Enoch Powell gave a speech to the Conservative Association meeting in Birmingham. “Rivers of Blood”.
I simply do not have the right to shrug my shoulders and think about something else. What he is saying, thousands and hundreds of thousands are saying and thinking – not throughout Great Britain, perhaps, but in the areas that are already undergoing the total transformation to which there is no parallel in a thousand years of English history.
In 15 or 20 years, on present trends, there will be in this country three and a half million Commonwealth immigrants and their descendants. That is not my figure. That is the official figure given to parliament by the spokesman of the Registrar General’s Office.
There is no comparable official figure for the year 2000, but it must be in the region of five to seven million, approximately one-tenth of the whole population, and approaching that of Greater London. Of course, it will not be evenly distributed from Margate to Aberystwyth and from Penzance to Aberdeen. Whole areas, towns and parts of towns across England will be occupied by sections of the immigrant and immigrant-descended population.
Though according to a report of the British House of Lords published last month, the data about the stock of immigrants in the UK “are seriously inadequate,” the British government estimates that there are almost half a million migrants residing illegally in Britain while the foreign-born legal inhabitants of the country currently account for 10 percent of the population. More than 1 million foreigners have legally settled in Britain in the past decade.
As Mr. Powell pointed out forty years ago, increasing numbers of native Britons are fleeing their country because they no longer consider it “worth living in for [their] children.” Last year Liam Clifford, director of Global Visas, a consultancy which assists people who want to leave, pointed out that the number of emigrants is rising dramatically while “the main reason for these people leaving the UK is the over-stretching of services caused by inbound immigration to the UK.” The same phenomenon can be witnessed all over Western Europe. In Germany and the Netherlands more natives are currently moving out than immigrants moving in. Those who leave no longer feel at home in their own country.
Yowza. Pierre Elliott Trudeau was the fifteenth Prime Minister of Canada from 20 April 1968 to 4 June 1979. (h/t Maz2)
I’m just glad that Harper and the CPC are actually doing something about immigrants with their immigration reform bill…now we’ll see way more immigrants in Canada!
Jase: “immigrants” aren’t the problem … “race” isn’t the problem … some cultures and religions are. So pick wisely.
aren’t the majority of immigrants from a different religion or culture? They’re coming from Asia, the middle east and all over so the likelihood of being Christian or of any Western culture is pretty small. All I know is that Canada is gonna look pretty different soon.
I think we are headed for a showdown sooner or later. Today I saw a woman covered — head to toe — with those Muslim cover-up garments. It is still shocking to me to see this — not so much the headscarf, but full face cover is not something that I (or most in our society) are accustomed to seeing. Well, about 1/2 later (and in the same neighborhood), I spotted a woman wearing a little skirt that barely covered her butt. A couple of Muslim (I think) men were walking on the same street. Well, the point I am trying to make is that I do believe we have a clash of cultures here. The woman with the full veil (and her family) must find it shocking to see someone barely dressed. I do not see how two such dramatically different notions about how we should live can survive indefinitely side-by-side.
batb: Though Toronto may be “the most multicultural city in the world,” so what? It’s always said like a badge of honour, but what it seems to have resulted in is a morass of lawlessness…and public places are filthy, unkempt, and, often, unsafe.
Sounder: batb, OMG, don’t try to inject a little reality here, the leftards are quite allergic to it.
Speaking of a little reality, batb and Sounder, Toronto’s per capita crime rate is in fact among the lowest in the country. In terms of violent crime specifically, which you seem most afraid of, Toronto’s 2007 rate of 738 incidents/100,000 population was lower than such places as London (755/100,000), Calgary (802), Sudbury (908), Halifax (1,261), and Saint John (1,313). All these cities are less culturally diverse than Toronto (source: StatCan, 2007, cat no. 85-002-XIE; google “StatCan crime statistics 2007”)
Perhaps it’s not the run-of-the-mill citizens who have the blinkers on. And since you’re of the belief that multiculturalism breeds criminality, please explain the fact that, despite a steady rise in ethnocultural diversity across the country as a whole, Canada’s crime rate been on the decline for the past 25 years.
Of course, I expect you both to completely ignore these facts, but hey, ain’t reality grand?
