Immigration: It Is Worse than Enoch Powell Predicted

From the desk of John Laughland on Wed, 2008-04-16 05:15

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Of all the great misquotations in political history, none can surely be more persistent that the use of the phrase “rivers of blood” in reference to the speech given by the controversial British politician, Enoch Powell, forty years ago on Sunday (on 20 April 1968).
 
What Powell in fact said was, “As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood’.” He did not talk about “rivers of blood” as such. A classical scholar, Powell perhaps thought that people would understand his reference to Book 6 of the Aeneid, in which the Sibyl recounts a prophecy of terrible wars to come. No doubt the vision was supposed to be of the Tiber actually foaming with blood, but Powell was some way from predicting actual bloodshed in Britain. Instead, he was using the quotation to communicate his sense of terrible foreboding.
 
Like many prophets of doom, Powell was furiously denounced for what many people regarded as a highly inflammatory attack on mass immigration. It is true that he had used some rather unfortunate language in his speech. But Powell’s basic sin was to have expressed openly – and dramatically – what many people were saying in private, namely that they no longer felt at home in their own country as a result of mass immigration.
 
Forty years on, it is obvious that Powell was both right and wrong. He was right that mass immigration would fundamentally change the nature of British society. That, indeed, is the point of it: supporters of mass immigration are more interested in multiculturalism as a political ideology than in any supposed economic benefits of it.
 
But he was wrong to permit one decisive, cataclysmic event. Although there have, of course, been outbursts of racial tension in Britain, and although immigration has contributed massively to the rise in violent crime on the streets of Britain’s major cities – one in five prisoners in Britain today is a Muslim, even though the number of Muslims living in Britain is probably around one sixtieth of the total population – what has in fact happened is perhaps worse: a slow erosion of the principles and values of British life which has occurred without people really noticing. Anyone who looks at a film from fifty or even forty years ago can see that the country has changed out of all recognition.
 
Immigration has greatly increased under the present Labour government. The huge influx of Poles is the most visible part of it, but the continued immigration from the third world has been massive as well. Immigration is openly discussed (and hotly contested) in several mass circulation newspapers, especially the Daily Mail and the Daily Express which conduct vigorous anti-immigration campaigns. They point out, among other things, that it is false to claim that immigration has no effect on employment among the indigenous population.
 
On the contrary, the government has been forced to admit, after many years of claiming the opposite, that the number of indigenous British people has fallen as the wave of immigration from Eastern Europe has risen in recent years. The number of immigrants, both from Eastern Europe and the third world, is now so great that it is almost impossible to find a single English person working in a shop of restaurant in London. I am not exaggerating. There are, of course, many inner city areas (including in the East End of London) where you hardly ever see a white face. As a result, there is now a very considerable phenomenon of “white flight” in Britain, white people leaving the inner cities and even the country in order to live in parts of the country, or other parts of the world, where they are not surrounded by immigrants. Hundreds of thousands of British people every year emigrate or move to the provinces for this reason. Those who stay practise segregation for their children: in London, all state school children are black while all private school children are white.
 
Powell was a bizarre figure. He was sacked from the Cabinet and left the Conservative Party after his famous speech; but it was not just on immigration that he disagreed with the Tories. He also fell out with Prime Minister Ted Heath’s over Europe, a subject on which he was as prophetic as on mass immigration and for which he is still revered by many Eurosceptic Tories today. But unlike them, Powell also disagreed with the pro-American stance of the entire British political class. He regarded British and American interests as different and often incompatible. He became convinced during the war (rightly) that the United States was determined to destroy the British empire. By contrast, the vast majority of Conservatives even today hold it as an article of faith that Britain must servilely copy everything the Americans do. This has now become the distinguishing feature of British foreign policy under New Labour.
 
For all these reasons, I agreed with Enoch Powell on almost everything and of course admired him greatly. Yet I never warmed to the man. On “Desert Island Discs”, a popular and well-established radio programme in which interviewees pick eight records they would take to them on a desert island, and on which Powell appeared in the late 1980s, Powell chose exclusively excerpts from Wagner’s Ring. I adore the Ring, and Wagner generally, but the choice of one single work of music, however superb, seemed to me to betray a basic strangeness, almost inhumanity. My impression of a certain inhumanity – a cussed determination to shock and to estrange – was confirmed when he was asked at the end of the interview if there was anything in his life he regretted. Powell replied, “I would like to have been killed in the war.”

Muslims far more than 1/60 of Britain's population!

Submitted by Clivus on Sat, 2008-04-19 14:55.

