical Arts

South-North Cultural and Media Studies

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Screening Solidarity in Late 1960s Britain: Racism,

Anti-Apartheid, and a Televised Debate

Tal Zalmanovich

To cite this article: Tal Zalmanovich (2018) Screening Solidarity in Late 1960s Britain:
Racism, Anti-Apartheid, and a Televised Debate, Critical Arts, 32:4, 49-66, DOI:
10.1080/02560046.2018.1478439

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 ARTICLE

Screening Solidarity in Late 1960s Britain: Racism, Anti-

Apartheid, and a Televised Debate

Tal Zalmanovich
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6663-9945
APARTHEID-STOPS European Research Council Project,
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
tal.zalmanovich@mail.huji.ac.il

ABSTRACT
In October 1969, a debate between anti-apartheid activist Bishop Trevor Huddleston and Tory
MP Enoch Powell was broadcast on British television. It presented viewers with opposing
ideas about immigration, dignity and duty. This article claims that Huddleston’s invocation of
apartheid as an extreme case of racism turned the debate into a key moment for educating
Britons about apartheid and about resistance to it. The paper argues that the debate presents
an opportunity to address the absence of television from current scholarship concerning the
role of culture in the global anti-apartheid struggle. In addition, it shows that Huddleston
used the emerging genre of the televised debate as a platform to appeal for solidarity. Thus
this event and the public reaction to it serve as a case study to explore solidarity as it was
recently framed by David Featherstone. Huddleston and Powell’s screened encounter fused
domestic and post-imperial concerns: its analysis thus helps to problematise artificial divides
between domestic and imperial historiographies. From a methodological point of view, the
analysis of the debate as text and performance is juxtaposed with letters from viewers as
well as newspaper coverage. This method illustrates first, the growing place of television
as a site of political debate. Second, it positions television recordings as a new archive for
scholars working both on the anti-apartheid movement and on racism in Britain. Third, it
serves as a lens onto the impact of Powell’s and Huddleston’s policies on the lives of Britons.

Keywords: television; solidarity; racism; Trevor Huddleston; Enoch Powell; anti-Apartheid

Introduction
On October 12, 1969, Britons tuned into ITV in anticipation of a confrontation
between two charismatic leaders: Tory MP, Enoch Powell, and the Bishop of Stepney,
Anglican monk, and anti-apartheid activist, Trevor Huddleston. The programme,

Critical Arts https://doi.org/10.1080/02560046.2018.1478439

www.tandfonline.com/rcrc20 ISSN 1992-6049 (Online), ISSN 0256-0046 (Print)
Volume 32 | Number 4 | 2018 | pp. 49–66 © The Author(s) 2018 Published by Unisa Press and
Informa UK Limited, [trading as Taylor & Francis Group]

49
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial-No Derivatives
Licence (http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
Zalmanovich Screening Solidarity in Late 1960s Britain

entitled “The Great Debate: My Christian Duty,” was aired on a Sunday evening. It
was the culmination of a lengthy public disagreement between Powell and Huddleston,
which originated on April 20, 1968, following Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” address in
Birmingham. In this now infamous speech, Powell described his fears that immigration
had caused a demographic and social revolution that threatened British society. In a
subsequent speech in Wolverhampton, on June 9, 1969, Powell called for the voluntary
repatriation of immigrants. At a teachers’ conference the next day, Huddleston called the
Wolverhampton speech “evil,” and contested its argument. Powell wrote to Huddleston
on June 12, 1968 to defend himself (Powell 1968b). In response, as the moderator of
the televised debate told viewers, “the Bishop then replied: ‘I hope it might be possible
for us to meet in public, so that the full weight of our arguments will be judged on their
merits’” (Great Debate 1969).
Their public meeting took place in a television studio in front of a live audience.
Huddleston and Powell were both media savvy and harnessed this skill and their fame
to weigh in on the raging discussion about immigration in Britain. Viewers knew
Powell as a leading figure in the crusade to limit immigration from the Commonwealth.
The audience recognised Huddleston as a vocal advocate of racial equality. As I will
demonstrate by analysing a recording of the debate that has not been screened again
since the broadcast, as well as correspondence from viewers, and newspaper coverage
of the event, the two men used the emerging genre of the televised political debate to
rally support for their views.1 As the outpouring of letters to Huddleston and the press
proves, individuals who watched the programme in their private homes felt propelled
into political involvement by Huddleston’s appearance. Their impulse to engage with
Huddleston (both positively and negatively) attests to the vitality of television as a new
site of politics, and as a platform for political solidarity. Following David Featherstone
(2012, 5), I frame solidarity as a transformative process that forges relationships
between organisations and individuals across social and geographical divides. Rather
than only galvanising a pre-existing political community, solidarity can also ignite a
process of politicisation and generate new groups, Featherstone argues (2012, 7).
Bearing in mind the transformative elements at work in the construction of solidarity, it
becomes possible to show how Huddleston used the debate to tap into existing reserves
of support, but also to exploit the far-reaching platform of television to circulate his
ideas beyond his own network of collaborators. His performance stimulated anti-racist
and anti-apartheid activists, lay and clerical Christians, as well as individuals affected
by so-called Powellism (Oxford English Dictionary 2006) to congregate around him in
support.
The analysis of the debate as text and performance will be juxtaposed with letters from
viewers and newspaper coverage. This method will illustrate the growing place of

