"Rivers of Blood" -- what Enoch Powell didn't say

I don’t like repeating myself in this blog, and I did touch on Enoch Powell’s 1968 “Rivers of Blood” speech in a post last year. So apologies.

But we’ve just had another example of some hapless or malevolent Tory (and I find it increasingly hard to tell the hapless from the malevolent in the Tory party) being forced to fall on his sword because he’s admitted to thinking that Powell, in that in famous speech, had a point. To be precise, Nigel Hastilow – prospective Tory candidate for Halesowen – has stood down, after appearing to agree with the Powell idea that uncontrolled immigration would change the country dramatically, and for the worse. It's a "Powell was right" line shared by the British National Party (who actually manufacture badges with that slogan).

Let me say straight away that I am emphatically NOT on Powell’s side. Though the sanctimonious attitude of New Labour on the issue is pretty hard to take too. What was being said by members of both main political parties in 1968 about immigration now seems light years away. If you can imagine it, Labour politicians were then capable of punning on the idea Sikhs’ human “rights” and their “rites” – both referring to wearing a turban (or at least that was John Stonehouse, quoted in the Powell speech..

But what seems so very odd to me is that, despite its usual title, Powell never actually used the phrase “Rivers of Blood” in this speech. Churchill had done so, so had Thomas Jefferson (the first, at least, in the context of urging others to avoid them). The closest Powell came to it was a famous, but significantly different, quote from Virgil’s Aeneid.

Roman writers were quite keen on river metaphors when it came to discussions of cultural mixing. The first-century AD satirist Juvenal (Satire 3, 62)complained that the “Syrian river Orontes had long since been flowing into the Tiber” (roughly the equivalent of saying that the Ganges has long since been flowing into the Thames). The Jewish turncoat and historian, Josephus (7, 5), wrote of the spoils of victory (over the Jews) flowing into Rome “like a river”.

Powell was a first rate classicist, and became Professor of Classics at Sydney University at age 25. He made a definite choice not to go down the Juvenal or Josephus route. What he actually said was ‘like the Roman, I seem to see "the River Tiber foaming with much blood."’ – in other words he's using Virgil, Aeneid VI, 87, a quote that comes half way through that great epic on Rome’s foundation by the Trojan refugee Aeneas.

The words were spoken by the prophetic priestess, the Sibyl from Cumae (why Powell said “the Roman” isn’t entirely clear – perhaps he meant Virgil), just before she gave Aeneas the secret of going to the Underworld, where he would meet his dead father and learn of the destiny of Rome. She was prophesying the battles that Aeneas would face with the indigenous peoples of Italy before he would be able to found his brand new, multicultural city. (That's a Renaissance version of her on the right.)

Virgil was offering a long-term message about ethnically mixed states: Rome would become a joint, shared comunity after all the bloodshed. But this was not what Powell had in mind. He was, I imagine, exploiting this quote because it was spoken by a divine prophetess who knew the truth about the future: he was going for classical legitimation for his own Sibylline prophecy about immigration.

Powell was characteristically unrepentant about this speech, though it did cost him his ministerial job. But he did say later that he wished he had used the quote in the original Latin: Thybrim multo spumantem sanguine cerno.Then at least everyone would have seen that it was a classical reference.

Comments

[Virgilfan]

Ever so sorry Michael, can't think how I managed to misread that, I feel very stupid now. It it a belter of a line though, isn't it? - you can see why Powell felt it deserved a wider audience!

[anthony alcock]

Powell's speech was delivered on April 20th.

[Michael Bulley]

Couldn't understand Virgilfan's comment (Nov 14) about the ‘et', as, scrolling down them, I couldn't see any comment that objected to it. Then I thought it might refer to my comment of Nov 5, 18:04. Earlier that day, I had written that you have to have the ‘et'. My later comment was just to show how swapping the second and third words around would make a good line into a bad one.

[Gilbert Murray]

It is a curious phenomenon that the "1984 linguists" all excuse their heroes or heroines from having said what they meant- which was perfectly clear at the time and consistent with their generally shameful histories.The context is wider than a misquoted paragraph.

