Notes
Quoted in J. Solomos, “‘Strangers in their own land’: Powellism’s policy Impact”, Patterns of Prejudice, Vol. 53 (2), 2019, 10. See also P. Corthorn, Enoch Powell: Politics and Ideas in Modern Britain, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2019, p. 159-161.
I have decided against using the phrase, preferring to refer to his ‘Birmingham speech’, like Randall Hansen or Peter Brooke. See Hansen, 182; Peter Brooke, “India, Post-Imperialism and the Origins of Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ Speech”, The Historical Journal, Vol. 50 (3), 2007, 669-687. Interestingly, Brooke uses “rivers of blood” in his title but not within his article, where there is talk of his “Birmingham speech”. On the choice itself, see O. Esteves & S. Porion (eds), The Lives and Afterlives of Enoch Powell: The Undying Political Animal, Abingdon, Routledge, 2019, p. 2.
Thompson, Ben. Ban This Filth! Letters from the Mary Whitehouse Archive, London, Faber, 2012.
See for instance Archive on 4, “50 Years on: ‘Rivers of Blood’”, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09z08w3
See Like the Roman: The Life of Enoch Powell, London, Faber & Faber, 2008 [1988], p. 449 ; Powell delighted in using this rocket metaphor. It is well-known he confided in his then journalist friend Clement Jones, just before the speech: “I’m not telling you what is in my next speech. You’ll get an advance copy in the fullness of time. But you know how a rocket goes up into the air, breaks up and explodes into lots of stars and then falls down to the ground. Well, this speech is going to go up like a rocket, and when it gets to the top, the stars are going to stay up” (Nick Jones, Clement Jones’s son in Esteves & Porion (eds)), p. 53.
Camilla Schofield also insists on the fact that Powell kept his speech a secret from his party before delivering it, which is a breach of protocol for any member of a Shadow Cabinet. See her Enoch Powell and the Making of Post-colonial Britain, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2013, p. 209.
Staffordshire Record Office (hereafter SRO], Powell Papers [hereafter PP], D3123/13.
SRO, PP, D3123/333.
Carter, Dann. Politics of Rage, George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1995, p. 250.
SRO, PP, D3123/16.
SRO, PP, D3123/14.
Respectively SRO, PP, D3123/13; D3123/12; D3123/336.
The former was very reluctant to publish anti-immigration views, the latter was not at all. On The Telegraph & Argus for instance, see O. Esteves, The Desegregation of English Schools: Bussing, Race and Urban Space, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2018, 72-3.
On the way newspaper editors may act as gatekeepers in giving access to the “Letters to the editor” columns, see J. E. Richardson, B. Franklin. “Dear Editor, race, readers’ letters and the local press,” Political Quarterly, Vol. 74 (2), 2003, p. 92.
For instance in SRO, PP, D3123/336.
See D. Newton, Paving the Empire Road: BBC Television and Black Britons, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011, p. 209-210.
Ibid., 204-5.
Ibid., 197-8.
J. Street, “Malcolm X, Smethwick, and the Influence of the African American Freedom Struggle on British Race Relations in the 1960s”, Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 38 (6), 2008, p. 942.
Respectively SRO, PP, D3123/13; D3123/50; D3123/167; D3123/336.
SRO, PP, D3123/11.
SRO, PP, D3123/11.
J. Street, p. 943.
SRO, PP, D3123/53.
SRO, PP, D3123/77.
Quoted in D. Newton, p. 201.
See man from Southampton, SRO, PP, D3123/333.
See G. Schaffer, “‘Till Death Us Do Part’ and the BBC: Racial Politics and the British Working Classes 1965-75”, Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 45 (2), 2010, p. 454-477.
Newton, Darell. p. 201.
Schwarz, Bill. Memories of Empire: The White Man’s World, Vol.1. London & New York, Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 4-9.
Also see A. Whipple, “Revisiting the ‘Rivers of Blood’ Controversy: Letters to Enoch Powell”, Journal of British Studies, no. 48 (July 2009), p. 729-730 for similar epistolary backlash.
For details, see P. Thompson, “Labour’s ‘Gannex conscience’? Politics and popular attitudes in the ‘permissive society’” in R. Coopey, S. Fielding, N. Tiratsoo (eds.), The Wilson Governments 1964-1970, London, Pinter, 1993, p. 137-8.
Ibid., p. 139.
Ibid., p. 141. On theatre censorship more specifically, see R. Vinen, The Long ’68: Radical Protest and its Enemies, London, Penguin Books, 2018, p. 203.
In October 1968, The People published an article entitled “If the word ‘student’ makes you sick”, see R. Vinen, p. 216.
SRO, PP, D3123/63.
Respectively SRO, PP, D3123/16; D3123/80; D3123/90; D3123/95.
SRO, PP, D3123/47.
A parallel may be ventured with the U.S., see Michelle M. Nickerson, Mothers of Conservatism: Women and the Postwar Right, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2014.
SRO, PP, D3123/20.
On this question, see Justin Gest, The New Minority: White Working-Class Politics in an Age of Immigration and Inequality, New York, Oxford University Press, 2016, which is a comparative ethnographic fieldwork in Youngstown (Ohio) and in Barking / Dagenham (East London).
Gilborn, David. “The White working-class, racism and respectability: victims, degenerates and interest-convergence”, British Journal of Educational Studies, Vol. 58 (1), 2010, p. 3-4
Quoted in Me, Me, Me? The Search for Community in Post-War England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), p. 155. Also Kjartan Páll Sveinsson (ed.), Who Cares About the White Working-Class? (London: Runnymede Trust, 2009) : https://www.runnymedetrust.org/uploads/publications/ pdfs/WhoCaresAbout TheWhiteWorkingClass-2009.pdf (accessed 20. 02. 2020).
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFo1xOSlGgg (at 2.15)
On this question, see L. Simpson, N. Finney, Sleepwalking to Segregation? Challenging Myths about Race and Migration, Bristol, Policy Press, 2009.
See Archive on 4, “50 Years on: ‘Rivers of Blood’”, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09z08w3.
Quoted in C. Schofield, p. 248.
The Guardian, “Knock, Knock, it’s Enoch…”, 12. 12. 2014.
Quoted in S. Hirsch, In the Shadow of Enoch Powell: Race, Locality and Resistance, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2018, p. 11.
For other anecdotal evidence, see C. Schofield, p. 247.
Quoted in Hirsch, p. 12.
Quoted in B. Richardson (ed.), Tell It Like It Is: How Our Schools Fail Black Children, London, Bookmarks, 2007, p. 127.
Quoted in G. Allport, The Nature of Prejudice, Cambridge (Mass.), Perseus Group, 1979 [1954], p. 15.
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