Enoch Powell and the Sovereignty of Parliament - Professor Vernon Bogdanor
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- Опубліковано 9 кві 2013
- Enoch Powell was the most powerful postwar exponent of the idea of the sovereignty of Parliament and indeed of English nationalism, opposing the coming of a multiracial society, devolution, and entry into the Common Market, as the European Union used to be called. His ideas proved unacceptable not only to Labour but also to the Conservative Party which he left in 1974. Was he, as his supporters allege, a prophet before his time; or have developments since his death shown that his fears were groundless?
This is a part of the lecture series, Making the Weather: Six politicians who shaped our age.
Winston Churchill wrote of Joseph Chamberlain, Colonial Secretary at the beginning of the 20th century, that, even though he never became Prime Minister, he 'made the weather', meaning that he played a crucial role in shaping the political agenda of his day. These lectures discuss six postwar politicians, none of whom became Prime Minister, but who, like Joseph Chamberlain, also made the weather and so helped to shape the age in which we live.
Enoch Powell and the Sovereignty of Parliament with Professor Vernon Bogdanor was recorded live on 12 Mar 2013.
The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and...
Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham's mission, please consider making a donation: gresham.ac.uk/support/
Intellect & integrity in great measure. Rare in politicians
Marvellous series. Many thanks for the uploads. "Those who ignore history end up repeating it..".
The elephant in the room is population density. The UK’s ability to feed and water its present population of around 67 Million is creaking considerably. Importing 40% of our food is not sustainable. If and when this supply is disrupted, then what?
'Its very difficult thing in our system to impose populist strength in the country in parliament... ' .... And here we are today.
It's sad to see this sort of civilized discussion occupying such slender margins in our society, now for decades. There are very few rational people out there that have been able to speak about such things broadly and maturely, even less now than there once was.
Thanks, Laurence! Delighted that you're enjoying these excellent lectures. There's two more yet to come...
We are collecting them all into a playlist on our channel: 'Six Politicians who Shaped the 20th Century'
(His previous series, on 'Britain in the Twentieth Century', is also there).
Another excellent talk by Professor Bogdanor ... well done! I watched the first of his lectures in this series, & will now search-out the middle two.
this helped me understand both sides of the immegration issue better than anything I've ever heard. bravo to prof bogdanor!
With regard to the Professor's criticism at the end of his lecture, that Powell needed to distance himself from the more inflammatory language of the 'Rivers of Blood' speech, may I offer an alternative viewpoint. Powell was an intellectual ahead of being a politician. While he had a lot to say, and addressed different audiences, he tended to take an academic's approach to making an argument. In this way, he was actually rather terse in his statements. For Powell, it seems, to have stated something definitely once was sufficient. That established his position, and he worked his way on from there.
Now to take this to its extreme, one might suggest that of course one loves one's wife. "I made that quite clear on the day I married her, 20 years ago. Isn't that enough? Why do I have to repeat it?" Powell obviously never fell into that trap, as he knew that love was not an intellectual matter alone, and his family obviously were very attached to him. So his statements that discussed race, immigration, the economy, etc., needed to be taken in a larger context. If he felt that he had established that he was not a racist/racialist and not motivated by those feelings, then he would not feel the need to restate that position. He had a strong case to argue on other fronts, and little time to do it. Further, being an intellectual, the argument he made was not about himself, but about the larger community, and his constituency. What did his feelings about the subject matter, when a large number of people had their feelings?
Powell spent quite a bit of his speeches about immigration giving example of what his constituents reported to him. That their comments may have been racist/racialist was beside the point to Powell. He looked at what lay beneath their concerns, and it was about the loss of their culture, their self-identity as Britons. Powell was seriously devoted to England. When it had an empire, he was all for the empire; when the empire grew up and left home, he was all for England/Britain returning to its roots as England/Britain. That meant that Britain had to retain its core culture and self-identity, and it was the threat to that culture and self-identity that he focused upon. In such an argument, you have to work from the basis that the core British culture and self-identity is worth preserving, that it is something that needs to be preserved against outside pressure. This is a reasonable conservative viewpoint, because if it isn't worth preserving, there is no point in Britain existing as Britain. That the core culture and self-identity would evolve over time was self-evident, but it should be allowed to do it in its own way. Having won WWII against a Nazi-based culture that can only be described as monstrous, it would seem that a very large number of Britons felt that British culture and self-identity was worth fighting for, and even dying for. Powell simply took that position and considered it against the situation of immigration to Britain by commonwealth peoples and the impact on British culture and self-identity.