John, you've grossly low-balled the numbers here. While it's true that Muslim populations have been overestimated in Europe (chiefly in France, where most of the Lebanese and Algerians were Jewish or Christian, not Muslim), they've done things like marketing surveys, involvement in mosques, birth certificate analyses and so forth. The Muslim population in the UK has exploded-- in the past 10 years alone, almost 6 million immigrants and streamed in, a very large number of whom are Muslim. Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Somalis, Indian Muslims, Sierra Leoneans and Muslim Nigerians, Yemenis and so forth constitute a very large share of the immigrants. The same way that, e.g., Muslim Indonesians, Sudanese and Malaysians comprise a large share of immigrants to Australia.

And it's not just the first generation-- Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Somalis in particular have an extremely high fertility rate.

So the numbers in the UK now, suggest at least 4 million and perhaps closer to 5 million Muslims. And rapidly growing.

Look!.. it's tryin' to think

Submitted by Sagunto on Thu, 2008-04-17 19:57.

@armor,

So let me try to get this straight, this second non-question of yours, okay?

 

"..Another symetrical question I could ask you is "Why do you think the Jews support immigration, and what part of Europeanness causes them irritation?". These questions are rhetorical. Please don't answer.."

So again, you could ask me.. but in fact you don't, right?

I won't bother with spelling, but perhaps you're also having a bit of trouble to understand what the word "symmetry" actually means? You need not worry about any answer, 'cause first of all I'm still waiting for one and besides, y'r "could-be" question is way too asymmetrical for me anyway ;-)

 

Try some decaf every now and then, it might do you good.

Sag.

Medved is for open borders

Submitted by johnnycanuck on Thu, 2008-04-17 18:44.

Michael Medved spent a good part of last year shouting "racist" and "nativist" at conseratives opposed to the Kennedy-McCain amnesty that would have brought tens of millions of migrants to the US.

Charles Krauthammer has always been pro-mass immigration in the past though lately he seems to have become a bit more conservative on the issue - certainly with regards to illegal aliens - though I think he opposes mass deportations of illegals. Like all neocons (ex-communists and left wing liberals) he believes the US is not a real nation. He believes it is merely a proposition to which anyway can become a part of. So I'd be surprised if he truly supported border control. Either way it is not something he seems to care much about.

Jonah Goldberg has made positive noises in recent years on the immigration matter but has spent many more years attacking those to his Right whom he saw as "anti-immigrant" and "nativist".

I don't know about Praeger.

All of the above neocons supported Bush in the last election despite knowing of his pro-amnesty plans. You see, the Middle East, and its borders matter more to neocons than those of the "proposition nation" known as the USA.

An acute form of ethnocentrism

Submitted by ovalteen on Thu, 2008-04-17 18:17.

Atheling writes: Secondly, not ALL Jewish people support mass immigration. Indeed, many conservative American Jews like Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, Charles Krauthammer, Jonah Goldberg, etc... favor restricted immigration and are adamantly opposed to illegal immigration.

It appears that many Europeans are suffering from JDS (Jewish Derangement Syndrome), as the Left suffer from Bush Derangement Syndrome.

You are becoming an ugly people, Europeans, very ugly, indeed.

Ath', you really owe to yourself, as an adult, to break free of the media's conditioning. Perhaps this quote from the Jewish conservative Lawrence Auster will help you begin to do so:

It is an acute form of ethnocentrism in which Jews, a religiously and ethnically distinct minority making up two percent of the population, put themselves at the center of America and insist that America form its most fateful national policy, immigration, around the emotional needs and fears of Jews.

http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/010326.html

You say American whites, unlike wicked European whites, haven't persecuted Jews. That doesn't mean Jews feel secure in America or wish you to retain control of the country you built. I don't myself believe that ALL Jews support mass immigration, but, not being a child, I recognize that it isn't necessary for ALL Jews to do so for Auster's words to be true.

@Armor: again no answer..

Submitted by Sagunto on Thu, 2008-04-17 18:05.

Perhaps you don't quite understand my question. Could be my own faulty Dutchy-English, so I'll try to be as specific as possible. If you then are still unable to produce a straightforward answer, well I won't bother you with it again. Deal?

 

Here goes..

Mass immigration is "the right thing" for a vast majority of the ruling elites in the West. Nothing specificly Jewish here. Your suspicions sound just as if someone with some grudge against gays would say:

"I think you already know that gay support for the policy of racial replacement irritates me no end".

You could even throw in some names of a few gay politicians who support immigration. My question to you obviously would be the same: Why the specific ferocity?

