BBC - Radio 4 - 1968, Rivers of Blood, The Real Source CRACKING ENOCH'S CODE Rob Shepherd, the presenter, gives his own views on that fateful speech by Enoch Powell: Trying to fathom what was in Enoch Powell's mind when he made his explosive 'rivers of blood' on 20th April 1968 has been like reading a detective novel when one knows 'whodunit', but the motive remains a mystery till the very end. Along the way there are plenty of plausible theories, but the facts never quite fit. While making BBC Radio 4's 1968: Rivers of Blood - the Real Source, I wanted to discover what suddenly drove a widely respected politician, such as Powell, to highlight lurid allegations about immigrants, repeat racist language and speak in apocalyptic terms? Was he genuinely voicing his constituents' concerns? Was he racist? Was he trying to do down his arch-rival, Edward Heath, the then Tory leader? Or was something else preying on Powell's mind?

I first tried to crack this mystery when, after Powell lost his seat in the Commons in 1987, I produced a television profile of him with Nick Ross for Channel 4. We filmed Powell for several hours in his small study at his London home one sultry July day. As the temperature from the TV lights soared, Powell, who was wearing his customary three-piece suit, remained as cool as a cucumber. 'I can take the heat', he assured us, because he had spent several years in India during the 1940s. I was struck then by India's impact on Powell. He had returned to England in 1946 determined to become viceroy, but independence the following year shattered his ambition - after hearing the news, he wandered London's night-time streets in despair. But he was Delphic about any link with his 'rivers of blood' speech. (308) The theory that Powell was motivated by racism was disproved when I again filmed Powell in 1993 for a Channel 4 series on post-war Britain, What Has Become Of Us, that I made with the historian, Peter Hennessy.

Powell recalled on camera one of his finest parliamentary speeches, when he accused the Tory Government in 1959 of having failed African detainees who had beaten and murdered in British-ruled Kenya. Powell told us how, having savaged his fellow Tories, he sat down in the Commons and wept. As he spoke, we noticed the tears were flowing again, 34 years later. Powell's withering assault and his emotional reaction were not the behaviour of a racist. A few years before Powell's death in 1998, I was commissioned to write an unofficial biography. He put no obstacles in my way, but did not allow me see his private papers. I discovered that before his fateful speech, Powell had confided in a journalist friend, telling him that 'the stars' from the 'rocket' he was about to launch would stay in the sky for a long time. This incident proved that Powell intended to shock people with his 'rivers of blood' speech. He had been frustrated that his constituents' concerns were being ignored, and by making the issue of immigration his own, so he thought, he would boost his chances of usurping Heath as Tory leader. But a final piece of the jigsaw was missing.

Then, a year or so ago, I was contacted out of the blue by a Cambridge historian, Peter Brooke, who was researching Powell's private papers, now held at the Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge. He'd found evidence linking Powell's experience of India with the 'rivers of blood' speech. We met for lunch, and as Peter talked, I realised that the real source of the 'rivers of blood' had finally been traced. My visit to Cambridge to examine this new evidence is the climax to BBC Radio 4's 1968: Rivers of Blood - the Real Source. As Peter Brooke and I leaf through Powell's papers, we find a strand that runs through his thinking from his days in military intelligence in India during 1943-46 and provides the missing clue to his motives in 1968. In the days of the Raj, Brigadier Powell argued that India was not ready for independence, because of 'communalism', i.e. an overriding loyalty to a group that would prevent people being rational voters or accepting the majority decision when they were in a minority. The bloody, communal violence that accompanied Indian partition and independence confirmed his worst fears.

Powell feared that immigration would import communalism into Britain, eroding its homogeneous electorate and undermining its parliamentary system. In the early 1950s, Powell abandoned his imperialism, but he never discarded his fear of communalism and its potentially bloody consequences. Robert Shepherd is a broadcaster and biographer of Powell. 1968: Rivers of Blood - the Real Source was broadcast on Radio 4 on Monday 3rd March 2008 at 8:00 p.m. and is repeated on Sunday 20th April 2008 at 1:30pm. Further Reading Enoch Powell: a Biography, by Robert Shepherd. Publisher: Pimlico; New Ed edition (4 Sep 1997) ISBN-10: 0712673253 FactCheck: Enoch Powell's 1968 speech - Channel 4 News FactCheck: Enoch Powell's 1968 speech By Channel 4 News Updated on 07 April 2008 Forty years ago, Conservative politician Enoch Powell made one of the most controversial speeches in British history - and effectively ended his political career.