1 The few scholars who did refer to the debate did so in passing and consulted the transcript (Malik
2002, 46; Schofield 2013, 257–59; Whipple 2009, 726).

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Zalmanovich Screening Solidarity in Late 1960s Britain

television as a site of political debate. It will position television recordings as a new

archive for scholars working both on the anti-apartheid movement and on racism in
Britain. Rather than limiting the analysis of the programme to its moment of broadcast,
this article proposes viewing it, the public reaction to the debate, and the media’s
engagement with it as one event. This framing enables an analysis that goes beyond
a confrontation between two famed political figures. It gives voice to ordinary Britons
concerned with the impact of immigration and racism on their lives. It thus turns the
gaze of the television screen onto its viewers in order to illuminate their experience of
late 1960s Britain.

Race and Immigration in the Post-War Period

Given Britain’s imperial past, Asian and black communities have resided in Britain at
least from the eighteenth century.2 Until the beginning of the twentieth century, these
communities were small, concentrated in port cities, and made up of transient seamen
(Spencer 1997, 3). Before the 1950s, the black and Asian population of Britain did
not exceed 0.5 per cent of the general public (Spencer 1997, 52). Apart from working-
class communities, a small number of students and intellectuals were concentrated in
London, Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Glasgow (Bailkin 2012, 96).3 Their
numbers were kept low by unofficial government policy restrictions. Due to post-war
labour shortages, however, workers from the West Indies and the Punjab were invited to
the country as migrant labour (Paul 1997, 67).
The newcomers increased the size, the visibility and the demographics of existing
communities. These changes ignited debates about immigration, often inspiring attacks
on immigrants by white Britons such as the Notting Hill disturbances of 1958. Media
coverage and academic discussions of racial tensions ultimately framed immigrants as
the source of social disorder, and kept the topic of immigration control high on the
political agenda (Waters 1997, 218). Public and political interest in the issue resulted in
new and restrictive legislation, particularly the Commonwealth Immigrant Act of 1962
(Paul 1997, 166). In the period between the announcement of the Act and its coming
into force, temporary residents rushed to apply for permanent status, and dependants
joined under the family unification provision (Spencer 1997, 131–34). Consequently,
from the late 1950s to the late 1980s, this demographic established communities in the
country’s major cities and its share in the population grew to over five per cent (Spencer
1997, 152).
The perceived shift in the demography of Britain resulted in anxiety and protest. The
Labour Party that won the 1964 election now supported the 1962 Commonwealth Act

2 There has been a black presence from the Roman times, but substantial communities appeared in the
Elizabethan era (Chater 2011; Fryer 2010; Gerzina 2003).
3 By 1960, around 50,000 overseas students, mostly West Africans, lived in Britain.

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Zalmanovich Screening Solidarity in Late 1960s Britain