Jase: England and Europe are being injected with largely one religion. That’s why they are doomed. Canadian immingrants are a complex mix … and that is much better, in my opinion. Most groups who immigrate here embrace Western values … there children born here mix freely with everyone. This is as it should be.
Some though, will never mix. Check out Lebanon.
april 20 , the rise of PET and Hitlers birthday , coinkidink , I think not. both the beginnings of National Socialist movements.
The Phantom: You know, the Americans have seen two or three waves of immigration in the last hundred and fifty years and it hasn’t done them a pinch of harm until lately. You had your Scots and Irish wave, your European wave, and lately your Latin American wave.
Actually, with each wave of immigration in the US and Canada came the standard fear-mongering rhetoric of “undesirables taking over the country,” their inherently “unassimilable” natures, an inevitable “clash of cultures” that would destroy the country, etc. etc. (hey, that sounds just like the sort of rhetoric that’s currently popular here on SDA!).
And each time, it all turned out just fine in the end.
But this time it’s, you know, different, right?
I have some personal perspective on this matter. I married a Chinese immigrant, and lived with her and her brother’s family for the first four years of our marriage. My brother-in-law had a daughter about 4 years old. One night over dinner, I asked if he was going to send her to a Chinese school. I was kind of shocked at the vociferousness of his reply:
“No way! We live in Canada now, and she’s going to be a Canadian”.
This doesn’t mean they spit on their Chinese traditions, or ignore their background, but it’s true – my niece went to regular schools, attended the University of Guelph, graduated with a degree in software engineering, and will be marrying a white Canadian this summer.
These are the type of immigrants I want for Canada; I really don’t care if they are brown, black, yellow, or green. What I care is that they buy into Canadian society, and want to raise their children as “Canadians”, not hyphenated Canadians, or worse, Muslims who say “Canada is not a real country”. Multi-culti, or Joe Clark’s ridiculous “community of communities” are a non-starter; they just entrench tribalism and divisiveness.
Powell was right on some things–very right, to the point of prophetic–and wrong on others, like most politicians. The main problem with Powell is that, especially after the UK lost India, he was a true Little Englander, wearing the mantle of paranoid crypto-Catholic High Toryism that’s since been picked up by Peter Hitchens: he believed to the end of his life that the United States was one of the principal pernicious evils in the world. And that attitude quite rightly alienated a whole lot of people who could’ve otherwise been allies, and otherwise see the virtues of some of the rest of what he had to say.
Kevin, I’m with you 100%.
I have no trouble with immigrants – duh! because I am one myself.
And I have no trouble with people of other races – duh! because I am married to someone of a different race and religion.
But I have trouble with one specific religion that has created nothing but trouble everywhere it has gone. And I have trouble with moral and cultural equivalency, because the direction of immigrant and refugee flows in this world makes it perfectly clear which cultures and societies are superior and which are inferior.
And yes, Dan this time is different. Look at England. It is frightening. This never happened before during any immigration wave. And look at the history of lands where Islamic numbers have become significant. Ask Zoroastrians, Coptic christians, Jews, Hindu , Buddhists and African animists what happened as Islam grew in numbers in their lands.
@KevinB:
Says a lot that marrying a white Canadian merits special mention (and tacit approval) in your books.
God forbid that your niece maintain any linguistic links to her cultural background. Would attending Chinese school as a kid really be incompatible with her enrolling at UGuelph, earning a degree, marrying someone outside her ethnicity, and otherwise “buying into Canadian society”?
Dan, ever heard of ‘Christmas yet to come’?
Dan – when we came here, my parents forbad non-english speaking in the house after about 3 months in Canada. My spouses family came in as refugees, and the father, from a totally different part of the world, did exactly the same.
30 years and two successful professional careers later, we are both grateful to our parents for their foresight in this issue.
Dan, previous large waves of US immigration came here from separate continents. The lack of proximity to home created a different psychology. Most Mexicans are within driving distance of the border. Mexico is basically reclaiming large swaths of the southwest US. I suggest you read Victor David Hanson’s “Mexiflora”. His statistics are staggering and it’s as much about the assimilation that isn’t happening. This IS different this time.
I don’t think Quebec has turned out “just fine” for Canada. We don’t need a balkanized country within a country here either.