The 'Rivers of Blood' speech outlined his fears at the numbers of immigrants coming into Britain, and their impact on society as he knew it. FactCheck looks at some of the claims in his speech, and how they compared to the wider picture then and now. All quotes are from Enoch Powell's speech to the Conservative Association meeting in Birmingham, 20 April 1968. The elderly widow "'Eight years ago in a respectable street in Wolverhampton a house was sold to a Negro. Now only one white (a woman old-age pensioner) lives there. This is her story...'" Powell tells the story, which he quoted from a letter, of one of his constituents - a widow whose sons had died in the war. The unidentified woman had taken boarders in at her seven-bed house, but gradually her white tenants had left, and she refused to let rooms to immigrants. Powell recounted how "negroes" abused her at 7am when she refused to let them use her phone. "She is becoming afraid to go out," quoted Powell. "Windows are broken. She finds excreta pushed through her letterbox." The emotive tale touched a nerve, but who was the woman?

Powell steadfastly refused to identify her, writing to a Labour MP: "I never disclose ... particulars likely to assist in the identification of constituents ... whose cases I may use to illustrate circumstances." When grilled on television in January 1969 by David Frost, Powell was repeatedly asked whether he had verified the story. He deflected the questions, saying instead that he had "verified the source" and hadn't the slightest doubt the story was true, and typical. Had Powell got his facts right or could he have fallen prey to National Front propaganda? So had Powell got his facts right or could he have fallen prey to National Front propaganda? Local and national press at the time tried to track down the elderly widow, but to no avail. Last year, the Radio 4 programme Document enlisted a historian to help sift through the paper trail. They narrowed it down to around 200 women who matched criteria such as having lived in the same street for years, being widowed during the war. The search narrowed down to one woman: Drucilla Cotterill, a homeowner in Brighton Place, then aged 68, who had been taking in lodgers for some years.

Most of the pieces fit, although Cotterill didn't match up completely: she didn't have a telephone, or lose sons during the war. The BBC interviewed former child residents of Brighton Place, who remembered excrement being put through a letterbox, and a dead dog being put through a window. However, other evidence suggested that things were far more friendly. "It is hard to know exactly what his constituents were saying to him at the time," said Robert Pearce, a former professor of modern history and author of Enoch Powell, a biography out later this year. "But if it were a real person, it seems unlikely that it was all accurate." Party policy? "The answers to the simple and rational question are equally simple and rational: by stopping, or virtually stopping, further inflow, and by promoting the maximum outflow. Both answers are part of the official policy of the Conservative party." Although some quarters of the party welcomed Powell's speech, he took things a fair jump further than the official party line in calling for the "maximum outflow" of immigrants.

As the 1966 election manifesto shows, moves to allow immigrants to go back were strictly voluntary: the party would, it said, "help immigrants already here to rejoin their families in their countries of origin, or to return with their families to these countries, if they so wish". As party leader Edward Heath in his statement on Powell's dismissal from the shadow cabinet: "I have repeatedly emphasised that the policy of the Conservative party is that immigration must be most strictly limited and that immigrants wishing to return to their own countries should be financially helped to do so. But everyone already in the country must be treated as equal before the law." Migration numbers "In 15 or 20 years, on present trends, there will be in this country three and a half million Commonwealth immigrants and their descendants. That is not my figure. That is the official figure given to parliament by the spokesman of the Registrar General's Office." As we'll see in the next claim, if anything Powell seems to have underestimated the numbers of immigrants that would come to Britain. But at the time, his three and a half million figure was the kind of dubious statistical representation that gets FactCheck's calculator burning.

As Bill Smithies and Peter Fiddick pointed out in a 1969 analysis of Powell's speech, the 3.5 million estimate was given in a parliamentary answer to the anti-immigration MP Sir Cyril Osborne. He had asked in June 1967 for the government's estimate of the present and likely future coloured population of Britain if the current rate of immigration and immigrant fertility continued - both of which were unlikely to happen owing to newly imposed controls on immigration, and because fertility rates were expected to decline as an immigrant group got more settled and grew older. Still, on this basis, the government gave estimates of one million in 1966, 1.75 million in 1975 and 3.5 million in 1985, although these needed to be taken with caution. If anything Powell seems to have underestimated the numbers of immigrants that would come to Britain. According to official statistics, it's estimated that 472,500 new Commonwealth immigrants entered Britain between 1955 and 1962, when Commonwealth citizens became subject to immigration control and counting procedures were tightened up.

