To see and not to speak...

"To see and not to speak would be the great betrayal," these were Enoch Powell’s words, and surely we must agree that a genuine opinion sincerely held should be heard, however much we disagree with that opinion. Fifty years on from his Rivers of Blood speech the BBC have chosen to offer the public their particular analysis of Powell’s words and they feel he should be damned as a racist.

Maybe there is another view, a kinder take on Powell, could the BBC analysis be a little biased?

“…My parents had to suffer…," are the words of Amol Rajan, a migrant's child chosen to produce the programme. I can understand that Rajan is upset at the distress his parents felt when they considered themselves unwelcome migrants in post-war Britain. He doesn’t say when his parents arrived in Britain, or why they came. Powell was warning of migration, not humanitarian aid given to refugees. There is a big difference, and if Rajan’s parents made the decision to seek economic improvement by migration then it was a choice. We all make choices in life. An outsider taking up a management role will often be disliked by the in-house contenders who lost out. This is normal human behaviour, so an economic migrant must anticipate some cold shoulders, some rejection.

When Powell made his speech I was out of the country, in the Merchant Navy travelling between the Middle East, North Africa, and other ports of call. Travelling to new places was interesting but I was actually working to save money to buy my first home, in Britain. When I was eventually flown home to Heathrow I was shocked by the sheer volume of migrants passing through the airport, and the taxi driver brought me up to speed on how Britain had been experiencing such a huge wave of migrants in the previous few years. He referred to them all as “jungle bunnies”, a horrible phrase but at the time no more bothersome to me than how working class language would address those who were disabled, or mentally ill. Political correctness was not deemed an essential in 1968.

In considering Enoch Powell’s speech we must keep in mind that the migrant is not always a refugee, although the refugee is always a migrant. At the time Enoch Powell was speaking the mass migration was not the result of a war, the people arriving here were not in fear of their lives, but they did want to better themselves by entering into a society that had better health, education and welfare systems in place. And yes we did owe a debt to many of them, because they had fought alongside us in WWII. Nothing is simple in world affairs.

I can understand that desire to improve prospects for yourself and your family completely. I have moved many times, always to take up jobs that offered me more of what I wanted. Not always money, but excitement, new experiences, new skills, or whatever. I’ve loved every place for what it offered, but must acknowledge that for much of the time I would be out of my comfort zone. Courage over comfort is how I lived my whole life, always taking on what my husband called the ‘stretching but achievable goals’.

But there are many ways of living and just as we are constantly being told by Powell’s detractors that we must accept change we must also give some attention to those who have no desire, or capacity for change.

My new neighbour in Wisbech is just two years younger than me but she has never travelled further than Devon. She lives behind the same front door that she crossed as a new bride almost fifty years ago. Her deep knowledge of her home and immediate surroundings is impressive, and at times envied. Not for her the worry about who to employ as a tradesman, for she knows all the locals. Her doctor knows her and her family circumstances in every detail. She has an solid base from which her opinions are formed.

I respect her immensely, she has welcomed me to my new environment and I find nothing to criticise in someone enjoying the comfort and stability of a settled home. A settled, safe and secure home is what most of us crave.

But those who choose never to travel do often resent people like me, and in the Fens there are a lot of us to dislike. We sell our properties in the south, in my case southern hemisphere and realize some useful equity that maybe allows early retirement, not something a Wisbech resident could so easily do if they fancied early retirement to London or Devon.

At a recent lunch in Kings Lynn there were three Essex migrants sitting alongside each other, and I am astounded at how many I have met since moving to Wisbech just over a year ago. There’s no easy answer to this conundrum, it’s a personal choice whether to re-locate to improve, or stay and enjoy the close ties that settlement in one place can foster.

I wish we could hear a second analysis of Powell’s speech by an indigenous Brit because there is always the potential for any speech to be received and unpacked as a collection of ideas to be rejected if the person unpacking has a strong bias. Make no mistake Amol Rajan was not viewing the speech as the taxi driver I met might have done. Nor was he presenting the views of the majority of working class British society of 1968.

