The "Rivers of Blood" speech was made by the British politician Enoch Powell on 20 April 1968 to a meeting of the Conservative Political Centre in Birmingham. In it Powell, who was then Shadow Secretary of State for Defence in the Shadow Cabinet of Ted Heath, strongly criticised the rates of immigration from the New Commonwealth (mostly former colonies of the British Empire) to the United Kingdom since the Second World War. He also opposed the Race Relations Bill, an anti-discrimination bill which upon receiving royal assent as the Race Relations Act 1968 criminalised the refusal of housing, employment, or public services to persons on the grounds of colour, race, or ethnic or national origin. Powell himself called it "the Birmingham speech"; "Rivers of Blood" alludes to a prophecy from Virgil's Aeneid which Powell (a classical scholar) quoted:
As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see 'the River Tiber foaming with much blood'.[1]
The speech was a national controversy, and it made Powell one of the most talked-about and divisive politicians in Britain. Heath, the leader of the Conservative Party at the time, dismissed him from the Shadow Cabinet the day after the speech.[2] According to most accounts the popularity of Powell's views on immigration might have been a decisive factor in the Conservative Party’s unexpected victory at the 1970 general election, although he became one of the most persistent opponents of the subsequent Heath ministry.[2][3]
- ^ Heffer 1998, p. 449; the line in Virgil is Aen. VI, 87: [et] Thybrim multo spumantem sanguine cerno.
- ^ a b McLean 2001, pp. 129–130
- ^ Heffer 1998, p. 568