There were then around Commonwealth 60,000 immigrants a year throughout the sixties. In 1968, there were a total of 84,470 immigrants in 1968, 64,380 of them from the Commonwealth. In 1969, the number declined to 48,090; in 1970, 42,380, before peaking at 72,510 (when laws changed). "There is no comparable official figure for the year 2000, but it must be in the region of five to seven million, approximately one-tenth of the whole population, and approaching that of Greater London." Never mind dependants born in the UK: according to 2001 census data, 4.9 million of the UK's population was born overseas, more than double the 2.1 million in 1951.

The decade up to 2001 saw the biggest increase in the post-war years in foreign-born population: 1.1 million, nearly double the 600,000 increase between 1961 and 1971. However, the majority of immigrants nowadays come from Europe, rather than the Commonwealth. And what Powell didn't anticipate was the rise in short-stay migration: just over a third of foreign-born migrants who came to the UK in the nineties left the country within four years of arrival. According to the 2001 census, 87 per cent, or around seven in eight, of England's population described their ethnicity as white British. Rivers of blood "As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see "the River Tiber foaming with much blood'." Just as no one in Casablanca actually says "Play it again, Sam," this is the closest the "Rivers of Blood" speech actually gets to its common title. What's the story behind the line that cemented Powell's reputation for racist rhetoric?

Powell is quoting a prophecy from Virgil's Aeneid, a Roman epic telling the mythological tale of the founding of Rome. On arriving in Italy after many trials and tribulations, the Trojan warrior Aeneas consults a priestess, the Sibyl, to find out how his plans to create the new empire will turn out. Her reply includes the line quoted by Powell: she tells Aeneas that in the process of creating Rome, she saw wars and the River Tiber foaming with blood. 'If it was any old person, you might think they'd just picked a line they liked the sound of and used it, but Powell was one of the best classicists of the twentieth century ... He'd have been well aware of the meaning of the line.' Mary Beard, professor of classics at the University of Cambridge "She was saying that you're going to found a multicultural, cosmopolitan state - and in the eyes of the Romans, Rome was the greatest civilisation - but it will be a painful process," said Mary Beard, professor of classics at the University of Cambridge. Could this suggest a slightly more measured view of immigration - which may bring necessary problems in order to achieve a greater end - than the rest of Powell's speech?

There are other examples of rivers being used in Roman literature as a metaphor for mixed nationalities, giving the idea of a flood of new people coming in - although Powell's quote comes specifically from the Aeneid. "If it was any old person, you might think they'd just picked a line they liked the sound of and used it, but Powell was one of the best classicists of the twentieth century," said Beard. "He'd have been well aware of the meaning of the line." Either way, any nuances of the Latin were lost on Powell's audience. Sources Enoch Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speech - Telegraph Enoch Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speech 12:01AM GMT 06 Nov 2007 This is the full text of Enoch Powell's so-called 'Rivers of Blood' speech, which was delivered to a Conservative Association meeting in Birmingham on April 20 1968. The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils. In seeking to do so, it encounters obstacles which are deeply rooted in human nature.

One is that by the very order of things such evils are not demonstrable until they have occurred: at each stage in their onset there is room for doubt and for dispute whether they be real or imaginary. By the same token, they attract little attention in comparison with current troubles, which are both indisputable and pressing: whence the besetting temptation of all politics to concern itself with the immediate present at the expense of the future. Above all, people are disposed to mistake predicting troubles for causing troubles and even for desiring troubles: "If only," they love to think, "if only people wouldn't talk about it, it probably wouldn't happen." Perhaps this habit goes back to the primitive belief that the word and the thing, the name and the object, are identical. At all events, the discussion of future grave but, with effort now, avoidable evils is the most unpopular and at the same time the most necessary occupation for the politician. Those who knowingly shirk it deserve, and not infrequently receive, the curses of those who come after. A week or two ago I fell into conversation with a constituent, a middle-aged, quite ordinary working man employed in one of our nationalised industries.

After a sentence or two about the weather, he suddenly said: "If I had the money to go, I wouldn't stay in this country." I made some deprecatory reply to the effect that even this government wouldn't last for ever; but he took no notice, and continued: "I have three children, all of them been through grammar school and two of them married now, with family. I shan't be satisfied till I have seen them all settled overseas. In this country in 15 or 20 years' time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man." I can already hear the chorus of execration. How dare I say such a horrible thing? How dare I stir up trouble and inflame feelings by repeating such a conversation? The answer is that I do not have the right not to do so. Here is a decent, ordinary fellow Englishman, who in broad daylight in my own town says to me, his Member of Parliament, that his country will not be worth living in for his children. I simply do not have the right to shrug my shoulders and think about something else.

