Enoch Powell significantly accurately diagnosed the poblem but UNDERESTIMATED the magnitude of it.
Pretend that Powell used his speech not to say what he said, but to say what is now true. Pretend for a moment that he had used his speech to say that within the lifespan of many of his constituents, white British people would be a minority in the whole of Birmingham. Pretend he had predicted that by the 2020s, significant numbers of Birmingham voters would vote in a Pakistani-born Muslim on specifically sectarian, racial, religious lines. And pretend he had predicted that as a result of this change, visibly Jewish people would be barred from attending a football match because the local Muslim community would not tolerate it. If Powell had said even a portion of this, he would have been derided even more than he was. In fact he would most likely have been deemed certifiable.https://www.spectator.com.au/2025/10/imagine-what-enoch-powell-might-have-said/During the 1970 general election campaign in Birmingham, for instance, Powell noted that ‘this country is today under attack by forces which aim at the actual destruction of our nation and society as we know or can imagine them’. He gave many examples of a ‘new psychological weaponry’ rendering the majority ‘passive and helpless’ by asserting ‘manifest absurdities as if they were self-evident truths’.
Most important of all, he referred to the ‘exploitation of what is called “race” as a common factor’ linking ‘the operations of the enemy on several different fronts’. He explained: ‘The people of this country are told that they must feel neither alarm nor objection to a West Indian, African and Asian population which will rise to several millions being introduced into this country. If they do, they are “prejudiced”, “racialist”, “un-Christian”.’
All this he described as nonsense, ‘but it is nonsense which it is already obligatory for academics and journalists, politicians, and parties, to accept and mouth, upon pain of verbal denunciation and physical duress’.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2025/11/letters-the-difficulties-of-reporting-on-ga...