“Per capita crime rate”(what type of crimes?), is a meaningless if one province keeps better statistics or excludes lesser catagories(marijuana possession) while another doesn’t. What you’ve glossed over is that Jamaican gangbangers top the list in committing homicides in Toronto.
Irwin Daisy
“In a country where the last serious race riots erupted seven years ago between white and Asian youths, the head of Britain’s equality watchdog called the poll findings “alarming'”
Although maybe not as serious there was also this confrontation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Birmingham_riots
Between Pakistanis and West Africans.
Powell was in my opinion correct that uncontrolled immigration would lead to major problems. It is easy in hindsight to be critical of him. What we often forget is that at the time Britain was not an EEC member let alone a member of what became the EU.
Powell focused in hindsight incorrectly on West Indian people probably because many of his constituents were racist and were putting pressure on him to “do something” At the time immigration was running at 5,000 per annum. Now it is effectively uncontrolled since anyone from the EU can enter Britain without let or hindrance.
Mark Steyn focussed on this in an article in the Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/08/02/do0202.xml
The weak governments in Holland and Denmark gave citizenship to Somalis who had claimed asylum. Almost all of them are economic migrants but the EU is so touchy feely and overloaded with Human Rights guff that they were unable to send them back where they belong. Britain with it’s “benefits for all” was a perfect place to come and set up.
Another common ploy is to “marry” a person from the EU and move to the UK. The visa is free and unlikely to be challenged lest the British government incur the wrath of the EU. By the way this doesn’t work if you are British. In those cases you have to pay for a visa and prove to the IO that the marriage is subsisting.
Last time I checked Immigration from outside the EU was running at 50,000 per annum, ten times what was the case in Powell’s day. Much of this is secondary immigration from the Indian sub continent. As has been noted it is not really a race issue it is a cultural issue and in my view the rise in islamic culture may well result in the death of Britain as we have known it . The death throes will be pretty ugly. I don’t honestly see any way of redeeming the situation. One of ZanuLabour’s ministers a few years back stated that he saw no upper limit for immigration. With lunatics like that in charge what hope is there?
looky….the problem with muslim immigration is that all these people are involved in a conspiracy…a conspiracy to defraud the government…a conspiracy to avoid contributing to their guest country…a conspiracy to NOT assimilate…their aims are the same throughout the european union…it’s an organized conspiracy using our left leaning idealistic democracies and their laws were promulgated reckoning a 10% slacker rate…..NOT 50% unemployed and shiftless.
looky….the problem with muslim immigration is that all these people are involved in a conspiracy…a conspiracy to defraud the government…a conspiracy to avoid contributing to their guest country…a conspiracy to NOT assimilate…their aims are the same throughout the european union…it’s an organized conspiracy using our left leaning idealistic democracies and their laws which were promulgated reckoning a 10% slacker rate…..NOT 50% unemployed and shiftless and hostile to boot.
Dan, your comment about the crime rate in Toronto reveals you as an imbecile who can’t read simple numbers. Please go back to playing Halo or whatever.
John Begley, are you playing at agent provocateur? “…all these people are involved in a conspiracy…”
If you believe that I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.
Dan doesn’t know something else either–at least two something elses: young males commit most crime. Due to such facts as our high abortion rate–nearly 3 000 000 since 1970–and low birth rate, the ratio of young males to the total population has decreased. Secondly, however, gun and other violent crime has increased.
So, things aren’t quite as pleasant as Dan seems to think they are, e.g., check out the high rate of bullying in schools. It’s exponentially higher than it was even a decade ago. Our civilzation’s headed south, no doubt about it.
Keep on fiddling, Dan!
lookout: So, things aren’t quite as pleasant as Dan seems to think they are, e.g., check out the high rate of bullying in schools. It’s exponentially higher than it was even a decade ago. Our civilzation’s headed south, no doubt about it. Keep on fiddling, Dan!
Actually, and not to trivialize the problem, bullying rates in Canada have been quite stable over time, and if anything, have declined slightly since 2002: 3w.phac-aspc.gc.ca/dca-dea/yjc/ch5_105_108-eng.php#t
Care to invoke any other wildly speculative claims about the imminent downfall of society that have no basis in reality?