What he is saying, thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking - not throughout Great Britain, perhaps, but in the areas that are already undergoing the total transformation to which there is no parallel in a thousand years of English history. In 15 or 20 years, on present trends, there will be in this country three and a half million Commonwealth immigrants and their descendants. That is not my figure. That is the official figure given to parliament by the spokesman of the Registrar General's Office. There is no comparable official figure for the year 2000, but it must be in the region of five to seven million, approximately one-tenth of the whole population, and approaching that of Greater London. Of course, it will not be evenly distributed from Margate to Aberystwyth and from Penzance to Aberdeen. Whole areas, towns and parts of towns across England will be occupied by sections of the immigrant and immigrant-descended population. As time goes on, the proportion of this total who are immigrant descendants, those born in England, who arrived here by exactly the same route as the rest of us, will rapidly increase. Already by 1985 the native-born would constitute the majority.

It is this fact which creates the extreme urgency of action now, of just that kind of action which is hardest for politicians to take, action where the difficulties lie in the present but the evils to be prevented or minimised lie several parliaments ahead. The natural and rational first question with a nation confronted by such a prospect is to ask: "How can its dimensions be reduced?" Granted it be not wholly preventable, can it be limited, bearing in mind that numbers are of the essence: the significance and consequences of an alien element introduced into a country or population are profoundly different according to whether that element is 1 per cent or 10 per cent. The answers to the simple and rational question are equally simple and rational: by stopping, or virtually stopping, further inflow, and by promoting the maximum outflow. Both answers are part of the official policy of the Conservative Party. It almost passes belief that at this moment 20 or 30 additional immigrant children are arriving from overseas in Wolverhampton alone every week - and that means 15 or 20 additional families a decade or two hence. Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.

We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependants, who are for the most part the material of the future growth of the immigrant-descended population. It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre. So insane are we that we actually permit unmarried persons to immigrate for the purpose of founding a family with spouses and fiancés whom they have never seen. Let no one suppose that the flow of dependants will automatically tail off. On the contrary, even at the present admission rate of only 5,000 a year by voucher, there is sufficient for a further 25,000 dependants per annum ad infinitum, without taking into account the huge reservoir of existing relations in this country - and I am making no allowance at all for fraudulent entry. In these circumstances nothing will suffice but that the total inflow for settlement should be reduced at once to negligible proportions, and that the necessary legislative and administrative measures be taken without delay.

I stress the words "for settlement." This has nothing to do with the entry of Commonwealth citizens, any more than of aliens, into this country, for the purposes of study or of improving their qualifications, like (for instance) the Commonwealth doctors who, to the advantage of their own countries, have enabled our hospital service to be expanded faster than would otherwise have been possible. They are not, and never have been, immigrants. I turn to re-emigration. If all immigration ended tomorrow, the rate of growth of the immigrant and immigrant-descended population would be substantially reduced, but the prospective size of this element in the population would still leave the basic character of the national danger unaffected. This can only be tackled while a considerable proportion of the total still comprises persons who entered this country during the last ten years or so. Hence the urgency of implementing now the second element of the Conservative Party's policy: the encouragement of re-emigration. Nobody can make an estimate of the numbers which, with generous assistance, would choose either to return to their countries of origin or to go to other countries anxious to receive the manpower and the skills they represent. Nobody knows, because no such policy has yet been attempted.

I can only say that, even at present, immigrants in my own constituency from time to time come to me, asking if I can find them assistance to return home. If such a policy were adopted and pursued with the determination which the gravity of the alternative justifies, the resultant outflow could appreciably alter the prospects. The third element of the Conservative Party's policy is that all who are in this country as citizens should be equal before the law and that there shall be no discrimination or difference made between them by public authority. As Mr Heath has put it we will have no "first-class citizens" and "second-class citizens." This does not mean that the immigrant and his descendent should be elevated into a privileged or special class or that the citizen should be denied his right to discriminate in the management of his own affairs between one fellow-citizen and another or that he should be subjected to imposition as to his reasons and motive for behaving in one lawful manner rather than another.

There could be no grosser misconception of the realities than is entertained by those who vociferously demand legislation as they call it "against discrimination", whether they be leader-writers of the same kidney and sometimes on the same newspapers which year after year in the 1930s tried to blind this country to the rising peril which confronted it, or archbishops who live in palaces, faring delicately with the bedclothes pulled right up over their heads. They have got it exactly and diametrically wrong. The discrimination and the deprivation, the sense of alarm and of resentment, lies not with the immigrant population but with those among whom they have come and are still coming. This is why to enact legislation of the kind before parliament at this moment is to risk throwing a match on to gunpowder. The kindest thing that can be said about those who propose and support it is that they know not what they do. Nothing is more misleading than comparison between the Commonwealth immigrant in Britain and the American Negro.

