Conservative leader's wife defends him
20 Jun 2012 7:16 AM IST
Nearly 45 years after the infamous 'Rivers of Blood' speech branded the late Conservative leader Enoch Powell a racist and altered Britain's discourse on racism, his wife has sought to defend him by citing his friendship with India's first army chief Gen K M Cariappa.
Powell, who fell in love with India while he was posted in Delhi for Military Intelligence in 1945, learned Urdu and soon returned home to become an outspoken critic of immigration from India and other Commonwealth countries as he saw his constituency, Wolverhampton, transformed by waves of immigrants.
Best known for his emotive 1968 'Rivers of Blood' speech delivered in Birmingham, in which he warned of the effects of mass immigration, Powell [1912-1998] saw his political career blighted by the speech, dismissed from the Conservative party, and for most of his later life, was a political untouchable.
Now Pamela Powell, a researcher in the Conservative party he married in 1952, has spoken for the first time about the speech in a detailed interview in a collection of essays published to mark Powell's 100th birth anniversary on 16 June.
Pamela cites Gen Cariappa when asked to respond to the allegation that her husband was a racist in the book titled Enoch at 100 [Biteback], edited by Greville Howard, and talks at length about other aspects about Powell, who once termed the relationship between India and Britain as 'a shared hallucination'.
To the accusation that 'Enoch was a racist and didn't like foreigners', Pamela says: 'Well, I always think of his friend General Cariappa, when people say that. Nowadays, what I'm about to say sounds completely normal and unexceptional, but at that time in India, it certainly wasn't'.
'Enoch was secretary of the All Indian Army Committee, and he and the general were going around most of India. This was after the war, after August 1945 until he was demobbed in 1946, I think.'
Powell, who fell in love with India while he was posted in Delhi for Military Intelligence in 1945, learned Urdu and soon returned home to become an outspoken critic of immigration from India and other Commonwealth countries as he saw his constituency, Wolverhampton, transformed by waves of immigrants.
Best known for his emotive 1968 'Rivers of Blood' speech delivered in Birmingham, in which he warned of the effects of mass immigration, Powell [1912-1998] saw his political career blighted by the speech, dismissed from the Conservative party, and for most of his later life, was a political untouchable.
Now Pamela Powell, a researcher in the Conservative party he married in 1952, has spoken for the first time about the speech in a detailed interview in a collection of essays published to mark Powell's 100th birth anniversary on 16 June.
Pamela cites Gen Cariappa when asked to respond to the allegation that her husband was a racist in the book titled Enoch at 100 [Biteback], edited by Greville Howard, and talks at length about other aspects about Powell, who once termed the relationship between India and Britain as 'a shared hallucination'.
To the accusation that 'Enoch was a racist and didn't like foreigners', Pamela says: 'Well, I always think of his friend General Cariappa, when people say that. Nowadays, what I'm about to say sounds completely normal and unexceptional, but at that time in India, it certainly wasn't'.
'Enoch was secretary of the All Indian Army Committee, and he and the general were going around most of India. This was after the war, after August 1945 until he was demobbed in 1946, I think.'
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