This passage is taken from Enoch Powell’s speech, a British politician and Conservative Member of

Parliament (Tory MP), delivered to a Conservative Association Meeting in Birmingham, UK, on 20 April
1968. After the ww2, Britain was devastated economically and it needed labour force for the
established program’ the Welfare State’. Therefore, she witnessed influx of immigants from its
previous colonies and welcomed them to come to the mother country under the Open Door Policy
which led to violance of the white against the coloured people. As a result, the British government
passed many laws and acts to protect the immigrants. For instance, the British Nationality Act
1948 that granted citizenship to people in British colonies and protectorates. Also, the Race
Relations Act 1965 that came as a result of the the Notting Hill Riots event in1958, where there was
white agression towards non-whites. This act was passed by government to prohibit discrimination
against immigrants in public sphere and professional domain. It made it illegal to refuse housing,
employment, or public services to individuals based on their race, color, ethnicity, or national origins.
As a reaction , Enoch Powell adressed his speech in which he warned the british of the dangers of
mass immigration that would lead to the collapse of British identity.

Enoch Powell generalises the idea that mass immigration is a threat to the British citizens by
identifying the concerns of his constituent. He uses an anecdote of an ordinary man who said that
‘’ if i had money to go, i wouldn’t stay in this country’’. He also shows the fear of his constituent of
black dominance over them by saying ,’’ in this country in 15 or 20 years’ time the black man will
have the whip hand over the white man’’. This violant and dark image reflectes Powell’s anti-
immigration attitude and shows that he fears that Britain will be devided as it happened in India.
Since Powell had been an army officer and was there just before partition , he had seen the stirrings
of Hindu and Muslim violence . He had also just returned from the United States when he made the
speech. Only two weeks before, Martin Luther King had been assassinated and America was
contorted by race riots. Moreiver, his argument was welcomed by many citizens as Whipple notes
that because ‘many working class Britons saw immigration as their problem and accordingly saw
Powell as their hero’ as he ‘was not speaking for all “whites” so much as for those to whom no one
bothered to listen’ [6] (Whipple, 2009, p. 729). In his speech, he also utilised rhetoric questions such
as « How dare i say such a horrible thing ?» in order to engage and convince the audience that the
same thing happens to ‘’ thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking’’.

Moreiver, he uses future statics to back up his argument that national character would be eroded by
native-born descendants of immigrants. According to him, in 15 or 20 years, on percent trends, there
will be in this country three and a half million Commonwealth immigrants and their descendents. His
greatest preoccupation is not even the immigrants coming but rather their descendants, the "native-
born" who, he worried, would "constitute the majority" of the ethnic minority population in a few
decades . The sheer numbers, according to Powell, constituted a ‘threat’ to ‘national
character’ and that British society ‘was likely to be undermined by the presence of migrants
from a different cultural, racial and religious background’, as the ‘black population could not
be integrated into British society’ (Powell, 1968a).Thus Powell presents himself as the
protector of the ordinary English and the guardian of national heritage and institutions
(Behrens and Edmonds, 1981, pp. 342-8). As their guardian Powell was thereby positioned to
identify the ‘race suicide’ argument that the British must be ‘mad, literally mad, as a nation
to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependents’, before seeking to mobilise
support via metaphor and pathos by arguing that by doing so the country is ‘busily engaged
in heaping up its own funeral pyre’ (Powell, 1968a).
He used another anecdotal example by stating,’’ immigrants in my own constituency from time
to time come to me, asking if i can find them assistance to return home’’. This logical fallacy is used as
an authority and as a proof of a more general political point . For him, re-immigration is the
solution to reduce the number of immigrants and their descendents. It encouraged
descendants of immigrants to leave the country and return to their country. He also argued
that the Concervative Party should maintain those three elements regarding the issue :
stopping further inflow, encouraging re- immigration and achieving equality before the law
by declaring ;’’ there shall be no discrimination or difference made between them by public
authority’’. As he back up his argument by stating Heath’s words that there should not be ‘’
first -class citizens’’ and ‘’ second -class citizens’’. Powell was against the Labour Party’s acts
that only protect the immigrants and their descendents such as Race Relations Act which
made them benefited from housing, employment and transportation services. Whreas, it
limited the freedom and authority of the White citizen’s property, as he states, ‘’the citizen
should be denied his right to discriminate in the management of his own affairs between one
fellow-citizen and another or that should be …as to his reasons or motive for behaving in on
lawful manner’’.

Moreover, Powell accused communalism that would lead to ‘’ fragmentation within

society’’ by comparing it to ‘ a canker’ which means a destructive fungal disease of apple and
other trees that results in damage to the bark. He gave example of The Sikh bus drivers’ strike
that was prompted by the sacking of a driver who violated a rule prohibiting the wearing of beards.
As a consequence, a major outpouring of support took place in Wolverhampton which was supported
by over 5,000 Sikhs (Brooke, 2007, p. 681). This became a lengthy campaign for a change to the rules
which would enable Sikhs to wear beards in line with their cultural heritage under the Race Relation
Act. Powell’s use of the strike to illustrate a broader argument over immigration and integration
serves to highlight his conception of a monopolistic understanding of British citizenship. At the end of
his speech, he alludes to Latin epic poem The Aeneid written by the ancient Roman poet Virgil
who makes a prophecy regarding the destiny of Rome and predicts bloodshed. As he states, ’ im filled
with foreboding ; like the Roman, i seem to see ‘’ the River foaming with much blood’’’. He predicts a
terrible future for the UK which will be full of violance and blood. This allusion makes the speech
more dramatic and is used to create a feeling of nervousness and a desire to act in the general
population. It is also clear that Powell wanted the speech to make an impact. He had informed his
constituency chair, Clement Jones, that: ‘I’m going to make a speech and it’s going to go up “fizz” like
a rocket; but whereas all rockets fall to earth, this one is going to stay up’ (Heffer, 1998, p. 448).

In this speech, Powell appears to imply risk and potential sacrifice for himself, as he justifies his right
and duty to speak out. This was encapsulated by his closing retort that: ‘All I know is that to see, and
not to speak, would be the great betrayal’. In fact , there were Conservatives with sympathies for
Powell’s position who have attempted to argue that ‘the message was right, but the medium was
wrong’ (Bourne, 2008, p. 82). Yet , Heath dismissed Powell on the grounds that his speech was
‘racialist in tone and liable to exacerbate racial tensions’ and he claims that ,’ he absolutely must go’.