The Negro population of the United States, which was already in existence before the United States became a nation, started literally as slaves and were later given the franchise and other rights of citizenship, to the exercise of which they have only gradually and still incompletely come. The Commonwealth immigrant came to Britain as a full citizen, to a country which knew no discrimination between one citizen and another, and he entered instantly into the possession of the rights of every citizen, from the vote to free treatment under the National Health Service. Whatever drawbacks attended the immigrants arose not from the law or from public policy or from administration, but from those personal circumstances and accidents which cause, and always will cause, the fortunes and experience of one man to be different from another's. But while, to the immigrant, entry to this country was admission to privileges and opportunities eagerly sought, the impact upon the existing population was very different. For reasons which they could not comprehend, and in pursuance of a decision by default, on which they were never consulted, they found themselves made strangers in their own country.

They found their wives unable to obtain hospital beds in childbirth, their children unable to obtain school places, their homes and neighbourhoods changed beyond recognition, their plans and prospects for the future defeated; at work they found that employers hesitated to apply to the immigrant worker the standards of discipline and competence required of the native-born worker; they began to hear, as time went by, more and more voices which told them that they were now the unwanted. They now learn that a one-way privilege is to be established by act of parliament; a law which cannot, and is not intended to, operate to protect them or redress their grievances is to be enacted to give the stranger, the disgruntled and the agent-provocateur the power to pillory them for their private actions. In the hundreds upon hundreds of letters I received when I last spoke on this subject two or three months ago, there was one striking feature which was largely new and which I find ominous.

All Members of Parliament are used to the typical anonymous correspondent; but what surprised and alarmed me was the high proportion of ordinary, decent, sensible people, writing a rational and often well-educated letter, who believed that they had to omit their address because it was dangerous to have committed themselves to paper to a Member of Parliament agreeing with the views I had expressed, and that they would risk penalties or reprisals if they were known to have done so. The sense of being a persecuted minority which is growing among ordinary English people in the areas of the country which are affected is something that those without direct experience can hardly imagine. I am going to allow just one of those hundreds of people to speak for me: “Eight years ago in a respectable street in Wolverhampton a house was sold to a Negro. Now only one white (a woman old-age pensioner) lives there. This is her story. She lost her husband and both her sons in the war. So she turned her seven-roomed house, her only asset, into a boarding house. She worked hard and did well, paid off her mortgage and began to put something by for her old age. Then the immigrants moved in. With growing fear, she saw one house after another taken over.

The quiet street became a place of noise and confusion. Regretfully, her white tenants moved out. “The day after the last one left, she was awakened at 7am by two Negroes who wanted to use her 'phone to contact their employer. When she refused, as she would have refused any stranger at such an hour, she was abused and feared she would have been attacked but for the chain on her door. Immigrant families have tried to rent rooms in her house, but she always refused. Her little store of money went, and after paying rates, she has less than £2 per week. “She went to apply for a rate reduction and was seen by a young girl, who on hearing she had a seven-roomed house, suggested she should let part of it. When she said the only people she could get were Negroes, the girl said, "Racial prejudice won't get you anywhere in this country." So she went home. “The telephone is her lifeline. Her family pay the bill, and help her out as best they can. Immigrants have offered to buy her house - at a price which the prospective landlord would be able to recover from his tenants in weeks, or at most a few months.

She is becoming afraid to go out. Windows are broken. She finds excreta pushed through her letter box. When she goes to the shops, she is followed by children, charming, wide-grinning piccaninnies. They cannot speak English, but one word they know. "Racialist," they chant. When the new Race Relations Bill is passed, this woman is convinced she will go to prison. And is she so wrong? I begin to wonder.” The other dangerous delusion from which those who are wilfully or otherwise blind to realities suffer, is summed up in the word "integration." To be integrated into a population means to become for all practical purposes indistinguishable from its other members. Now, at all times, where there are marked physical differences, especially of colour, integration is difficult though, over a period, not impossible. There are among the Commonwealth immigrants who have come to live here in the last fifteen years or so, many thousands whose wish and purpose is to be integrated and whose every thought and endeavour is bent in that direction. But to imagine that such a thing enters the heads of a great and growing majority of immigrants and their descendants is a ludicrous misconception, and a dangerous one. We are on the verge here of a change.