that it had previously opposed (Paul 1997, 174). As a nod to its voters, Labour passed
the 1965 Race Relations Act that prohibited discrimination on “racial grounds in places
of public resort” and penalised “incitement to racial hatred.”4 The 1965 Act, and the new
institutions that were created to monitor its execution, added to the heated controversy
over immigration. Although some white fascist organisations and individuals were
charged under the new clause that criminalised hate speech, white mainstream
politicians were exempt from scrutiny (Schaffer 2014, 271). Criticism of immigration
amassed around the figure of Tory MP Enoch Powell, and erupted with his Birmingham
address. The speech was a eulogy to white England, cautioning against impending
violence due to immigration. Powell’s infamous prediction, “As I look ahead, I am
filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with
much blood,’” dates from this speech (Powell 1968a). It carefully alternated between
emotive, sensationalist use of anecdote and rhetoric peppered with imagery of flooding
and swamping, barely remaining within the limits of lawful discourse (Crines, Heppell,
and Hill 2016; Schaffer 2014, 263, 275). Powell was not prosecuted under the hatred
clause, as many thought he should have been. He was demoted within his party, and in
response, thousands took to the streets both in protest against, and in support for, his
politics (Schofield 2013, 209). The massive display of support for Powell came on the
heels of further restrictive immigration legislation (Gilroy 2002, 44).5
Concern about contemporary race relations brought activists from left-wing groups
to weigh in on the question of race in England, including anti-apartheid activists.
Huddleston’s condemnation of Powell was triggered by his experience in South
Africa, where racism had become entrenched in a constitutional form, as he told
viewers. Huddleston grounded his opposition to apartheid in his 12 years’ experience
in Johannesburg between 1943 and 1955. In his bestselling memoir Naught for your
Comfort, published in 1956, Huddleston described the evils of state racism from the
age of segregation in South Africa through the establishment of apartheid in 1948.
Narrated in the first person, and replete with anecdotes and testimonials, the book
reveals the devastating effect of racial segregation on Huddleston’s parishioners in
the black Johannesburg suburb of Sophiatown. The memoir narrates the spread of
apartheid legislation, the swelling of protest and the consequent growing repression by
the regime. Huddleston’s clear voice of protest together with his vigorous fund-raising
abilities made him a ubiquitous political presence. This was recognised both by the
government and by opposition movements. On June 25, 1955, during the formative
People’s Congress in Kliptown, activists conferred an honorary title on Huddleston for
his service to the struggle against apartheid.6 All this time, South African authorities had

4 Race Relations Act 1965, The Public General Acts, Part 2, Chapter 73, 1615, November 8, 1965.
5 The Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968 introduced the legal concept of partiality. Citizenship was
allocated and withheld on racial grounds.
6 The honorary title was also conferred that day on Chief Albert Luthuli and Dr Yusuf Dadoo. See
“Isitwalandwe/Seaparankoe the Highest Award of Honour,” accessed January 23, 2017, http://www.
anc.org.za/content/isitwalandwe-seaparankoe.
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Zalmanovich Screening Solidarity in Late 1960s Britain

him followed by police and threatened with arrest or deportation (Denniston 1999, 56).
Huddleston was recalled to England in 1955 in response to mounting pressure on his
religious order. By this time, his biographer concluded, Huddleston’s face was “the most
photographed of any Christian except the Pope, his stand on racial equality admired by
millions” (Denniston 1999, 63). In accordance with his celebrity status, a CBS television
crew documented Huddleston’s departure from South Africa (67). Huddleston left for
England via the USA on a tour sponsored by the American Committee on Africa, and
while there met with Martin Luther King, Louis Armstrong, Eleanor Roosevelt and
others (68).
Huddleston’s publicists at the Collins publishing house in London helped to cultivate his
status as a major moral authority in England. They had contacted the BBC on January 25,
1956, months before Huddleston’s return to the country, to consult how best to present
him to the public (Trevor Huddleston Talks I: 1956–1962). In February, important
journalists such as David Attenborough and Grace Wyndham-Goldie, the influential
producer at BBC Television, were invited to a screening of a 1954 film made by the
American journalist Edward Murrow depicting apartheid South Africa and featuring
Huddleston as a prominent opposition figure (Trevor Huddleston Talks I: 1956–1962).
Letters between BBC television and radio directors reflect a keen interest in Huddleston
and his message (Trevor Huddleston Talks I: 1956–1962). Huddleston’s critique of the
Church’s silence on apartheid added another dimension to his commentary on South
Africa. Assistant head of religious broadcasting of the BBC wrote to the head of radio
on February 6 that it was clear that Huddleston “intends to rouse the conscience of this
country and to call upon the church to take action in the affairs of South Africa.” He
concluded that “[a]s a Department we shall have to decide what to do about this powerful
impact on the country” (Robertson 1956). His recommendations amounted to allocating
abundant airtime for Huddleston on radio and television (Robertson 1956). Huddleston
featured frequently on the BBC, and a special episode of the prestigious Panorama
programme focused on him (BBC 1956). Huddleston’s public assemblies were another
source of success and drew thousands of listeners. In his first public meeting at Central
Hall, near Westminster Abbey in London, in late April 1956, 4,000 people queued to
hear him speak. It was decided to hold two open meetings so that everyone would get
the opportunity to hear him (The Manchester Guardian 1956a). When he arrived in
Manchester a few weeks later, his events were sold-out (The Manchester Guardian
1956b).
The public figure that audiences encountered was shaped by the South African sojourn,
which Huddleston termed his “Damascus road.” In Johannesburg, Huddleston was
“converted into an activist rather than an observer, a fully political priest, realising that
conflict with ‘the principals and powers’ had to be a fundamental part of [his] pastoral
ministry” (Huddleston 1991, 26). Johannesburg was also where Huddleston joined a
network of activists and forged a repertoire of tactics that he continued to draw upon in

