| Topic: | The right’s attempts to rehabilitate Powell | |
| Posted by: | Robin Taylor | |
| Date/Time: | 21/06/10 11:44:00 |
| One of the most disturbing trends of recent years is the way in which some political commentators and journalists have tried to justify (and even glorify) the inflammatory racist outpourings of the late Enoch Powell. Last Saturday morning, on the fortieth anniversary of Ted Heath’s entry into Downing Street, I decided to look up the 1970 general election on Wikipedia. It was quite a shock to discover that a large proportion of the text was given over to a claim that Powell had won the 1970 election for Heath and that he had attracted as many as five million extra votes to the Conservatives. (The reference given for this assertion was a passage in a book written by the pro-Powell journalist Simon Heffer). As someone with a background in polling, I know this claim to be untrue. The Conservative vote rose by only 1.7m in the 1970 election (and that was from the very low Tory base of 1966). Furthermore, the main issues on which the 1970 campaign was fought were industrial relations and the economy. In fact, when Powell did make a speech about immigration, this was specifically used by Heath to rule out his readmission into the cabinet. It therefore beggars belief that a third of Tory voters were only supporting the Conservatives because of Powell. Accordingly, I set about editing the passages that related to Powell’s alleged influence so as to provide some semblance of balance. I also created a link to the “rivers of blood” speech but found that this Wikipedia article also contained a pro-Powell slant. For example, much was said about the public support Powell enjoyed from the dockers and other sections of the white community – but no black perspective was given at all (despite the fact that the speech led directly to members of minority ethnic groups being physically assaulted on the streets of Britain). I therefore edited the rivers of blood article as well (adding words like “claimed” and “alleged” to those passages that sought to assume that Powell’s testimonies were factual, as well as highlighting the point that it was not just immigration but specifically Commonwealth immigration that his speech had objected to). Within a short while, my amendments had been deleted and the articles reverted to their previous pro-Powell content. A few minutes after undoing the reversion so as to reinstate my amendments, the reversion had been re-enacted. This went on continually all morning until I had to go out (and has carried on subsequently). Looking at the history, it seems that two users had been reverting my amendments. The main culprit is called “Britannicus”, someone who has previously contributed positive remarks to articles about Norman Tebbit, Richard Littlejohn and MigrationWatch. The other user (the Delaware-based “Schrandit”) spends an inordinate amount of time touring the changes pages on Wikipedia, and describes himself as a “nationalist”. However, it is “Britannicus” who is the more unsettling of the two: his user page contains various xenophobic flags and symbols, together with a description of the author as being “of English ancestry” and a number of peculiar phrases such as “a sense of national glory”. In fact, it was this user that first created the pro-Powell section on Wikipedia’s 1970 General Election article back on 27 July 2007. My view is this: by taking on and destroying Powell in the immediate aftermath of his “rivers of blood” speech, Heath did something quite profound. He moved permanently to the left the boundaries of what has subsequently been regarded as acceptable debate on race relations – and all decent people should be eternally grateful. In life, Heath was castigated by the hard right for doing this. Now, even in death, it seems that his tormentors are determined to deny him the credit for his solitary electoral victory. Those of us who are on the left owe it to Heath to do all we can to ensure that the historical revisionists do not succeed. For the record, here is the offending passage from Wikipedia’s 1970 General Election article (followed by my amendment):- ---------- Britannica’s version: In "exhaustive research" of the election, the American pollster Douglas Schoen and Oxford University academic R. W. Johnson believed it "beyond dispute" that Enoch Powell had attracted 2.5 million votes to the Conservatives. Johnson later wrote that "It became clear that Powell had won the 1970 election for the Tories...of all those who had switched their vote from one party to another in the election, 50 per cent were working class Powellites. Not only had 18 per cent of Labour Powellites switched to the Tories but so had 24 per cent of Liberal Powellites". Johnson further believed that the votes Powell brought to the Conservatives were "quite possibly four or five million". My version: The American pollster Douglas Schoen and Oxford University academic R. W. Johnson claimed that Enoch Powell had attracted 2.5 million votes to the Conservatives, but most psephologists contend that Powell had no influence on the outcome at all as Edward Heath had previously sacked him from the shadow cabinet over his notorious rivers of blood speech. Right wing historians like to infer that because the pro-Tory swing had been larger in the areas around Powell's own west midlands seat that this implied a special "Powell effect", but swings are traditionally bigger in the black country due to the region's high concentration of the historically volatile C2s (skilled manual workers). The victory of the Conservatives in the 1970 general election was widely seen to have put an end to any realistic ambition that Powell may have had to lead the Conservative Party, and gave Heath a firm mandate to govern in his own one nation tradition of moderation and racial inclusiveness. Heath's decision in 1968 to take on and defeat the far right in his own party had effectively been endorsed by the electorate in 1970. ---------- I hope forum progressives will visit the above mentioned Wikipedia articles from time to time and undo any pro-Powell bias they may encounter. Perhaps you might even consider adding your own passages. Wikipedia should be a source of impartial commentary on political matters, and for this reason there might be a good case for just deleting the contentious paragraph from the 1970 General Election entry altogether. However, if the right insists on making the website partisan, then let us ensure that our historical interpretation prevails and not theirs. CW4 members may also like to read this excellent article about the right’s attempts to rehabilitate Powell:- http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=2105 |