Hitherto it has been force of circumstance and of background which has rendered the very idea of integration inaccessible to the greater part of the immigrant population - that they never conceived or intended such a thing, and that their numbers and physical concentration meant the pressures towards integration which normally bear upon any small minority did not operate. Now we are seeing the growth of positive forces acting against integration, of vested interests in the preservation and sharpening of racial and religious differences, with a view to the exercise of actual domination, first over fellow-immigrants and then over the rest of the population. The cloud no bigger than a man's hand, that can so rapidly overcast the sky, has been visible recently in Wolverhampton and has shown signs of spreading quickly. The words I am about to use, verbatim as they appeared in the local press on 17 February, are not mine, but those of a Labour Member of Parliament who is a minister in the present government: 'The Sikh communities' campaign to maintain customs inappropriate in Britain is much to be regretted. Working in Britain, particularly in the public services, they should be prepared to accept the terms and conditions of their employment.

To claim special communal rights (or should one say rites?) leads to a dangerous fragmentation within society. This communalism is a canker; whether practised by one colour or another it is to be strongly condemned.' All credit to John Stonehouse for having had the insight to perceive that, and the courage to say it. For these dangerous and divisive elements the legislation proposed in the Race Relations Bill is the very pabulum they need to flourish. Here is the means of showing that the immigrant communities can organise to consolidate their members, to agitate and campaign against their fellow citizens, and to overawe and dominate the rest with the legal weapons which the ignorant and the ill-informed have provided. As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see "the River Tiber foaming with much blood." That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect. Indeed, it has all but come. In numerical terms, it will be of American proportions long before the end of the century.

Only resolute and urgent action will avert it even now. Whether there will be the public will to demand and obtain that action, I do not know. All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal. April 1968 - Historical Events - On This Day On This Day Historical Events in April 1968 Full Calendar Apr 1 KEMO (now KOFY) TV channel 20 in San Francisco, CA (IND) 1st broadcast Apr 2 Beatles form Python Music Ltd Apr 2 Chad creates Union of Central African States Apr 2 Senator E Mccarthy wins Democratic primaries in Wisconsin Event of Interest Apr 2 "2001 A Space Odyssey" directed by Stanley Kubrick premieres in Washington, D.C. Film Director Apr 3 N Vietnam agrees to meet US reps to set up preliminary peace talks Apr 3 "Planet of the Apes" United States wide premiere Apr 4 "Education of Hyman Kaplan" opens at Alvin Theater NYC for 28 performances Apr 4 Apollo 6 launched atop Saturn V; unmanned Assassination Apr 4 US civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr.

assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee Civil Rights Activist Apr 5 Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego opens Apr 5 US marine base Khe San Vietnam, appalled Apr 6 94.5% of East German voters approve new socialist constitution Apr 6 Firestone World Tournament of Champions won by Dave Davis Apr 6 HemisFair 1968 opens in San Antonio, Texas Apr 6 Gas and gunpowder explosions at sporting goods store, downtown Richmond, Indiana, kills 41 and injures more than 150 Apr 6 13th Eurovision Song Contest: Massiel for Spain wins singing "La, la, la" in London Apr 8 40th Academy Awards postponed to Apr 10th due to death of Martin Luther King Apr 8 Baseball's Opening Day is postponed because of Martin Luther King's assassination Apr 8 Czechoslovakia Cernik government forms Apr 8 New socialist constitution of East Germany takes effect Apr 8 WKPI TV channel 22 in Pikeville, KY (PBS) begins broadcasting Event of Interest Apr 8 Gangsters Henry Hill and Jimmy Burke commit the Air France robbery, stealing $420,000 Mobster and FBI informant Apr

 9 Martin Luther King Jr., buried in Atlanta Apr 9 Minn's Wayne Connelly is 1st to score on a Stanley Cup penalty shot Apr 9 Ralph Aberbathy elected to head So Christian Leadership Conference Apr 10 Ferry Wahine sinks in Wellington harbour, New Zealand on route from Lyttelton (51 killed) Apr 10 "George M!" opens at Palace Theater NYC for 435 performances Apr 10 40th Academy Awards: "In the Heat of the Night", Rod Steiger & Katherine Hepburn win Apr 10 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site Apr 11 Polish Marshal Spychalski succeeds Ochab as president Event of Interest Apr 11 President Lyndon B.

Johnson signs 1968 Civil Rights Act 36th US President Apr 11 W Berlin student Rudi Dutschke seriously wounded at demonstration Apr 11 WHED TV channel 15 in Hanover, NH (PBS) begins broadcasting Apr 12 Nerve gas accident at Skull Valley, Utah.