Bit late with this, but here is the prophet’s actual speech —
http://www.sterlingtimes.org/powell_speech.doc
And for the truly dedicated a “rivers of blood” screensaver [not checked]
http://www.sterlingtimes.co.uk/rivers_of_blood.htm
Dan,
“Canada’s crime rate been on the decline for the past 25 years.”
You ever stopped to consider the effect of age/demographics on that number? Of course not, you just abuse the stats you don’t understand.
Do you ever wonder why the twits in media and universities can’t seem to understand why if the over-all crime rate is dropping that Youth crime is increasing dramatically? That number just happens to be the only number not effected by the aging of the population.
People commit crimes when they are teens to middle age. The baby boom saw a huge increase in crime when the boomers turned of age. This peaked when boomers were in their twenties and has been declining since. BUT, it hasn’t been declining as fast as the population has aged because of the increased per capita rate of crime in younger people.
Crime as stated in terms of the number of people in the crime-committing age group has increased. It’s the number of this group which has declined.
Although I don’t buy into race as being a factor in crime, it’s pretty obvious that culture and attitude toward society is. There is a reason why Natives and some other groups have incarceration rates higher than the average and there is a reason why most Asian groups have a lower rate. It’s outlook and culture. There is less stigma in some groups than others. Education rates, work ethic, etc all follow the same path. Part of that issue is the level of scapegoating and victimhood that is held by the culture. Hindus from India and Buddhists from China are visible minorities but have more likelihood of financial success than white Canadians. The reason is the respect and focus on education, family and law. These groups culturally are more likely to shun any misbehaviour, less likely to blame whitey if they don’t work hard enough to succeed and less likely to shirk their family and social responsibilities.
Race isn’t the factor. Raise a black kid or an Indian kid in a family from India living in a middle-class area and they’ll top their class at university. Put a kid from India or a white kid on an Indian reserve and their likelihood of being a drunk criminal increases with exposure to poor ideological and cultural surroundings. Lowing expectations, holding the belief that you’ve been wronged by the world and that you can’t succeed so there is no reason to try, accepting poor behaviour from yourself and those around you and giving respect to criminals instead of scholars is a recipe for nothing but failure.
The bottom line is the difference between success and failure isn’t race but choice. This is also why even in marginal groups, there are those strong enough to reject their culture’s pathologies and succeed in spite of them. The opposite is also true. There are lots of trailer parks full of stirrup-pant wearing single mom’s with no education on welfare for the fourth generation raising their 7 little fettle-alcohol-syndrome babies with their smoke hanging out of their mouth.
Warwick: Do you ever wonder why the twits in media and universities can’t seem to understand why if the over-all crime rate is dropping that Youth crime is increasing dramatically…because of the increased per capita rate of crime in younger people. Crime as stated in terms of the number of people in the crime-committing age group has increased.
Oh really? Has the per capita rate of crime among youth (12-17) “increased dramatically,” as you say, or did it peak in 1991, been on an downward trajectory overall for the past 15 years, and currently rank below mid-1980s levels? Has the per capita youth crime rate flowed roughly in opposition to the overall crime rate during this time, or has it flowed roughly in parallel?
For the answer, see here: 3w.statcan.ca/Daily/English/070718/d070718b.htm. True, it went up in 2006 (for the first time in 4 years), and violent-crime-as-percentage-of-total is up, but overall, the statement “Youth crime is increased dramatically” is grossly overstating the reality. And your claim that demographic shifts have allowed the declining overall crime rate to mask increases in the youth crime rate? Also false–both rates have roughly trended in the same directions.
RE: British emigration. Brown has delights stored up for all his tomorrows. Oh, I so hate shadenfreude, it doesn’t become me.
Dan,
Of course, you completely missed my point. I’m not glad that my niece chose a white Canadian as her husband as opposed to a Chinese man; I’d be happy for her either way. But the fact that she chose a white man shows that she’s not “locked” into her ethnic background.
How many, say, Muslim girls get to say the same thing?
We must be very careful to continue to make the issue about culture and freedom for all. The mere fact that immigrants are living amongst is not the problem. Immigrants with an antipathy to our freedoms and institutions are the problem not immigrants in general, regardless of colour.