A Rising Tide In The Rivers Of Blood

This story is about a guy called Dutch. But we're going to take a little detour first. I say little. It's more of a road trip. I remember about ten years ago, I was idling a nice day away in Dudley. Yes, that is possible, being an outlet for Batham's, the finest beer in the land, and hence in all of the world.

I was some know-it-all student punk, ambling around the town's cluster of charity shops. I found a book about Enoch Powell, signed by the man himself. I saw him as nothing more than a local celebrity fascist, and so didn't see much point in buying the book- these were the heady days before e-Bay and so forth, so I didn't feel compelled to make a fast buck on it.

Of course, charity shops are like jumble sales- it wasn't advertised as being autographed, because the staff didn't realise that it was.
Inevitably, I'm a little gutted, in hindsight. And, given that we now live in a authoritarian, right-wing state which masquerades as something different, perhaps it's time for me to revise my opinion on the Brummie polemicist.

Infamous for his "Rivers Of Blood" speech, the speech itself arose from the case of a Wolvehampton landlady who refused to rent out her spare room to blacks, depsite the high demand. He was against the introduction of the Race Relations Bill, rather than immigration, as he saw the proposal as a curtailment of freedom of expression. To quote him, "Like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood’".
This was, in fact, a reference to the civil rights unrest in the US, via a reference to Virgil. Standard Tory oratory, if not from an incredibly intelligent background.

Inevitably, though, intelligence isn't always a bedfellow of perception, but I'm surprised that I agree with a lot of his opinions. He was furious with Britain's attempts to appease the Nazis, seeing it as a betrayal of British interests. He was also quick to realise that Russia would end up as a key ally with Britain.

During the war, he came to the conclusion that America had plans to dismantle the Britsh Empire and become the dominant superpower- "I see growing on the horizon the greater peril than Germany or Japan ever were...our terrible enemy, America."

Part 2 coming tomorrow....