Because the issue of national sovereignty was a critical part of that British culture and self-identity, Powell could not agree with the necessary loss of sovereignty that would come with joining the EEC. Joining the EEC was another assault on the core identity of the Britain he loved. Powell was not blind to the faults of Britain's self-identity and culture, but he seemed to feel that a nation that had acquitted itself as Britain had in wars that directly threatened its sovereignty and existence over the previous 200 years, had the right to self-determination as to how it fixed those faults. You will note that he never seriously advocated that Britain should jump into other countries to fix their internal problems, no matter how repugnant those issues may have been, or how that nation's values may revolt British sensibilities.
The final analysis that is presented of Powell in this lecture is, if you will excuse me saying so, rather shallow, and rooted in current social values, rather than those of Powell's time. Powell was a very deep thinker about a wide range of issues. An analysis of his life should burrow far more deeply into his thinking than was evident in this lecture, even allowing for its all-too-brief span. That said, it was interesting, informative and not too bad.
You do realize that there is no British culture and no 'true Briton', right?
just think about what has happened in the last few hundred years. what culture? the 'upstairs' one? or the one 'understair'? of the peasant farmer? the londoner craftsmen? the German kings and queens that rule since George 1.? the coal miners? the criminal underground? the factory workers?
furthermore it has always been influenced by the 'outside'. tea? yeah, a typical English plant...
culture isn't static and the greatest achievements come from the meshing.
The idea of a culture worth conversing and thus keeping frozen implies the perfection of that culture. which to me is not deep thinking but petty bigotery.
While you do have a point concerning culture, and while it certainly changes and evolves because of many influences, this does not mean we do not have distinct cultures, as core elements persist over time.
To take a simple example, why is it different to be a Scot rather than English? Or why is it different in Northern Ireland, compared to the rest of Ireland or in Great Britain? These groups have a certain flexibility, in that they can accept new people and re-create them into new members, but they also have persistent characteristics. To give one example, if we consider Wales to have been England's older 'vassal state,' and that the Welsh have had centuries of the English demonstrating to them why it is far superior to be English, why do the Welsh still try to be distinctly Welsh?
While any culture has many distinct components to it (the various occupational groups, different socioeconomic groups, regional groups, etc.), there are often overarching commonalities. No culture remains frozen; even the French have evolved, despite strong efforts to remain distinctly French, efforts far stronger than those in most other European nations. So the question remains: what are the culturally distinct, overarching features of something we might call British? We know when we are in Britain that we are not elsewhere in Europe, or in the US, or Canada, or Australia, or New Zealand, or South Africa, or India. All these have been 'British' at some point, but each has a distinct culture.
Having lived in several of these countries, I can tell you that although superficially the US and Australia have many features in common, they are culturally very distinct. Australia has a collectivist state of mind, but seems to value the individual; the US has an individualistic mentality, but quashes the individual in practice, thereby requiring greater conformity as part of its culture (which plays out in its sub-cultures). Britain differs significantly among its constituent nations, and yet has significant commonalities.
I think that Powell was looking not at the superficialities, in particular the different sub-cultures within Britain, but was aiming at the overarching commonalities. One of these, I think he would content, is the place of Parliament and government in general in the British state of mind, which plays out in culture. The UK Parliament is a quite distinct, if not unique, institution, and the way that government has evolved in the UK is quite different to the rest of the world. Powell's concern with joining the EU was the potential lost of that thread of the culture to a form of government that was, naturally, foreign to how Britain had done government for centuries. On the immigration issue, I think his concern was with numbers and the consequent creation of distinctive sub-cultural groups that were actually non-British in their history and what they wanted for the future.
