Fool Britannia opens race-hate floodgates

Apr 16 2008 by Dan ONeill, South Wales Echo

HE couldn’t have picked a better day for it. April 20: Hitler’s birthday.

That was in 1968, but today, 40 years on, his message still resonates and they’re saying it all over again – “Enoch was right”.

Then, it was racism. Today it’s practically patriotic to protest at the “immigrant flood”. Enoch became a pariah. Today, politicians – Tony Blair is one – mouth platitudes about “controlling” immigration and it looks a vote-winner.

So even though it’s 40 years on Sunday since Enoch Powell made his infamous “Rivers of blood” speech, he’s once again the patron saint of Little Englanders and those tabloids trumpeting an “alien takeover”.

The truth is he’d be forgotten but for that speech to just 85 Conservatives in his Black Country constituency and those three words: “Rivers of blood”.

In 20 years, he predicted (wrongly), this country would be flooded with “immigrants and their descendants”. Then came the words ending his political career, words that took thousands on to the streets to protest at his sacking by Ted Heath: “As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood.”

That year Martin Luther King’s assassination saw US cities torn apart by racial warfare which, he said, “we watch with horror”. But it was inevitable here, as well, Apocalypse by the end of the century. Now, once again, we’re being told of the horrors to come.

“Immigrants,” thunders the Daily Express, “can’t wait to arrive in the land of dole and benefits”. The Daily Mail agrees: “Benefits Britain, here we come.” While others warn that the flood – yes, always a flood – of immigrants will cripple the health service and education system “as they help themselves to state benefits”.

Benefits? Few speak of the benefits immigration has brought in so many areas – that the health service would have crashed long ago but for immigrants. In passing, the Sunday Express predicted more problems “when Britain is confronted with an HIV timebomb as Romanian teenagers descend on our overstretched health service”.

This is a nation built by immigrants, my grandfather was one of them. And always, always there have been Enochs.

Look back 50,000 years or so and there on top of what would one day be Penylan Hill, Ee-Nok, Neanderthal knuckle-dragger, gives his very own Rivers of blood speech.

“Bloody Cro-Magnons. Ruinin’ ow country. My daughter been on the list since the last Ice Age but them – soon as they get yer they’re shouting the odds round the office and before you know it they got their cave. No waiting.”

“Yeah”, someone shouts, in the Vale, as well. “Better class of cave, innit. An’ the benefits... they gets 10 times as many seashells an’ beads as wot we do. Blimey, it’s 50 seashells for one manky slice of mammoth these days, all we can afford an we was born an’ bred on the banks of the Taff. But they gets deer an’ pork and goat an’ the local shaman’s surgery is full of flaming Cro-Magnons getting their evil spirits exorcised for nuffink. Come back next month for us.”

Fast forward a few thousand years and it’s the Celts upsetting the locals, then the Romans, Vikings and Normans, Irish and Italians, every new wave greeted by an Enoch seeing the River Taff foaming with much blood.

But in time the newcomers adapted to the customs of the country, were absorbed and became Welsh even though there was always a sentimental spot reserved for the Old Country. Now, Enoch would thunder, they want US to adapt to THEIR customs and he wouldn’t believe his luck at what’s happening.

Here is the apocalypse I promised, he could say, as British-born Muslim fanatics plan to murder thousands of their fellow countrymen in the name of Islam. Imagine his glee as he hones in on those appalling “honour killings,” the mobs on the streets of Britain calling for the beheading of anyone who “insults Islam”. What ammunition militant Muslims would give him as they call for the killing of Salman Rushdie while their leaders stay silent. How he would delight in such idiocies as a school musical’s name being changed from The Three Little Pigs to The Three Little Puppies” to avoid offending Muslims.

In truth, we are afraid of offending Muslims. In case those aforementioned loonies among them repeat their tiresome – and criminal – call to Behead the Infidel. And until organisations like the Muslim Council of Britain stop pussyfooting around and offer clear condemnation of the fanatics and hate-peddlers, they merely offer even more ammunition to the racists on this 40th anniversary of THAT speech who will continue to shout. . .

Enoch was right.