[VirgilFan]

Just because human nature is 'quite basic', does that mean we should pander to it and never even try to live in a way that our minds, if not our animal drives, can see would be better? I was really shocked when I first found out that Powell's line was from Virgil - I hadn't been aware classics could be put to such purposes! He ought to have quoted it in Latin of course, just to make the journalists do their homework. I have to disagree with whoever didn't like the 'et' - I think it creates a majestically spondaic line and a real crescendo end to the Sybil's sentence - Virgil certainly know his way round a hexameter!

[CHRIS THOMAS]

Enoch Powell came to address the students at Essex University in the 70s and we gave him such a hard time he couldn't deliver his talk - although never a real Lefty I must admit that I joined in - probably just for the fun. But, nearly 40 years later I think he was right. My take on history is that an influx of different races/ethic groups seldom results in peaceful coexistence and is more likely to lead to varying degree of ethic cleansing. Not nice, but perhaps inevitable given that, deep down, human nature is really quite basic

[Hein Maassen, Leidschendam, The Netherlands]

Dear Paul, the British royal house may be a lot of things, but not Dutch. Our stadtholder William III also became king William III after the Glorious Revolution, but he and Mary never had children. The Dutch connection of the kings and queens of England died with them.

[anthony alcock]

If Powell had used the Latin, it would probably have never had the same effect.

[Brian Taylor]

Marion,

Mary is subversive of students' faith, and this is wicked.

[paul potts]

Dear Mary

All this sounds like squabbles between immigrants. Was Juvenal really a Roman? In Brittania, the Carribeans of whatever generation think there are too many Indians. The Muslims don't get on with the Hindus, and the Irish, of whom I am one, think there are too many English, especially in high places.

Our immigrant royal family, Dutch or German or something, have never been accepted by our largely Scottish aristocracy.

What is sinister, though, is that our largely Scottish government is trying to use all this in order to turn the place into a security state.

Paul

[Marion Morrison]

Surely it's a joke when you call Mary Beard a "wickedly subversive commentator"? Who on earth would take anything Mary Beard says seriously enough to be subverted? Hers are entirely othodox leftist views and, as such, have been completely discredited.

[Max]

Are you going to point out that Powell's quotation of Virgil can be read (with some effort) deconstructively in the context of his speech, every time that speech is mentioned in the news?

I don't see why you keep quibbling about the "rivers of blood" tag. It seems a perfectly decent paraphrase of his intended meaning.

[Paracelsus]

How odd - I used to consider the
Labour Party hapless, but now see
them as distinctly malevolent. Or
does Mary think it is the Tories
who are rushing to extinguish the
last meagre embers of our civil
liberties?

[Xjy]

BIGT is so right - many cultures are exceedingly damaging to the UK. Like the Imperialist British GodSquad military-religious culture of starvation, slavery, deracination and disease currently presided over by the cosmopolitan mishmash coup-based Hanoverian monarchy and the Labour (!) Party.
What we really need is the pure cultural heritage of the races that made Britain Great:
The Pure Pict
The Pure Scot
The Pure Celt
The Pure Hibernian
The Pure Roman
The Pure Cornish
The Pure Angle
The Pure Saxon
The Pure Jute
The Pure Dane
The Pure Norseman
The Pure Norman
The Pure Gaul
The Pure Aquitanian
The Pure African
The Pure Indian....

Yup, what we need is PURE race and PURE culture.

Trouble is, none of this PURITY has anything to do with the Greeks or the Hebrews or the Hanoverians. So that's the Church and the Monarchy oot the windae for starters...

Hm. If BigT means what it says, then a huge programme of PURIFICATION will be needed. Starting with the people now living and keeping the country going, and the language we use...

But, for a start, choose your PURE race and culture so we can understand what you (and Powellism) might be getting at in the first place.

