John Enoch Powell was a British politician. He served as a Conservative Member of Parliament (1950–1974) and was Minister of Health (1960–1963) then Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) MP (1974–1987). Before entering politics, Powell was a classical scholar. During the Second World War, he served in both staff and intelligence positions, reaching the rank of brigadier. He also wrote poetry, and many books on classical and political subjects.
Louis Sebastian Theroux is a British-American documentarian, journalist, broadcaster, and author. He has received three British Academy Television Awards and a Royal Television Society Television Award.
The "Rivers of Blood" speech was made by British Member of Parliament (MP) Enoch Powell on 20 April 1968, to a meeting of the Conservative Political Centre in Birmingham, England. His speech made various remarks, which included strong criticism of significant Commonwealth immigration to the United Kingdom and the proposed Race Relations Act, which made it illegal to refuse housing, employment, or public services to a person on the grounds of colour, race, ethnic or national origins in the country. It became known as the "Rivers of Blood" speech, although Powell always referred to it as "the Birmingham speech". The former name alludes to a prophecy from Virgil's Aeneid which Powell, a former classical scholar, quoted:
As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see 'the River Tiber foaming with much blood'.
Nicholas William Budgen, often called Nick Budgen, was a British Conservative Party politician.
Granta is a literary magazine and publisher in the United Kingdom whose mission centres on its "belief in the power and urgency of the story, both in fiction and non-fiction, and the story's supreme ability to describe, illuminate and make real." In 2007, The Observer stated: "In its blend of memoirs and photojournalism, and in its championing of contemporary realist fiction, Granta has its face pressed firmly against the window, determined to witness the world."
Jonathan William Patrick Aitken is a British author, Church of England priest and former Conservative Party politician. Beginning his career in journalism, he was elected to Parliament in 1974, and was a member of the cabinet during John Major's premiership from 1994 to 1995. That same year, he was accused by The Guardian of misdeeds conducted under his official government capacity. He sued the newspaper for libel in response, but the case collapsed, and he was subsequently found to have committed perjury during his trial. In 1999, he was sentenced to 18 months in prison, of which he served seven months.
Simon James Heffer is an English historian, journalist, author and political commentator. He has published several biographies and a series of books on the social history of Great Britain from the mid-nineteenth century until the end of the First World War. He was appointed professorial research fellow at the University of Buckingham in 2017.
Powellism is the name given to the political views of Conservative and Ulster Unionist politician Enoch Powell. They derive from his High Tory and libertarian outlook.
The Fourth Reich is a hypothetical Nazi Reich that is the successor to Adolf Hitler's Third Reich (1933–1945). The term has also been used to refer to the possible resurgence of Nazi ideas, as well as pejoratively of political opponents.
Wolverhampton South West is a constituency created in 1950 represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2019 by Stuart Anderson of the Conservative Party.
The West Bromwich by-election of 24 May 1973 was held after the appointment of Labour Member of Parliament (MP) Maurice Foley to the European Commission. Held continuously by Labour since 1935 it was retained in this by-election.
Morecambe is a seaside town and civil parish in the City of Lancaster district of Lancashire, England, on Morecambe Bay, part of the Irish Sea.
Thomas Edwin Utley, known as Peter Utley, was a British High Tory journalist and writer.
Sathnam Sanghera FRSL is a British journalist and best-selling author.
Damian Leighton Barr is a Scottish writer and broadcaster. He is the creator and host of the Literary Salon, which started at Shoreditch House in 2008, and he hosts live literary events worldwide. In 2014 and 2015, he presented several editions of the BBC Radio 4 cultural programme Front Row. He has hosted several television series including Shelf Isolation and most recently The Big Scottish Book Club for BBC Scotland. He is the author of the 2013 memoir Maggie & Me, about his 1980s childhood in the west of Scotland, and the 2019 novel You Will Be Safe Here, set in South Africa in 1901 and now. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA).
Mark Fisher, also known under his blogging alias k-punk, was an English writer, music critic, political and cultural theorist, philosopher, and teacher based in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. He initially achieved acclaim for his blogging as k-punk in the early 2000s, and was known for his writing on radical politics, music, and popular culture.
George Eaton is a British writer and journalist. He is Senior Online Editor of the New Statesman, a position he was appointed to in February 2020. He was previously political editor from 2014 to 2018, joint deputy editor from 2018 to 2019, and an Assistant Editor from 2019 to 2020.
There have been incidents of racism in the Conservative Party since at least 1964. Conservative shadow defence minister Enoch Powell's "Rivers of Blood" speech in 1968 was both influential and widely regarded as anti-immigrant with racist overtones; the party's leader at the time, Edward Heath, condemned it, although some Conservative MPs defended Powell's speech. Since then, accusations have been made about several leading members of the party and its policies; these have related to prejudice against non-white people.
All Out War: The Full Story of How Brexit Sank Britain's Political Class is a 2016 political history book by the Sunday Times Political editor Tim Shipman, focusing on the 2016 Brexit Referendum.
Mussolini's War: Fascist Italy from Triumph to Collapse, 1935–1943 is a book by John Gooch, published in 2020.