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London. One of the central insights he drew from this period was that the mass media
could be used as an effective political tool (Huddleston 1956, 33).
Huddleston was aware of the importance of a well-curated public persona to further his
agenda. In his first sermon as the Bishop of Stepney, in London on October 3, 1968,
he argued that “[v]ery often a generation finds certain words, catch-phrases, symbols,
which somehow characterise that generation … I think that the most significant is the
word ‘image.’ We live in a world of image-makers. We are, whether we like it or not,
involved in this whole process of image making” (MSS Huddleston 407). His own
image was made of several components. He was a Christian fighting for justice, an
authority on South Africa, an unflinching maverick, a patron of the arts, a political and
moral figure—the “turbulent priest.”7
Powell too had a strong brand, as the existence of the noun “Powellism” indicates.
He was central to the discussion of race and immigration at the time, and remains a
domineering figure in the historiography of post-war Britain. Powell was known to
Britons as a brilliant scholar of ancient Greece, an orator and translator who abandoned
his academic career to fight in the Second World War. Powell had an impressive war
record. His experiences during the war shaped his view of himself as primarily a soldier
(Schofield  2013, 2). As a young man, Powell supported the imperial ideal: decolonisation,
and in particular, the independence of India, was consequently a disappointment to him.
Decolonisation ruptured Powell’s belief in the continuity of Empire and presaged a
retreat on his part to narrower forms of English nationalism (Whipple 2009, 722–23).
In the 1960s, this sentiment developed into an anti-American and anti-European stand
(Brooke 2007, 670). In the public brouhaha that followed his “rivers of blood” speech,
and his extended public exposure, the various components of Powell’s political vision
were consolidated into a single, recognisable package.

Television as a Public Sphere

In the 1960s British television and radio had “dramatically increased the audiences who
could be involved in a sense of shared nationality” (Webster 2005, 5). Television thus
became a major site for fraught debates about national identity. The growing centrality
of the home as a place of solace, socialisation and entertainment increased television’s
cultural role (Zalmanovich 2013, 12–3, 83–4). In the winter months of 1965, the BBC
undertook a study into the interests of adults in Britain and found that home and family
topped the list. The data showed that most people preferred “to stay at home mowing the
lawn or watching television” (The Times 1965). The viewing pickings, however, were
slim. The period from the mid-1950s until the advent of cable TV in the 1980s was aptly

7 This description first appeared in Carolyn Scott’s “Trevor Huddleston: The Turbulent Priest Returns,”
Canadian Churchman, September 1968. Recently, it has formed the title of Piers McGrandle’s
biography, Trevor Huddleston: Turbulent Priest (London: Continuum, 2004).

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Zalmanovich Screening Solidarity in Late 1960s Britain

titled “the era of scarcity,” referring to the narrow viewing diet of only two television
channels (Turnock 2007, 17). Consequently, anything screened on these channels had
the potential to reach a much larger audience than it would have done in a fragmented
cable television market.
Although television viewing was often a private and domestic act, in the pre-cable
era it had a public side to it too (Crisell 2002, 21). Starting in the early 1920s, both
policymakers and the public thought of broadcasting media as a national resource
(Crisell 2002, 27). Radio stations and later television stations were licensed, regulated,
and, in the case of the BBC, publicly-funded by a licence fee. Unlike the American media
market that was governed solely by the laws of demand, competition scarcely existed
in Britain. Consequently, individuals who sat in their living room to watch the evening
news could be sure that at that very same moment, millions of their fellow countrymen
and women were to be found indulging in the same act. Television viewed at home
paradoxically became a public space in which a shared national culture was shaped.
Images, bits of reporting, commentary, and banter broadcast on television became social
currency as viewers repeated them to people they saw at the greengrocer, the pub, and
the office. This social trade created links between strangers (Zalmanovich 2013, 14).
Television viewing functions like newspaper reading had previously done for emergent
nationalism. Benedict Anderson argued that newspapers supplied common content to
the discussions of a nation, but the reading ritual in itself was a demonstrative gesture
of belonging (Anderson 2006, 35–6). Similarly, watching television offered Britons a
common language and ceremony, befitting the democratic pulse of the post-war era
(Zalmanovich 2013, 14).
Powell and Huddleston’s televised debate and its scheduling on a Sunday evening, a
prime time slot, attest to the importance of television as an arena of political exchange.
Television political debates were a new genre that had grown in popularity with the 1960
Kennedy–Nixon American presidential debate (Kraus 1988, 9). British broadcasters
tried to initiate leadership debates as early as 1964, but the political parties involved
rejected the idea (the first televised one was staged in 2010). By 1965, however, British
politicians appeared regularly on television as interviewees, commentators on discussion
panels, and in current affairs programmes such as Panorama. Politicians sought to seize
the educational impact of political debate on viewers after studies showed that many
prospective voters searched for information concerning issues raised on television
(Coleman 2000, 10). This potential was also recognised by activist groups such as the
British Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM), which prioritised education as Rob Skinner
has demonstrated (2014, 216–31).
For these reasons, it is not surprising that a high-profile politician and a renowned
activist chose to stage their confrontation in a television studio in late September 1969.8
The moderator, Alistair Burnet, was known to viewers as the chief presenter of ITV’s

