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Friday 10 February 2012

Up-market demagogue - 1

Just want to second Stephen's remarks on the Enoch Powell documentary (which I enjoyed, by and large).  I hate to sound melodramatic, but the "rivers of blood" speech cast a bit of a shadow over my youth for the simple reason that it gave racists the idea that their ideas were respectable. Life felt a little less secure as a result. 

It always puzzled me that, if Powell had seriously wanted to clear his name, he could easily have denounced the head-banging fringe element, yet as far as I know, he never did. (I'm willing to be corrected on this. I certainly don't recall him making any such statement. Yes, I see him on talk shows going through high-flown formulations about why he wasn't a racialist, yet Nick Griffin did much the same thing on Newsnight last week.)

Besides, as Geoffrey Wheatcroft put it, what's the Latin for "piccanniny"?

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