When someone is an immigrant, they can choose to integrate themselves, or they can choose to stand outside the culture into which they have come. If one moves to a new country to work on a temporary basis, one may choose not to integrate, but not necessarily to stay apart, as one variant of this. But when you get distinct groups forming and dominating certain geographical areas, there is a potential clash of cultures. As one example, in Australia, the largest immigrant group from Asia to the late 1980s was from the Philippines, but you never saw distinct Filipino areas: maybe a single shop/store with some leaning that way. But whole suburbs became Vietnamese, e.g., Richmond and Footscray in Melbourne. Those areas often recreated the same feuds and groups as back in the old country, which created many local problems. There were also calls for something distinctly non-Australian for these groups and areas, by the people in these groups. That is a challenge to the existing culture. How do you deal with that?
Australia has had a 'conversation' over the past half-century on what it means to be Australian. The US really needs to do that more openly, as it is causing all manner of internal cultural issues. Powell was trying to get that conversation going from the time of the 'Rivers of Blood' speech, taking the viewpoint that culture was something worth maintaining in its distinction. This is not to say freezing it, but to control the influences on it from outside. The big questions he was asking were about how the culture could be managed, and the choices that the British people as a whole needed to be making.
The immigration issue was kind of happening without too much thought to cultural consequences. The EEC issues was happening without too much thought beyond the economics. That was his argument. As a classical scholar, Powell was aware of the critical nature of culture, even if it was, necessarily, poorly defined, and wanted a rigorous debate about it before taking actions that might adversely affect it.
If more politicans reflected the view of their electorate rather than the reflecting the view from above them ... perhaps we would not be in the debacle we are currently residing. It is the dishonesty and deceit that is causing the problems.
nwjh1957...What a cogent, dispassionate yet compassionate analysis! Your lines of discussion apply to other topics, your points apt & well-supported. I note with disappointment but no surprise the dissents your Comment occasioned, & their bases in insisting folk should, well, change their human natures; implying that the way things are & always have been, is & has been not just disposable but needs to be somehow erased, because these ways are not those the dissenters would (everyone but THEMSELVES, as we know from actual practice) see.
-----You are a realist, & a seer of the nature of man*& the essentialness of its delicate lineaments. The dissenters would cut the lineaments cuz they see them as unaesthetic. They see themselves as clever. Such folk always do.
* Don't even START with the "sexist!" stuff, Snowflake; i'm not in the mood & YOU know what i meant. Go sit with the dissenters or scream helplessly at the sky, but don't block my light.
You make some fascinating points; however, it's worth noting that quite a lot of people even at the time considered his views to be entirely romantic and his use of logic to be based on rather questionable, romantic assumptions. As Roy Jenkins said of him, "Because he always starts with a false premise, he is always bound to come to the wrong conclusion." Denis Healey said that Powell used to build "dazzling towers" of logic, but the higher they went, the more tenuous was their relation to reality. He said that Powell's conclusions were often a "Reductio ad absurdum".
Excellent lecture. And EP such a fascinating contradictory character.
What are people going to say about Powell and his predictions now that Brexit has occurred? Powell actually said things would change when people fully understood the EU situation. He said this in the 1970s and one one of the youtube videos. He said that the British unwritten constitutional situation allowed for more changes than those countries with written fixed constitutions. He had a lot to say on immigration, EU and Scotland even. He was a world renowned Greek Scholar. He did not hate other groups and had a great great love of India where he lived for four years during WW2 and he learnt Urdu too. But he was a British nationalist.
perhaps that he didn't foresee it but created it?
if he hadn't said it, would it be now an issue? or would other issues occupy the attention?
He was not that powerful and got sidelined because of it.
It is a little far fetched to suggest that one man and, largely, one speech caused all the racial tension and related issues in Britain! It was there all the time, but Powell talking about it allowed it to enter more mainstream discussion. For example, in 1969 Spike Milligan starred in a sitcom that delved into discrimination in the workplace, "Curry and Chip," which was a little too close to the bone in places. Several other programs started the discussion, and commonly parodied the racism of the time. "Love Thy Neighbour" in the 1970s was another. It was there, and the ghettoization of various areas as immigrants moved in was well known. Earls Court Road was filled with Australians in the 1960s (and became known as 'Kangaroo Valley'), but by the 1990s the Australians were gone and people from the Indian sub-continent were clustered there.
