Only yesterday I was telling a friend about Powells warnings of April 20 1968. And so although he was so badly vilified, his prophesies came to pass.
“…But the overarching reason why Britain left the EU, I believe, is plainly and simply understood if political correctness is set aside. A slim majority of the British public, primarily its aging population who remember what Britain was once like not too long ago as society and culture that open immigration policy severely, if not mortally, has undermined, decided that to save what remained of their island kingdom they needed to regain their full political sovereignty instead of losing more of it to the bureaucrats of the EU in Brussels.
Immigration, it bears repeating, and what it together with multiculturalism have done to Britain in incrementally unraveling its very special place in history, over-rode the arguments in favor of remaining in the EU. The peril of open-door immigration was foreseen many years ahead of the decision made to join the European Common Market (the predecessor to the EU) ratified by a referendum held in June 1975.
Nearly half-century ago Enoch Powell, a Conservative MP and a member of the shadow cabinet led by Edward Heath, spoke out on the perils of open immigration that came to be known as the “Rivers of Blood” speech.
At a Conservative Party gathering in Birmingham on April 20, 1968, Powell warned how unrestricted immigration was inexorably and unalterably changing the nature of British society. What is mostly remembered of Powell’s speech is what was at the time considered inflammatory. But for Powell it was about numbers as he stated, “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 Birmingham speech ended for Powell a distinguished career in politics as his warnings went unheeded, and he was removed from his position in Heath’s shadow cabinet. In the aftermath of the July 2005 suicide bombings in London, and concerns over “homegrown terror” from radicalized Muslim immigrants or Muslims of immigrant parents born in Britain, Powell’s warning in retrospect was prophetic for contemporary Britain and the West in general..”