Sag.

@Sagunto

Submitted by Armor on Thu, 2008-04-17 18:28.

This is an improved reply to Sagunto's previous posts, not to his latest :

Sagunto: " @Armor: YOU first.. "

I did not ask you any question. I said I could ask you the same question.

"again: WTF about the Jewish thing?

1) What you are saying with your question is that there is something wrong with people who say that Jewish support for mass immigration is a problem. What you imply is that Jewish support for the racial replacement of my people is something nice and natural (or doesn't exist?), while my disapproval of it is a sign of unhealthy Jew-hating.

2) My ANSWER to you was that there is nothing wrong with people who point to the important responsibility of the Jews in the policy of mass immigration, but there is something wrong with people like YOU who try to intimidate people who state the fact that Jews massively support mass immigration. This is what I meant when I said that we (or "I" if you like) could ask you the same question.

So, in fact, I did answer your accusation, although I did not reply to the slur in your question "what part of Jewishness causes your irritation". Another symetrical question I could ask you is "Why do you think the Jews support immigration, and what part of Europeanness causes them irritation?". These questions are rhetorical. Please don't answer.

@Sagunto

Submitted by Armor on Thu, 2008-04-17 18:38.

"Why the specific ferocity?"

There has not been any ferocity on my part.

" Your suspicions sound just as if someone with some grudge against gays would say: "I think you already know that gay support for the policy of racial replacement irritates me no end". You could even throw in some names of a few gay politicians who support immigration."

Okay. So what you are saying is that Jews do not have any special responsibility in the organization of mass immigration. This is where you are wrong. No wonder we are getting nowhere.

The US did want to destroy the British Empire, and rightly so

Submitted by Rob the Ugly American on Thu, 2008-04-17 17:17.

Roosevelt's views on this issue are a simple matter of historic fact; he was a strong anti-imperialist who detested the de facto slavery in which European powers held the world at the time, and had done so for centuries. This does not mean he did not support the UK or want them to win the war; he thought that the notion that Europeans should keep the rest of the world under their thumbs and continue to enrich themselves at others' expense was outmoded and immoral, especially as Europe had shown themselves to be capable of the most evil acts in history.

Our own sins are that in the decades since we have adapted a modified version of the European empire. Much European anti-Americanism (probably including the writer's) comes from the jealousy that Europeans feel because they can no longer keep the rest of the world in bondage to them, and the notion that they could do a better job at it than the Americans (the latter being an obviously ridiclous idea, considering the events of the first half of the 20th Century).

@Sagunto

Submitted by Armor on Thu, 2008-04-17 16:54.

"..what exactly is the distinctive part of Jewishness that causes your irritation?"

Maybe the question is not addressed to me, as I have never been an activist in anything. I think we would be entitled to ask YOU what the fuck about the Jewish thing. Why is it not all right to state the fact that Jews massively support mass immigration and the genocidal replacement of European people?

And I do find it revolting that people like Atheling would be tricked into thinking that Jonah Goldberg wants to control immigration to the USA.

@Armor: YOU first..

Submitted by Sagunto on Thu, 2008-04-17 17:27.

you said:
"..I think we would be entitled to ask YOU what the fuck about the Jewish thing.."

But of course you (we?) are entitled to ask your what-da-fuck question about my
Why The Ferocity caption in my earlier post. But here's the thing: you didn't answer @atheling's question and you didn't answer mine either. So with all due respect and lots of sugar on top.. would you oblige me?

I'll repeat the Q one more time:

"what exactly is the distinctive part of Jewishness that causes your irritation?"

Sag.

@Sagunto

Submitted by Armor on Thu, 2008-04-17 17:43.

"what exactly is the distinctive part of Jewishness that causes your irritation?"

I think you already know that Jewish support for the policy of racial replacement irritates me no end.

@Saharian

Submitted by atheling on Thu, 2008-04-17 04:50.

"Jews were amongst the most pro-American of the Conservative Party activists I encountered"

For good reason, I imagine. Jews in America fare well, and we haven't relegated them to ghettos, or concentration camps, or indulged in pogroms. Perhaps Jews, who have experienced a great deal of persecution over the centuries, recognize that there is freedom in America for everyone, and that the law protects them equally.

"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.” – Thomas Paine

WTF about the Jewish thing???

Submitted by atheling on Wed, 2008-04-16 23:51.

Saharian:  "I was irritated by the unthinking pro-American stance of certain Conservative Party activists in London, especially Jewish ones."

Why, pray tell, is it particularly the "Jewish ones" that "irritate" you? 