8 It was broadcast a month later.

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News at Ten, and the leading anchor for the network’s coverage of the 1964 and 1966
general elections. His presence, the employment of debate visual tropes and the title
of the programme, signalled its importance to viewers. The Times television critique
enthused about it the next day: “The debate, free from phony showbiz presentation,”
was “extraordinary because it consisted of 45 minutes of almost uninterrupted argument,
compelling because of the urgency of the subject itself and because of what it revealed
of Mr. Powell’s political philosophy” (Billington 1969).
The two men brought a set of well-rehearsed arguments to the studio. Talking points,
images and phrases were used in earlier media performances and congealed around
three main concepts: evil, human nature, and duty. The themes were introduced in the
opening lines of Powell’s April 1968 speech: “The supreme function of statesmanship
is to provide against preventable evils. In seeking to do so, it encounters obstacles
which are deeply rooted in human nature” (1968a). For Powell, New Commonwealth
immigrants were the embodiment of “preventable evils.” Powell feared they would
constitute a fifth or a quarter of the population of some of England’s major towns and
cities—a situation that he found explosive. In an earlier letter to Huddleston, Powell
explained that he had proposed a scheme of “voluntary repatriation and resettlement”
out of duty to address “danger while it can still be averted” (The Evening News 1969).
Powell maintained that his actions were a pragmatic response to human nature, and that
he wished to minimise social tension and violence. As Paul Gilroy commented, Powell
and his adherents claimed to object to “biological” racism and therefore thought they
should not be labelled “racialists.” Their rejection of black settlers as Trojan horses
who fractured the fabric of an allegedly homogenous society, however, amounted to the
exclusion of commonwealth immigrants from the nation on the basis of race (2002, 46).
Huddleston contested Powell’s statements and implicit assumptions. In a previous
letter to The Times, Huddleston had already rejected Powell’s premise that immigration
equalled social tension and that most Britons were intolerant (Huddleston 1968). In fact,
he disagreed that England had an immigration problem at all. The responsible politician,
argued Huddleston, had a duty to build reserves of tolerance rather than ferment discord
as Powell did. That duty included a moral component to atone for colonialism and its
outcomes. Britons, argued Huddleston, had called upon imperial subjects “to fight with
them in their wars, to die for them … [W]e have … taken a deliberate part in the slave
trade.” And yet, Huddleston argued, when 3 million Africans and Asians come to work
in Britain, often by government invitation, “we say, ‘No, you are an alien wedge’”
(Great Debate 1969). This was an unacceptable denial of responsibility.
Furthermore, Huddleston thought that opposing immigration made for bad politics.
He maintained that such opposition was a sign that “we have not really learnt what
the world is about … [W]e are still bogged down in a completely little Englander,
isolationist view of world affairs” (Great Debate 1969). Britain, Huddleston argued,
was compromising its potential global role by alienating the majority of humankind
with “deliberate immoral choices and actions” (Great Debate 1969) He argued that he