Comedians of the day had a field day, and it allowed a new line of discussion of the issues. A black comedian, wearing a white suit, black shirt and white tie, who introduced himself as "what you look like in a photographic negative," at one stage crooned "Enoch's dreaming of a white Christmas...," but went on to speak sympathetically of Powell, even while producing some relevant jokes, and pushing more into racial issues beyond Powell.
It was a very real issue long before Powell brought it up. He knew that it would cause trouble, and he did foresee a lot of the consequences. But he thought that it was more important that it be brought out into the open than papered over, because papering over a volcano or a pit is not a success in the long term. He chose to bring it out not in terms of the underlying problem being racism, because that would lead to the symptoms being the focus, not the problem. He looked at the really big picture, the question of the clash of significantly different cultures. You can deal with racism, because that is superficial, and getting to know people can overcome a lot of that. But the culture clash goes way deeper. This may have been a significant reason why people from Canada, Australia and New Zealand didn't cause culture clashes: it was not their race so much as the cultures were well-aligned.
For example, Muslim immigrants to the UK can fit in, be locally accepted, and get along quite well with non-Muslim people. As many of the locals will tend to be lapsed Christians, if the immigrants are 'lapsed Muslims,' the integration is easier. But the culture clash start with burkhas and continues to Sharia. This aspects ramp up the incompatibility stakes. Sharia can only be implemented in the UK if the Parliament is abolished and the legal institutions of a millennium are thrown out. That is, perhaps, too much to ask, so we get to a real culture clash. Powell suggested assisted, voluntary repatriation, as one initial idea for how to deal with some aspects of the problem. Is a Christian Briton a racist for objecting to the implementation of Sharia because they would prefer their own institutions? I would suggest that as Islam, at its base, isn't really racially based (anyone can be a Muslim, even if there is preference for Arabic), we are at a cultural point only.
+nwjh1957
so where is the difference between a Muslim clamouring for the sharia and say, Oliver Cromwell?
why do some people have the feeling they do not benefit from the changes we had that got us from similar attitudes to today's?
but it's easier to deport (and sell it to the broader public) than to work on that.
+Sibling Anon: Two of your replies are not showing up on the public discussion, but I am getting copies. Are you responding privately?
You made a comment asking what is the difference between someone clamoring for Sharia and Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell was a dictator, but he was a single man. In the power vacuum after the elimination of Charles I, he had the army, so he seized power. Parliament was unable to prevent him, as he had the army. (Parliament fixed this a lot later, so the sovereign is a figurehead leader of the armed forces, not the actual one.) When he died, his reign ended, and as soon as his son was pushed aside, that time was over. Cromwell created no significant body of theory that would live on beyond him on how to run a country or live one's life. He just wanted control, like all dictators, and thought he knew best (although all dictatorships start from the latter and move to the former). He used all the techniques of dictators before and since, to maintain power and deal with potential threats. Having overthrown the 'Divine Right of Kings,' he could hardly invoke it for himself! So he had to use more Earthly means of consolidating power: purges, the equivalent of the secret police, executions, keeping Parliament out of the picture, etc.). But if Cromwell had you killed, you were simply dead.
Sharia, by contrast, claims a divine source and an eternal punishment for transgressions. It is designed to be an eternal, unchanging document. It will not shift over time from being a best solution to just control as a classical dictatorship: it is already at total control. As Islam claims the Koran to be both inerrant and the final word of God, there is no flexibility, no growth, no change possible. As Islam also claims the right to exterminate all infidels, apostates and anyone who doesn't believe, and as fundamentalists are also more than happy to exterminate other Muslims who are not of the correct sect (i.e., 'mine'), Sharia is ultimately not an instrument of guidance, control or correctness, but the foundation of annihilation of the species. As Peter Medawar pointed out half a century ago, religious fanatics (of all stripes) have to exterminate those who do not adhere to the same teachings as infidels in order to secure their particular version of omniscient truth, and this, logically, must extend to the entire human population, as none but I am a true believer.
right on the EEC As well
Enoch Powell was right all along . He just did not read classics but he understood them thoroughly. History has away of repeating it self.
interesting lecture. interesting man. his stare was intense.
