As we appraocah the European elections of 2019. We find the culture wars intensify and the prejudice of the blue kippers spill across the land. As we face the propsect of a Samhain or halloween exit from Europe into the kipper dark of November we should reflect that it's been over 50 years since Enoch
Powell's rivers of blood speech. Powell laid the foundation for a hard right
white supremacist model of politics. Powell was a Classical scholar of some
note and yet his prejudice; his narrowness and his League of Empire Loyalist
approach was not reflected in the reality of Roman society. He might well froth
at the mouth and see the River Tiber turning blood red...yet he was wrong.
Modern scholarship reveals that Rome
was multicultural, multiracial and multipath There were black Centurions on
Hadrian's Wall and their Celtic legionary troops in Palestine. Mary Beards
research has shown the lack of Powell's knowledge. Powell knew of the Roman
elite yet he never pointed out that it was the plutocrats like Crassus and the
populists like Caesar who brought down the Republic. The elite families of Rome
fought it out and kept the masses quiet with bread and circuses. How apt for
Powell's use of the race card and the patronage of the corporations of that
time. There were black Emperors Brown Emperors and numerous races and
ethnicities appeared in the Senate and as administrators. Yes, there were
slaves but one wonders if parallels can be drawn with the low paid low
deskilled slavery of the call centre and the pound shops.
Powell was one of the
elite and he gloried in the British Empire but failed to see how close he resembled
the demagogues of the Athenian polis and of the Roman tribunes. For Powell
Classics was a study of the elite. He failed to explain that without the
concept of .an Empire wide citizenship St Paul would have been unable to carry
out his missionary journeys. For the blue kippers of today who do not
understand that the freedom granted to St Paul enabled them to create what they
would call in code " Christian Civilization " ironically it was
Theodosius a Christian Emperor of Byzantium who brought in religious
intolerance and limited the rights to travel for citizens.
The thoughts of Enoch Powell have
cursed our society. It has laid the foundations of the hard right. And for the
pound shop Powell's of today it has provided the oxygen of hate and fear.
Powell's history is partial. He served as s Unionist MP in Northern Ireland
after leaving his Wolverhampton seat. He served as a representative of a narrow
theocratic party. His scholarship of Ancient Rome was brilliant yet partial and
it offers nothing to the new popular people’s history of today. He could
manipulate but could never understand. His toxic legacy divides us rather than
links us. The blood in the River comes from the millions slain by the military
industrial complex of the European states, it comes from the victims of the far
right and of the alt right. Powell begat them all and cast division amongst us
all. He stirred up fear and it is our blood that he risked staining not only
the River Tiber red but staining our souls and our thoughts... It has been over
fifty years of separation, isolation and prejudice. Look into the mirror and
see the faces of Farage and Trump looking back.
Forty years ago he was speaking to a
Monday Club meeting in the centre of Swansea. I remember picketing that meeting
and I am so glad I did. Powell left us s toxic legacy. let’s remove the stain
and drain our blood from the numerous rivers he polluted. I was at an English
Prep school in the Midlands in 1968. The teachers at the school loved Powell
and the racism and prejudice there was that of Powell. I have loathed his ilk
ever since.
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