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could not believe that “we are a nation that is so dim, and stupid that we cannot see this
national purpose in terms of our place in the world community … Internationalism, the
unification of the World is the next stage” (Great Debate 1969).
Huddleston’s argument about Britain’s need to position itself as a serious world power
by cooperating with the non-aligned countries in Asia and Africa, reveals a tension
between his internationalist impulses and invocations of national identity. Contrary
to the way Powell supporters positioned Huddleston as a hater of all things British,
Huddleston’s arguments about Britain’s moral duty demonstrate his investment in the
supposed virtues of Britishness and British ideals. Unlike Powell, he believed that
Britain did have a role to play on the international stage as long as it reckoned with its
past (The Church Times 1968).
Powell claimed the right to speak for England from the secular power of parliament
which Huddleston could not do. Huddleston may have felt comfortable in his role as a
“fully political priest,” but his opponents saw this as a misuse of his clerical position.9
This was a weak argument considering the prominent role the Anglican Church
historically and presently played in British political life (Loss 2017, 283). Accordingly,
Huddleston’s answer was a fairly standard Christian argument. He claimed that it was his
duty as a Christian, not a privilege, to comment on racism. The Christian faith was based
on “one foundational fact … that God became man, he did not become an Englishman,
he did not become a Palestinian, he did not become an Irishman … and as man he has
an inherent dignity” (Great Debate 1969). Christ assumed the humanity of all persons,
discriminator or the victim of discrimination, and thus as the theologian Robert Nelson
argued, to “ignore, or despise or hate other persons, especially without provocation …
means to show the same inimical attitude to Christ” (World Council of Churches 1969).
This line of argument discloses Huddleston’s connection to a line of Christian
missionaries and their imperial involvement during what Michael Barnett terms the age
of “Imperial Humanitarianism” between the eighteen century and the Cold War (Barnett
2011, 9). Huddleston’s order had a mission in South Africa from 1903. But his ample
use of the concept of the “dignity of man” throughout the debate echoes more than the
Christian belief in shared humanity. It reflects Huddleston’s ties and contribution to the
rise of “global civil society” (Thörn 2006). Dignity was the foundational concept of
human rights as a post-war discourse and a legal frame as proclaimed in the preamble
of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Coundouriotis 2006, 843). Dignity
in this document is seen as the origin of rights and as the basis for expressing equality.
The concept was fundamental to the anti-apartheid debate and literature (Coundouriotis
2006, 844). As already stated, Huddleston’s experience in South Africa changed how he
envisioned both his role and that of the Church. Beginning as a humanitarian fighting

9 A Mrs Willbourne informed Huddleston that she had complained to her vicar: “I do not consider it
the function of our fathers in God to lecture to us on politics or social justice.” Mrs N. Willbourne to
Huddleston, November 21, 1968 (MSS Huddleston 329).

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for social reform, he was transformed into an activist who aligned himself with local
forces of national liberation working to overthrow the apartheid regime. To combine
a religious commitment to lessen the sufferings of others with a secular discourse of
“an international community” linked by a “common humanity” was not unusual in
the post-war decades (Barnett 2011, 102–3). Both religious and secular policymakers
frequently used a language that promoted shared responsibility for fellow human beings
and articulated the demand “to relieve suffering and fight injustice” (McVety 2014, 17).
Huddleston’s use of this language functioned as a prospective marker of solidarity with
other anti-apartheid and anti-racist activists watching the debate.
The debate captured a further development in Huddleston’s and others’ thinking about
racism and the Church’s duty to eradicate it. A few months before the “Great Debate:
My Christian Duty” was broadcast, Huddleston gave a speech to the Notting Hill
Consultation on Race in London. The consultation was organised by the World Council
of Churches, the largest ecumenical organisation in the world (Zalmanovich 2019). The
premise of the consultation was that racism, and white racism in particular, was an
urgent and global problem. The Programme to Combat Racism (PCR) that ran for 25
years was born out of this meeting, and it had a lasting impact on networks of advocacy
in the anti-apartheid struggle (World Council of Churches 1969). It pioneered a shift
from campaigns that focused on individual rights to organising collective action against
racism and advocating direct financial support to liberation movements (Welch 2001,
865, 878). This new dimension of alignment imbued Huddleston’s use of the language
of dignity and rights with further, and more radical, meaning.
Because Huddleston embodied a multiplicity of meanings, groups and individuals
from diverse backgrounds and politics found him appealing. From this position, his
performance in the debate functioned as a call for solidarity. The stream of letters to
Huddleston from a myriad of organisations that confronted Powellism in their daily work
demonstrate that Huddleston’s appearance was received in such light. Powell was hailed
in the public arena as an intellectual and a sharp orator. Activists who opposed Powell
tuned in to the debate with trepidation, because they acknowledged that in the public
eye Huddleston represented their cause against a powerful adversary. The chairman
of the Race Relations Board, the body in charge of monitoring racial discrimination,
was “grateful … to [him] for undertaking this task” and for expressing his views with
“admirable clarity and self-control” (MSS Huddleston 39). Another activist admitted
that when he had first heard of the debate “[he] was apprehensive, having seen other
performances of [Powell’s], and knowing how easily a climate of racialism can be
fostered.” His doubt was dispelled “by [Huddleston’s] clear, forthright and strongly
presented case” (MSS Huddleston 39). Ethel de Keyser, the secretary of the British
Anti-Apartheid Movement, maintained it was the first time she had “seen Enoch Powell
in a defensive role and unable to dictate the grounds on which discussion took place.” De
Keyser assessed that the debate must have “contributed considerably towards shrinking