The problem was that he had the air of a fanatic with hard piercing bright blue eyes like adolf hitler and i dont mean to compare the two politcally although obviously both were nationalists. Im simply saying he put some people off because they knew he would take his arguments to there full conclusions and do almost anything to defend them and those he saw as "his people". So in this way there is a slight comparison which was eagerly seized by his opponents to defame him.
I agree, a wolfish hard gleam in his eye that unsettled many i'm sure
@@MB-THX1138 Enoch unsettled them with his intellect and fair reasoning.Did his job representing his constituency !Amazing man warned about the undemocratic EU in the seventies!Resigned over it ,a man for all seasons who was more interested in doing what’s right and helping his country than climbing the greasy pole of politics!,Should of been PM ,RIP Mr Powell and thank you .
Very interesting lecture. Thank you for posting x
Well researched.good lecture
Why is it that all the people with the solutions are destroyed?
Because they aren't solutions. They are romantic delusions.
Because they are a threat
He was correct in every way
My god how right was this man, it’s unbelievable how someone could predict what would happen in the future. 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧
It wasn't that unbelievable. He was stating the obvious. It just didn't fit in with what the government wanted people to hear.The tories knew he was right but too scared to back him for fear of up setting the younknow whos
No it is not hard to predict the future. Especially when planned for. As Black man who lived through his era. And one of those affected by the policies. Enoch Powell was not received well by me. However, I have recently gone back and listened to his speeches. There is a group who hide their actions and disguise their words. If there is one thing about Enoch Powell that I admire is he was honest. Just a drop of that ALL politics no matter the policies would clean up politics and make for a more peaceful world.
@@thepeoplesvoice6832 You known who? Who is that I wander. The government's are never worried about upset. They are worried about democracy and holding office. Britain has created an enormous amount of suffering, misery death and destruction in thus world of ours because of its imperialistic and capitalistic Ideology and it's pursuit. Enoch Powell idea England for England does not take into account How the small group of people on this tiny island will hold onto the power it once had. A power that without technology and the ideology of non expansion that the nations it conquered had. Which remains the battle the now. That small group realises to survive they need the the people, (population). They will buy hook or crook ensure that their elite position is maintained. The white people (or the you know who group) have been used as the thugs in this quest. Given nationalistic dreams and notions. Enoch Powell himself fell under this spell. Resulting in a world of continual wars and conflict. And what is the result. A country which can not care for its people in an pandemic. All that blood and guts given and spilt on both sides for what. It is my opinion what I see of England today, could have been achieved without all the suffering, misery destruction and death.
He could see when the blind did not want to see.
In this lecture, it was stated that Canada had been independent since 1867. This is not quite true: up until the 1930s, our foreign policy was controlled by Westminster. It was why, for example, when Britain declared war on Germany in 1914, we Canadians were automatically in. (This almost tore the country apart as many from Québec had NO desire to fight in Europe on behalf of England.)
B Pray I have never understood why the Quebeckers didn't want to fight on behalf of France.
+Matthew McVeagh The French walked out on them when it counted most, and let the colony fall to the English.The French were having to deal with Fredrick the Great, at the same time as English agression in the Americas. After two world-wars and two conscription crises, De Gaulle realised the long-standing resentment and tried to make up for it, even arriving in a battle-cruiser..''Vive le Québec Libre!'' and all that. Almost worked too..
It was also felt that they were not full or equal citizens, so...why go fight as members of the British Empire? A LOT of them DID though..and bravely.
Nils Brown Thanks, that's definitely helped my understanding. :) I've always wondered how loyal the Québecois were to their Frenchness. Given what you say about the feeling of being abandoned perhaps more loyal to their culture, language and religion and less to the country itself.
@@MatthewMcVeagh They owed France no more than the Afrikaaners owed the Government of the
Netherlands.
@@MatthewMcVeagh Quebeckers have culture and language in common with the French, but they are
isolated from them greatly by distance and history.