Apr 14 1st NBA game at Madison Sq Garden, Knicks beat SD Clippers Apr 14 32nd Masters Golf Tournament: Bob Goalby wins, shooting a 277 Apr 14 Marilynn Smith wins LPGA O'Sullivan Golf Open Apr 14 Roberto de Vicenzo loses Masters for signing an incorrect score card Apr 15 Houston Astros beat NY Mets, 1-0, in 24 innings Apr 17 "Fade Out-Fade In" closes at Mark Hellinger Theater NYC after 72 performances Apr 17 A's 1st game in Oakland-Alameda Stadium, lose 4-1 to Balt Orioles Apr 18 178,000 employees of US Bell Telephone System go on strike Apr 18 1st ABA basketball championship began Apr 18 Dutch Department of Amnesty International forms Apr 18 London Bridge is sold to US oil company (to be erected in Arizona) Apr 18 Mart Crowley's "Boys in the Band" premieres in NYC Apr 18 Peter Luke's "Hadrian VII" premieres in London Apr 18 San Francisco's Old Hall of Justice demolished Apr 18 US performs nuclear

 test at Nevada Test Site Apr 19 72nd Boston Marathon: Amby Burfoot of Conn 1st man in 2:22:17 and Bobbi Gibb of United States 1st woman in 3:30:00 Apr 19 Belgian construction workers strike Apr 19 NL owners approve expansion for 2 new teams Apr 20 South African Airways Boeing 707 crashes at Windhoek, 122 killed Apr 20 English politician Enoch Powell makes his controversial "Rivers of Blood" speech.

Event of Interest Apr 21 22nd Tony Awards: Rosencranz & Guilderstern & Hallelujah Baby! win Apr 21 Carol Mann wins LPGA Lady Carling Golf Open Apr 23 "I'm Solomon" opens at Mark Hellinger Theater NYC for 7 performances Apr 23 1st decimal coins issued in Britain (5 & 10 new pence, replacing shilling and two-shilling pieces) Apr 23 United Methodist Church forms Apr 24 ABC Masters Bowling Tournament won by Pete Tountas Apr 24 Leftist students take over Columbia University, NYC Apr 24 USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR Apr 24 Mauritius becomes a member state of the United Nations.

Apr 25 "Half a Sixpence" opens at Broadhurst Theater NYC for 512 performances Apr 26 Students seize administration building at Ohio State Apr 26 US underground nuclear test, "Boxcar," 1 megaton device Apr 27 "Education of Hyman Kaplan" closes at Alvin NYC after 28 performances Apr 27 Balt Oriole Tom Phoebus no-hits Boston, 6-0 Apr 27 Congress of Political Party Radicals (PPR) forms in Netherlands Apr 27 The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) hold a rally to protest the banning of a Republican Easter parade Apr 28 11 year-old Mary Bell strangles 4 year-old Apr 28 Carol Mann wins LPGA Raleigh Ladies' Golf Invitational Apr 29 "Hair" opens at Biltmore Theater NYC for 1750 performances Apr 30 3 Oriole pitchers walk 14 NY Yankees in a 9 inning game April 20th 1968: Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood...

April 20, 2012 April 20th 1968: Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech On this day in 1968, British politician Enoch Powell made his controversial ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech at a Conservative Association meeting in Birmingham. Powell was the Conservative MP for Wolverhampton South West. The speech was vehemently anti-immigration with its ideas that immigrants were 'ruining’ Britain and many refused to integrate, thus fostering racial and religious tensions and leading to violence. Powell argued for greater restrictions on immigration. The speech was very controversial, with some supporting his comments as 'brave’ and many condemning it as racist. It led to Powell’s dismissal from the Shadow Cabinet by Conservative leader Edward Heath but his message has since been adopted by far-right groups.

The speech gained its infamous name from its reference to Virgil’s Aeneid: “As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see 'the River Tiber foaming with much blood.’” 1968 Newspapers - Historic Newspapers Historic Newspapers Free Delivery when buying 3 or more items 03300 669700 Call for Assistance 1968 Newspaper An Original Newspaper From 1968 Is The Ultimate Gift Welcome to the world's largest original Newspaper Archive where we you can search for 1968 Newspapers from any day in 1968. These genuine editions have been carefully preserved under optimum conditions and make perfect keepsake gifts for milestone occasions, such as anniversaries and birthdays. Your 1968 Newspaper comes with a Personalised Certificate of Authenticity and a choice of special presentation options to help preserve this window into the world once was that will be loved and cherished by the recipient for many years to come.