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the larger than life-size image he has managed to create in the country and make many
of his adherents question their prejudice and allegiance” (MSS Huddleston 39).
Huddleston became a model for Christians and clergyman aspiring to speak out against
racism. One correspondent appreciated Huddleston’s public affirmation of “the role of
the Christian Church and the responsibility of Christians … with respect to racism” (MSS
Huddleston 39). A Wolverhampton teacher was content with Huddleston’s “forthright
and reasoned vindication of the Christian attitude to our coloured brethren and sisters”
(MSS Huddleston 39), while a student of theology thanked him for saying “all that
[she had] wished to say to [her] racist friends and associates” (MSS Huddleston 39). A
Church of England chaplain assured Huddleston that he had made all of them “feel 6
feet taller!” (MSS Huddleston 39). The press officer of the Archbishop of Canterbury,
for his part, congratulated Huddleston on “one of the best things [he had] seen the
Church do on television” (MSS Huddleston 39).
Partners and parents of immigrants were another group that was drawn to Huddleston’s
attack on Powell. Their responses convey the atmosphere created by Powell’s rhetoric
in British towns and cities. A woman married to a West-Indian immigrant wrote, “you
really understand and feel with us the hurt and sorrow … since Enoch Powell made
his first speech in April 1968” (MSS Huddleston 39). A couple found, in Huddleston,
“moral inspiration,” and told him that their “adopted coloured son is as good a Welsh
speaking Welsh child as any white one” (MSS Huddleston 39). Adoptive parents of “two
brown children” supported his belief that the British were capable of more tolerance
than Powell depicted, concluding that, given the “right lead,” the country could “readily
absorb the latest in a long line of immigrant communities” (MSS Huddleston 39).
As these letters demonstrate, the televisual presentation made an intellectual exchange
of ideas feel personal and relevant to the lives of numerous viewers. The arguments
Powell and Huddleston presented on television acquired an intimacy, immediacy and
urgency that the written word failed to invoke and encouraged viewers to respond.
Television brought politicians and activists into the homes of many who had never
visited a parliamentary institute, marched in a demonstration or attended a political
meeting (Coleman 2000, 11). One viewer explained this in a letter addressed to Powell
and Huddleston: “On Sunday last you both came into my sitting room … So I have
decided to come in on that debate with my views” (MSS Huddleston 39). Many put
pen to paper and engaged in the conversation—whether in the form of a letter to a
newspaper or through addressing the participants directly. In late October, one viewer
rushed to complete his letter of protest to Huddleston upon the former’s release from
hospital (MSS Huddleston 39), and another was impelled to inquire how to locate an
anti-apartheid group in his vicinity (MSS Huddleston 39). Although there are no rating
statistics available, media coverage, and the outpouring of letters received by Huddleston
after the broadcast, demonstrate the reach of the programme and its resonance with
a substantial audience. The diversity of class, ethnicities and gender backgrounds
displayed by the writers attests to the potential of broadcast to forge relationships and

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extend solidarity beyond social divides. Interestingly enough, the view that the debate
was a cultural event was probably shared by Powell himself, who included its transcript
in a compilation of his speeches, interviews and writings (Powell 1973, 95-113).

Conclusion
Lenny Henry, Britain’s most celebrated black comedian, recalled in 2008 that when he
watched television as a child, “there were no black people on it at all. That was in the
days of black and white television. They should have called it white and white television”
(Henry 2008). In such an environment, discussions about race like the “Great Debate:
My Christian Duty” were mostly deliberations about immigration where white pundits
argued how best to limit it. In this respect, Powell and Huddleston’s confrontation was
not much different. Powell used anti-immigration rhetoric to determine the parameters
of the discussion. Huddleston tried to undermine Powell’s anti-immigrant sentiment,
but he did not sever the imagined links between immigration, race and British decline
that dominated public discourse. Ultimately, the emphasis on evil, duty, and human
nature obscured the growth of white supremacy groups such as the National Front, daily
attacks on non-white Britons or the acceptance by the right and the left of a system that
allocated and withheld citizenship on racial grounds (Gilroy 2002, 66).
From the “rivers of blood” speech onwards, Powell introduced an emotional vocabulary
of invasion and loss into public discourse. His tendency to juxtapose words such as
“flood” and “immigration” constructed the nation as a subject easily overwhelmed in
the face of others. This rhetoric created the impression of others “as those who have
invaded the space of the nation, threatening its existence” (Ahmed 2014, 46). Powell’s
depiction of aliens stealing the country from its white citizens constructed the latter as
endangered subjects. In this narrative, the proximity of the other threatened to strip the
British people not only of their present and future—jobs, houses, a sense of security,
and a cohesive community—but also of their past, that is to say, their understanding of
Britain’s historical legacy (Ahmed 2014, 43).
This language, and the melancholia it betrayed, argues Gilroy (2005, 102), was the result
of Britons’ inability to mourn the loss of empire and accommodate its consequences.
Thus, when Huddleston suggested that centuries of imperial exploitation had created
an obligation toward commonwealth immigrants, Powell supporters rejected the guilt
and shame that they felt this argument entailed. Beryl Carthew wrote on June 12 to
reprimand Huddleston, saying that it was “evil and unwholesome to try and instil in a
whole people, a guilt complex” (MSS Huddleston 39). Huddleston’s offer to Britons
to enter a process of reconciliation, rather than stagnate in its state of wrongdoing, was
rejected by most observers (Ahmed 2014, 101).
Although Huddleston failed to change the terms of the immigration debate, he did
present a forceful portrayal of state-sponsored racism. He had acquired considerable