In 1968 international travel was not something routine and commonplace for the majority of Brits. Holidays to Spain were only just beginning to be promoted heavily as a working man’s annual treat. In the 1960s we still had foreign exchange controls that had been in place since 1947.

After my return to Britain I worked in London for a few years before moving to Birmingham, and it was here that I saw how migration could affect a community. I needed all my courage to walk home from work of an evening. It wasn’t that I suffered any physical assaults but the huge gatherings of adult males sitting cross-legged on the ground wailing and shouting can only be described as intimidating. Some evenings there would be over a hundred on my street corner. They were just doing what was normal for them, praying. But for me, used to prayers spoken softly inside the church, head bowed and in silence they were perceived as a threat.

I had a tiny flat, the top of an old Victorian terrace, and the smells of Asian and West Indian spices and cooking mingled with the loud alien music could not be eliminated by the somewhat leaky single glazed sash windows. I coped OK, I was still young and could even tolerate the saxophone the boys living below me would play at 2am, but my next-door neighbour was much less able to adjust.

The big difference was that I had just moved to Birmingham and expected to make adjustments to fit in. It was difficult. Many evenings I would feel my stomach clench when the smells, the music, the men’s shouting all combined to be overwhelming. But I was still young, had a demanding job and a frenetic love life that resulted in exhaustion most nights as I finally crashed into my bed and slept.

My neighbour was not so fortunate.

She was probably in her seventies and hadn’t travelled. Her whole world had been turned into a place she no longer recognized. I admit that the perceived threat I felt when walking past those migrants frightened me, but my neighbour felt such terror that she could only venture out at times when they weren’t there. She kept every window shut tight, but still felt nauseous and unable to sleep. Life for her was intolerable, but she couldn’t move. She owned her home but the value had fallen as the neighbourhood had declined. Where the polished quarry tiles of the doorsteps had one shone out it was more likely that there would be an adult squatting on the step, wearing strange clothing, calling out to passer’s by.

Often it was a friendly greeting from a West Indian who seemed to think that everyone should want to stop and chat, but we didn’t, we were reserved, we were British (so were they, but not British as we knew it!). If the shouting was a foreign language we weren’t always sure what was meant. The media, aka the chattering classes, would have us all believe that the reserve of the British is a bad thing, that we ought to embrace multi-cultural Britain, but is British reserve a bad thing? If we feel most comfortable being reserved, abiding by what many see as old-fashioned ways, are we wrong? Do we lose our discernment when we reveal too much too soon? And if we are expected to extend tolerance to others, then are we entitled to anticipate a little more reciprocity.

For some unknown reason the rubbish bins in these previously smart terraces were re-located from the back alleyways to the front gardens. Shabbiness descended and my Birmingham neighbour was trapped in a community she no longer felt a part of. She suffered greatly. 
Amol Rajan reports on his parents suffering without acknowledging that they made the choice to migrate, my neighbour’s children could just as easily have said “… My parents had to suffer…and they had no choice"

The people attacking Powell, such as David Frost, did not live in a tiny terrace house assaulted by smells and noises. They did not have their choices limited by their frugal savings as they watched the value of their property decline.

To pass legislation to say that we must all accept whatever is decided by government does nothing to ameliorate the very real stress being imposed on so many British people who have not chosen to migrate but find themselves living in a strange land. 

I think Enoch Powell warrants a more unbiased appraisal, and we must all be more open to examining both the benefits and the drawbacks of nation blending. I know we should all strive to love our neighbours as ourselves, and that racism is never acceptable, but neither are laws and plans passed without asking the people being governed what they want. The culture of a neighbourhood is just as important as the culture of a country and if we become an homogenized mix with no reference to our British roots we might all be the losers.

Listen to the programme and make your own assessment, but remind yourself of the context and what the Britain Enoch Powell was concerned about was like in 1968.