[BigT]

It would be very interesting to read the text of Powell's speech, was it about cultures or races for example? There can be little doubt that the doctrine 'all cultures are the same and great for the UK' is indeed false and has proved damaging. How academically neutral is Ms Bard with her smearing of all Tories - presumably some politically correct law makes her remarks 'hate crime', or ...probably not, come to think of it. Keep the bias flowing Mary.

[Michael Bulley]

If you started it off "et multo Thybrim...", it would be metrically impeccable, but poetically awful. Wonderful, isn't it - verse?

[Jez W]

Marion writes;

"As a student at an Australian university in the 1960s, I was told that when Powell started lecturing in Classics at Sydney University, he went into his first lecture and ordered out all the women in the lecture theatre (there wouldn't have been very many) because Classics wasn't suitable for girls. I'd be interested to know whether anyone else has heard this story."

Let's face facts Marion, if the one sided, anti-Powell character assasination at the start of this article is anything to go by then we won't be seeing any posts rubbishing the allegation (or this posting probably?).

[Zareen]

Perhaps this is a superficial thought, not well examined, but it occured to me very forcefully when I read the news article about Nigel Hastilow this morning:

Though I understand how these sorts of sentiments (Powells') could arise, I am surprised that those who hold them have such a myopic view of history.
Isn't it ironic that:
a.) For a significant part of the '1000 years of English history' Powell talks about, the spectre of colonialism loomed large all over the world, and England was busily engaged in transforming the national characters of her subjects? Who set up reams and reams of official red tape where none previously existed. Who demanded changes in dress, ettiquette, language, working conditions, cultural practices, agriculture and public services, who introduced 'Englishness' (read: fairplay and decency, but also bureaucracy and economism) into public life? Who transformed 1000s of years of 'Indianness' into a set of values to be scorned, an inferior set of principles to that held by the white man?
and
b.) The pauperization of colonized countries persists today. I hesistate to label colonialism as a 'cause' for mass emigration, but common sense suggests that it might at least be a driver of the processes which keep post-colonial societies economically and politically marginalized.

And a personal disclaimer: I am Indian. I am here for my education, I provide several thousand pounds a year to my university. The day I get my degree is the day I leave.

[SW Foska]

Can't see that the 'classical allusion'ness of Powell's remarks makes them any more palatable. If a rapist carries on his vile violations but dressed up in a swan costume, does the Jupiter-Leda analogy buy a shorter sentence? It shouldn't do.
As for the Ganges, it flows into the Mersey, not the Thames: see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/merseyside/7011696.stm

[Xjy]

I see the Tiber seethe with foaming blood...

Thick with gouts of gore, the river runs with blood...

I see Tiber foam, its blood-swell clotted with gore-gouts

[Xjy]

Amazing what a little word like "et" can do. As you quote it, the line takes on a terrible rhythm with a heavy start and a caesura filling the ssssssss in spumante with hissing menace, presumably as it fills out the missing half-foot. The metrically impeccable "et" on the other hand amplifies the "oooooo" in "multo" - a bit like Anne Bancroft's wonderful ululations in Dead and Loving It. :-)

[Candadai Tirumalai]

If Enoch Powell did indeed ask the women to leave he was offering his stricter version of the Oxford Biology don, who, during the Second World War, when many male students had left would address those attending his lecture as "Gentlemen" even when there were none left; he would not look at the ladies.

[Tim]

Like Thatcher's famous "no society" comment, quotd out of context and without any regard for what was meant. For those interested, she said: "and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then also to help look after our neighbour" and "If children have a problem, it is society that is at fault. There is no such thing as society. There is living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate."

[Michael Bulley]

I think that if Powell had decided to quote the Latin words, he would have found a way to include the "et" at the beginning, since without it it doesn't sound right rhythmically.

[Marion Diamond]

As a student at an Australian university in the 1960s, I was told that when Powell started lecturing in Classics at Sydney University, he went into his first lecture and ordered out all the women in the lecture theatre (there wouldn't have been very many) because Classics wasn't suitable for girls. I'd be interested to know whether anyone else has heard this story.