Brilliant' very interesting
Powell was forecasting the 'Tiber' in a few more decades, not at the time of this monologue. Dismissal of his forecast is thinking the half-time whistle was full-time.
One of the great intellects of the ages but a terrible PR man. Would have made a terrific PM with the right support.
Superb analysis as usual. This boy is special.
I would suggest that incomplete devolution is vastly more dangerous than is general decentralization. If all four regions had the same degree of autonomy (ie. England had the same stake in local autonomy as Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland) it would tend to stabilize the system instead of destabilizing it.
I'm all for devolution, but we have to understand the underlying issues. The real division is not between Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland, it is between London and the south east and pretty much everywhere else. London and the south east has a huge percentage of the population, and dominates everywhere else. If there is to be devolution for England, it should be regional devolution. An English parliament for example would only concentrate yet more power in the hands of London and the south east.
Powell was an intellectual juggernaut who knew what was coming, but was let down by the cowards in his party. He was absolutely right in noting the problems that would flow from a failure to integrate immigrant communities, and that in large numbers, they would refuse to integrate. You have only to see 2nd and 3rd generation immigrant children today that dress for the streets of Islamabad to know this is true.
I wonder what Enoch Powell would have made of Brexit. No doubt he would have been happy to be leaving the EU, but I think it's very safe to say that he would have been appalled at those Brexiteers who think that we should have a closer relationship to the USA and the commonwealth, both of which he despised.
T H I dont think the Special relationship has anything to do with Brexiteers per say, Its just we are closely linked by ancestors of America..we in Great Britain are the Mother Country..🇬🇧✨
Paul Gavin Enoch Powell was an Englisman..🇬🇧👈
The last politician to put country before everything else, a true British hero.
Rest in Peace, Sir.
Enoch Powell was the best PM that England never had... Who would have benefited the world so much.
The greatest PM the UK never had. What a great man.
He didn't serve as a prime minister. Or?
Enoch Powell was a very odd man, with a bizarre mix of views. Some of his right wing supporters today would be shocked to discover what some of his other views were.
@@TheVapaaduunari if he had been Prime Minister this country would be a wholely differrent place.
(i am aged 21)
Clearly Powell was right?
yes
Christopher Briggs He was spot on! wise educated man..
Remove the question mark.
100% Right we need men like him this countrys a joke
Someone who didn't like to turn his mirrors around at home!
Enoch Powell , britton would have been a far better place it people had listend to him
He had over 80% support at one point!
Do you mean Britain? It sort of undermines your point if you can't even spell your own country.
I remember the 7/7 attacks in London. I was working a summer job and my boss at the time said Enoch Powell was right. I googled the name and landed on Powells wikipedia page, I was utterly outraged by my bosses comment, so much so that I nearly reported him to HR. At the time I was very sensitive to racism, as I was the son of a immigrant, mixed race and had been regularly bullied because I was the "only p*ki" in the school. However, I can now appreciate what Enoch Powell was saying and his courage. I am pessimistic about long term peaceful race relations. Generally people are ethnocentric and that is OK. The only person who refuses to accept this fact is the post modern, white middle class liberal, who holds no real conviction.
I have no sound on this vid.
I do.
There’s a river called Blood River in South Africa interesting that this man Powel was saying mentioned a river of blood coming to Britain. Amazing how Britain doesn’t today offer citizenship to a the British descendants of South Africa’s Citizens that in fact came from Britain originally
South Africans are Dutch
Didnt achieve much?He was the viceroy of India
"perhaps they thought it was unfair he hadn't been giving a hearing" - haha
Enoch Powell would always speak the truth and he would quote the law and facts which Parliament didn't like, he was never a racist has some people like to think.
Apropos of nothing, Prof. Bogdanor sounds just like Michael Palin.
He was a very smart man, but anyone with an ounce of integrity towards his duty as a servant of the people of his country could have foreseen what he did.
What I could never agree with him on is his view of parliament and parliamentarians in the state. He had a rather elitist view of the politicians and parliaments position in the state.
An autopsy on Britain & the British.