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authority concerning the injustices of apartheid that he had witnessed at first hand.
Invoking these injustices enabled him to confront viewers with the potential danger
of racial discrimination. This was one way in which anti-apartheid activists impacted
political discourse in Britain. Decolonising nations in the period held up apartheid as
the moral justification for their cause and as an impetus for political action (Irwin 2012,
4). Moreover, the expressive culture of apartheid and the exiles that circulated it and
their experience of institutionalised racism informed and became embedded in longer
histories of struggles against racism (Bethlehem 2018). The ideas, networks, and savvy
use of the media that Huddleston had formulated during his 12-year sojourn in South
Africa offered an alternative to the worldview and tactics articulated by Powell and his
supporters. Huddleston effectively harnessed the media to issue a call for solidarity.
The hundreds of letters from viewers received in response to the debate testify that
many were moved by this appeal. Huddleston’s stand as an anti-racist warrior whose
time in a former imperial post had generated solidarity rather than exclusive forms
of nationalism, demonstrates how post-imperial society continued to be impacted by
empire even during the process of winding it down. The Huddleston–Powell debate
strongly attests to the need to eliminate the divide in scholarship between domestic and
imperial historiographies—an undertaking begun by historians of race and immigration
over the course of the last decade (Bailkin 2012; Burkett 2013; Hall and Rose 2006;
Matera 2015; Schofield 2013; Schwarz 2011; Webster 2001).
The televised nature of the debate is also crucial here. My analysis has sought to
foreground the gains of extending scholarly exploration into the role of television in
the global anti-apartheid struggle. Håkan Thörn (2006), Shirli Gilbert (2007), Detlef
Siegfried (2016), and Louise Bethlehem (2017) have offered compelling accounts
concerning the use of culture as a political tool in the global anti-apartheid struggle. Their
accounts, however, do not encompass television. While commentators have reflected on
the role of television in passing, much work remains to be done.10 This is particularly
pertinent for the British case, given the centrality of the medium in British life in the late
1960s. Britons learnt about apartheid and encountered its opponents largely through the
medium of television. Yet this form of political education has remained invisible since
scholars have not sufficiently used television recordings as a potential archive. As my
discussion here suggests, the exploration of television as a fruitful source base should
not be restricted to discrete recordings alone, but should include public engagement
with this medium, as well as the ongoing deliberations of figures who appeared on the
screen.
In his role as one of the founding figures of the British AAM and the head of the
organisation from 1981 to 1994, Huddleston was central to the harnessing of culture as

10 See Tomaselli and Boster’s observations concerning the anti-apartheid Sun City concert on MTV to
the effect that “a sense of an integrated musical community spanning the USA, UK, and South Africa”
was created when the global audience tuned in to watch it and was exposed to its anti-apartheid
message (Tomaselli and Boster 1993, 5).

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a tool of political mobilisation. The analysis of his televised debate with Powell begins a
much-needed inquiry into the role of television in anti-apartheid campaigning. It reveals
the roots of Huddleston’s future engagement with questions of image and celebrity
culture. This became a defining component of AAM activity under his direction, clearly
visible in various iconic campaigns such as the concert tribute for Nelson Mandela’s
70th birthday in 1988 and the Free Nelson Mandela concert in London following
Mandela’s release two years later. In retrospect, Huddleston’s own reflections on the role
of media in the anti-apartheid struggle, voiced in his memoir, signpost the importance of
these dimensions of his public engagement for the historiographic record. “I have long
learned,” he wrote, “that my only weapon … is publicity” (Huddleston 1956, 33). This
statement, future scholarship may well attest, is no mere hyperbole.

Acknowledgements
The research leading to these results was funded by the European Research Council
under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013) / ERC
Grant Agreement no. 615564. Special thanks to Louise Bethlehem, Lucy McCann at the
Bodleian Library, to the British Film Institute and the BBC Written Archives.

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