Choose your Date View Available Newspapers from the Archive Choose your Gift Pack option Personalise your Certificate of Authenticity The Perfect Gift for Any Occasion Headlines From 1968 Events UK Recipients love to read what was happening in the world on a date that has a special meaning to them, such as a birthday or anniversary, as it creates a fascinating connection with their past. A 1968 Newspaper offers the ultimate insight into 1968 news as it offers a true window into how the world once was, reported first hand from those living at that time. Birthday Newspapers offer a wonderful trip down memory lane, and the personal nature of this present will show that you have put a lot of thought into your gift. Headlines From 1968 Events Not only will your newspaper be a fantastic way to discover 1968 history but it will also be a treasured gift of high sentimental value. This is made even more special with the certificate of authenticity included with every 1968 newspaper, at no extra charge. This can be personalised with not only the recipients name and the occasion but also a personal message.

Add the perfect finishing touch to this special gift with one of our many stunning presentation options, ranging from commemorative keepsake folders to beautifully crafted gift boxes. These look great but will also help to store your 1968 newspaper so that it can be referred to and enjoyed for many years to come. Not just by the person receiving it but by future generations that will enjoy sharing trips down memory lane as the 1968 pictures, headlines and news reports bring back fond memories from the past. Newspaper 1968 Article Coverage Please see below for a breakdown of important events that happened in 1968 which are likely to be covered in your newspaper dependent on the date selected. If you're looking for specific 1968 news headlines then please feel free to contact our archivist team who are experts when it comes to researching old newspapers from this significant period of historical interest. Date Event 8th January 1968 Prime Minister Harold Wilson endorses the 'I'm Backing Britain' campaign for working an additional half hour each day without pay. 13th January 1968 Johnny Cash records “Live at Folsom Prison“.

6-18th February 1968 The 1968 Winter Olympics are held in Grenoble, France. 12th March 1968 Mauritius achieves independence from British rule. 4th April 1968 Martin Luther King, Jr. is shot dead at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Riots erupt in major American cities for several days afterwards. 7th April 1968 Scottish racing driver Jim Clark is killed in an unscheduled Formula Two race at Hockenheim. 20th April 1968 English politician Enoch Powell makes his controversial Rivers of Blood Speech about immigration and anti-discrimination. 29th May 1968 Manchester United become the first English team to win the European Cup Final. 10th June 1968 Italy beats Yugoslavia 2-0 in a replay to win the 1968 European Football Championship. The original final was played on 8th June and had ended 1-1. 4th July 1968 Alec Rose, 59, receives a hero's welcome as he sails into Portsmouth following his 354-day round-the-world trip.

17th July 1968 Saddam Hussein becomes Vice Chairman of the Revolutionary Council in Iraq after a coup d'état. 30th July 1968 Thames Television begins transmission in London. 11th August 1968 The last steam passenger train service runs in Britain. A selection of British Rail steam locomotives make the 120-mile return journey from Liverpool to Carlisle, before having their fires dropped for the final time. 5th October 1968 Police baton charge civil rights demonstrators in Derry, marking the beginning of The Troubles; a period of religious-political conflict in Northern Ireland. 12-27th October 1968 The Summer Olympics take place in Mexico City. The event is officially known as the Games of the XIX Olympiad. 22nd November 1968 The Beatles release “White Album“. 3rd December 1968 Elvis Presley returns to live performances in a special Christmas television programme that would later be dubbed the “'68 Comeback Special”.

10th December 1968 April 20, 1968 - What Happened - On This Day On This Day What Happened on April 20, 1968 Full Calendar Day of the Week: Saturday Historical Events English politician Enoch Powell makes his controversial "Rivers of Blood" speech. Event of Interest Pierre Trudeau sworn in as Canada's 15th Prime Minister Prime Minister of Canada South African Airways Boeing 707 crashes at Windhoek, 122 killed Famous Birthdays LeShundra Nathan, heptathlete, born in Birmingham, Alabama Famous Weddings The Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein (24) weds fellow reporter Carol Honsa Famous Deaths Enoch Powell - Rivers of Blood Speech (FULL) ✔ - YouTube Enoch Powell - Rivers of Blood Speech (FULL) ✔ Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. The interactive transcript could not be loaded. Loading... Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later.

Published on Feb 8, 2014 Enoch Powell's address to the General Meeting of the West Midlands Area Conservative Political Centre (commonly called "Rivers of Blood" speech) on 20 April 1968 was a speech criticising Commonwealth immigration, and anti-discrimination legislation that had been proposed in the United Kingdom.

Question: Which English politician made his ‘Rivers of Blood’ Speech in April 1968?
Answer: Enoch Powell