My Grandma on my Dads side was Morrison British my grandfather on my mother’s side a Button Scottish however I became a South African citizen out of no choice of my own and cannot become a British citizen and still had to apply to London for permanent residency in New Zealand it’s all a joke this colonialism has caused chaos and suffering
I wonder if there was a Celtic king who had a similar speech against the invasion of the Germanic hordes that spawned the "English"? Would it be something like this,"We must stop the invasion before these barbarous hordes invade our great island, and over run it with their Latin/Germanic foreign tongue! The streets will flow with our blood and well be forced to listen to Coldplay and wear Adidas tracksuits...oh the horror!".,.,,.
Mgrsdgfsd Afsdgrsdgfsdg God Forbid!
Powell was right and wrong. While many immigrant groups have successfully integrated into British society, those who follow Islam have not. Powell wasn't able to distinguish prospectively and thus painted all groups as one. Lately, in addition to increased immigration of people who have no intention of assimilating, it is the shear numbers of out of control immigration that has been the cause of major negative impacts to our benefits system.
Except 90% of London muslims feel British vs 40% of Paris Muslims feeling French. The assimilation of Muslims is MUCH MUCH better in UK than a lot of Europe. If you start to treat them like second class citizens and otherise them they will become alienated and angry like they are in a lot of Europe like Paris and Brussels.
+Dave Hobbs
That is because being British has been unmoored in order that it may float on the tide peoples whos roots and cultures are significantly foreign to those of the British Isles and its native peoples and close cousins.
Many admit to seeing Britishness as being something as little as an administrative category, a passport, residence in the Isles or perhaps having some period of intertwined history between their people & that of being subjects of the British Empire.
That the British ruling powers have not corrected this and continue a policy of vagueness regarding British Identity to not even require proficient understanding & use of English, (or any other native tongue of the Isles), is something I understand the French to have been much firmer with.
Whether people 'feel British' having been encouraged to do so with some wordless inexact verbal sounds of encouragement is a seperate issue as to whether they Are British, (depending upon definition), given that they are most certainly not Britons.
+wiaruz
Integration was formerly understood to mean become indistinguishable, hence the relevance of race and the focus on numbers over time.
Sikhs for example have integrated very well socio-legally but they maintain a seperate non-British culture & ethnicity.
For individuals & families to have arrived and integrated into the British people, cultural value system & worldview would have been unobjectionable.
What has occurred instead, as was noted, is that the native people & culture have been forced to adapt and change to accommodate the foreign newcomers with forceful legislation enacted against them to ensure it is so that has led to a restriction and revocation of what were hard won traditional rights & liberties & a silencing of legitimate moral objections.
You are right but even 1% of disloyal muslims makes up a hell of a lot of people in your backyard
wiaruz neither the Irish, Scots or Welsh have integrated very well.
1:06:44 ..say what?
Despicable intellectual(s)
well our purely "symbolic" Queen sacked the Australian government, so she us not merely a figurehead bogdanor has scant regard for facts
Peter Powell, his son, and an equal academic, was an erudite Rado 1 DJ.
That's the most sensible comment on here. Well done.
He did not have a son. He had only two daughters.
This guy is saying that Powell was not team player. He is wrong. Powell was on the team of the people of Britain. This guy is Jewish... not British.
And you are an anti-semite. and I don't throw that word around lightly.
WTF? What planet are you on???
What do you think you are, with an Irish surname?
Bogdanor's conclusions rehash many of the biases against which Powell fought, especially the weird trembling about the colour bar. He grotesquely glosses over the immigration problem with the New Commonwealth. If you listen to Prof Bogdanor, it sounds as if there was an EU immigration deluge and a halt on New Commonwealth migration, but EU migrants have at all points only comprised a minority of immigrants. The claim that racial relations in the UK are somehow good is grotesque. London is already minority-British and would be minority-white if not for EU migrants. The situation in Birmingham is similar, as Powell correctly predicted.
Bogdanor's conclusions make him sound like the modern Conservatives - a toothless supercilious Cameronian entity that has failed to protect Britain because of their own convoluted self-imposed unreasonable limitations. Now their idea is to whine about the EU, as if they're protecting Britain, all the while failing to halt and even increasing New Commonwealth migration.