Armor:  "Some supporters of mass immigration want to live in a country where the whites have become a minority. This is particularly the case of many Jewish organizations."

Do tell us of some "Jewish organizations" which support mass immigration, please. 

Secondly, not ALL Jewish people support mass immigration.  Indeed, many conservative American Jews like Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, Charles Krauthammer, Jonah Goldberg, etc... favor restricted immigration and are adamantly opposed to illegal immigration.

It appears that many Europeans are suffering from JDS (Jewish Derangement Syndrome), as the Left suffer from Bush Derangement Syndrome.

You are becoming an ugly people, Europeans, very ugly, indeed. 

 

 

"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.” – Thomas Paine

re: wtf

Submitted by Armor on Thu, 2008-04-17 00:11.

"Indeed, many conservative American Jews like Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, Charles Krauthammer, Jonah Goldberg, etc... favor restricted immigration and are adamantly opposed to illegal immigration."

From what I understand, Goldberg is a bogus conservative who pretends to be tough on immigration, but actually likes to denounce anti-immigration activists.

I don't know about the 3 others, but they are probably the same as Goldberg.
Tell me if they are not.

re: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Submitted by atheling on Thu, 2008-04-17 00:14.

From what you understand?

Your "understanding" of things does not exactly inspire confidence.

"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.” – Thomas Paine

Supporters of mass immigration

Submitted by Armor on Wed, 2008-04-16 23:36.

Laughland said: "He was right that mass immigration would fundamentally change the nature of British society. That, indeed, is the point of it: supporters of mass immigration are more interested in multiculturalism as a political ideology than in any supposed economic benefits of it. "

Some supporters of mass immigration want to live in a country where the whites have become a minority. This is particularly the case of many Jewish organizations. Other people support mass immigration because they like to destroy things, although they would rather not live next to immigrants. But I think most "supporters of immigration" are simply leftists who like to cling to the politically correct line. They don't really have an opinion about anything, but they like to have the right postures. And they enjoy denouncing anti-immigration activists as racists and fascists. I don't think it is important to them whether there is a racial replacement or not. They haven't thought about it.

In the political field, I think most conservative members of parliament are against mass immigration, but it is easier for them to say that they welcome mass immigration as an enrichment to the country.

Good ol' American Conspiracy

Submitted by B. English on Wed, 2008-04-16 17:38.

"He became convinced during the war (rightly) that the United States was determined to destroy the British empire" sez John Laughland.

So that explains why the U.S. federal government supplied England with weapons for those initial years of the second world war (before the U.S. was drawn into war)! I see why so many Americans lost their lives in Europe during the war. How sneaky of the Yanks!!!

John seems to have some agenda regarding Americans.

Powell and Orwell

Submitted by dchamil on Wed, 2008-04-16 15:13.

As George Orwell presciently remarked, "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."

Reconquista,did you allow in

Submitted by ROBERT CROSS on Wed, 2008-04-16 12:10.

Reconquista,did you allow in your figures that poles and all the other effluent from europe are included in the white figures?just as in america ,with the mexicans, those that are not english or indigenous british are always included to swell the numbers,to put flesh on the lie.

Powell as prophet

Submitted by ovalteen on Wed, 2008-04-16 08:23.

But he was wrong to permit one decisive, cataclysmic event.

I think he predicted serious inter-racial conflict rather than one decisive, cataclysmic event. The serious inter-racial conflict has begun and will get worse. Even so, there are undoubtedly large numbers of Muslims in the UK who would happily nuke London if they could. Nor are atomic bombs the only horror they are hoping to get their hands on.

Powell was a bizarre figure.

Yes, he was, but when lunacy becomes normal and lies govern policy, it takes bizarre people to point out the truth and attack the lies.

Not quite true

Submitted by reconquista on Wed, 2008-04-16 07:05.

"in London, all state school children are black while all private school children are white."

This may be true in the future but it's not quite accurate now.

MAINTAINED PRIMARY SCHOOLS (1): NUMBER AND PERCENTAGE OF PUPILS BY ETHNIC GROUP
England:
White: 80.7% (White British 77.0%)
(South) Asian 8.4%
Black: 4.6%

London:
White: 47.0% (White British 36.8%)
(South) Asian 17.6%
Black: 20.9%

Inner London:
White: 33.4% (White British 21.5%)
(South) Asian 19%
Black: 30.5%

http://www.dfes.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/SFR/s000744/SFR30_2007_LAtables_3.xls

I think the maintained schools numbers exclude independent (private) schools but I could be wrong.