I made a remark on the change in political rhetoric surrounding race since Enoch Powell's speech in one of my 'Stirring up apathy' blogs a few days ago. I would like to expand on that in this blogpost.
In the fifty three years since Powell's speech, politicians have drawn the wrong conclusion. They have operated on the assumption that the overtly racist manner in which he expressed racism was inadvisable, but that his sentiments had to be conveyed in a more covert, 'deodorised' way. (It is notable that, despite the fact that Edward Heath sacked Powell from the front bench, the Heath government passed restrictive immigration legislation in 1971, although Heath's record on admitting the Ugandan Asian refugees from Idi Amin's regime was better than Wilson's). Therefore, when Thatcher declared in 1978 that many people felt that this country was being 'swamped' by immigrants, she associated herself with that sentiment while avoiding responsibility for it. Michael Howard tried to pull off the same trick in the 2005 general election. New Labour's rhetoric against 'illegal' asylum seekers avoided the issue of racism by focussing on the legitimacy of their claims for asylum. Gordon Brown's ridiculous promise in 2007 of 'British jobs for British workers' exploited xenophobia while avoiding the charge of racism. Theresa May's inflammatory and hateful speech on 'somewheres' and 'nowheres', which plumbed new depths in its bigotry, managed to tap into latent xenophobia, racism, anti-Semitism. Islamophobia, distrust for intellectuals, and amorphous cosmpolitan 'elites', without explicitly naming these targets of contempt. It was the ultimate in 'dog whistle' or 'wink' politics. Johnson has overtly exploited racism and Islamophobia in his 'journalism', without any obvious negative consequences for himself. He seems to have an innate capacity, however, for dissociating himself from responsibility for any of his actions, in a sort of continuous re-invention, an ability which his Cabinet colleagues seem intent on replicating for themselves.
When Gordon Brown was caught describing a voter in the general election of 2010 as 'that bigoted woman', after a conversation with her when they had discussed immigration, it was clear that he had not dared to confront her prejudices directly. He clearly felt that he could not, because by then there had been an unspoken consensus among politicians to pretend that immigration was bad for British society, and to avoid making British voters confront the reality: that immigration was an unavoidable consequence of having had an empire. The transformation of British society was occurring at precisely the time when most British people were attempting to dispose of their complex imperial inheritance in a bottomless pit of amnesia. However, as with most repressed memories, consequences eventually happen. We see this now, in the government's determined attempt to control historical memory through its 'culture wars' on museums, the National Trust and universities.
Although British society may have avoided Powell's most dire predictions, the poison of that noxious speech still remains, as its sentiments have never been decisively repudiated. It remains a guiltily unacknowledged presence in much political rhetoric about national identity, multiculturalism and sovereignty.
Immigration was one (of many) factors behind the Brexit vote. It is no coincidence that Powell would have welcomed the referendum result.