ARmy Rumour SErvice

Originally Posted by Victorian_Major

Hardly a successful speech, if there are so many different interpretations of what the unfortunate bloke was trying to say?

Well, there are people that understood it, and people that didn't (or didn't want to).

It is one of the best speeches I have ever read. Name me a single MP in Parliament who could produce something even half as engaging today (notwithstanding the subject matter)? I do not think there are any - and I have probably met over 100 MPs. Virtually all are idiots, none rise to the occasion when really asked to do so.

Originally Posted by Balleh

]He saw it as his duty as an MP to warn of the dangers of allowing the growth to continue although, and I can’t find the reference, elsewhere he said words to the effect that warning of future disaster is seldom welcome, or indeed understood, as it hasn’t yet occurred – the prophet in his own land syndrome.
]

Post #75, its normally left off when people quote his soeech as the preamble completely changed the whole tenor of the speech....




The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils. In seeking to do so, it encounters obstacles which are deeply rooted in human nature. One is that by the very order of things such evils are not demonstrable until they have occurred: At each stage in their onset there is room for doubt and for dispute whether they be real or imaginary. By the same token, they attract little attention in comparison with current troubles, which are both indisputable and pressing: whence the besetting temptation of all politics to concern itself with the immediate present at the expense of the future.

Above all, people are disposed to mistake predicting troubles for causing troubles and even for desiring troubles: 'if only', they love to think, 'if only people wouldn't talk about it, it probably wouldn't happen'. Perhaps this habit goes back to the primitive belief that the word and the thing, the name and the object, are identical. At all events, the discussion of future grave but, with effort now, avoidable evils is the most unpopular and at the same time the most necessary occupation for the politician. Those who knowingly shirk it, deserve, and not infrequently receive, the curses of those who come after.


Enoch Powell - The supreme function...

Originally Posted by sunnoficarus

Powell had all the things politicians lack today.
Courage, intellect, principles and conviction.

and mad ideas?

He was once a Warwick. One of my COs was a junior officer in the Warwicks, when Powell fell from grace with the 'Rivers' speech, and promised himself that when he was CO (as his dad had been), he would invite the old feller to dinner, and to address the mess members.

In 1986 (IIRC) he made good on that, and we had a black tie dinner with EP as guest of honour.

Enoch treated us to a post-prandial lecture on how - based on his interpretation of classified documents, to which only those with Parliamentary privilege could gain access - he knew that there had been a conspiracy, inspired by America during [but not confined to] WW2, in which it was proposed that, if Ireland would abandon its neutrality, and join the Allies [against Nazi Germany in the first instance, and, later, against the USSR], Ulster would be ceded by Britain, to Dublin.

Proper cross about it, was Enoch.

And - judging by the hard stare he gave me as he left the dining room - he didn't much like the red bow tie I was wearing with my DJ that evening.

Originally Posted by Pyianno

Well, there are people that understood it, and people that didn't (or didn't want to).

It is one of the best speeches I have ever read. Name me a single MP in Parliament who could produce something even half as engaging today (notwithstanding the subject matter)? I do not think there are any - and I have probably met over 100 MPs. Virtually all are idiots, none rise to the occasion when really asked to do so.

We are now ruled by political spivs who pass their every thought and word through a focus group before uttering it.

Originally Posted by sunnoficarus

We are now ruled by political spivs who pass their every thought and word through a focus group before uttering it.

Totally uncontrolled immigration (what we have in the UK) is insane to me. I really couldn't care less about the racial characteristics of immigrants. However race, culture and language are obvious and tangible hallmarks of immigration which can't easily be hidden. For this reason they are often conflated with immigration but I remain of the opinion that it is not the race, the culture or the language that the 'natives' oppose but the immigration itself.

It's impossible to have a serious debate. We are always told by our political elites that multi-culturalism is a good thing. In fact if we say otherwise we risk prison.

If I didn't love my country I'd have left it already!

Originally Posted by Stonker

and mad ideas?

He was once a Warwick. One of my COs was a junior officer in the Warwicks, when Powell fell from grace with the 'Rivers' speech, and promised himself that when he was CO (as his dad had been), he would invite the old feller to dinner, and to address the mess members.

In 1986 (IIRC) he made good on that, and we had a black tie dinner with EP as guest of honour.

Enoch treated us to a post-prandial lecture on how - based on his interpretation of classified documents, to which only those with Parliamentary privilege could gain access - he knew that there had been a conspiracy, inspired by America during [but not confined to] WW2, in which it was proposed that, if Ireland would abandon its neutrality, and join the Allies [against Nazi Germany in the first instance, and, later, against the USSR], Ulster would be ceded by Britain, to Dublin.

Proper cross about it, was Enoch.

And - judging by the hard stare he gave me as he left the dining room - he didn't much like the red bow tie I was wearing with my DJ that evening.

Powell would have been well aware of the offer made to DeValera in June 1940.

Malcolm MacDonald - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I always took a bit of a different slant on Powell's speech and I remember the time well as I was about 13. I don't claim that I fully understood the tone of timbre of the speech at the time but it strikes me that his references to blood in the Tiber were more about why Rome fell because of the pressures put on it by tribes wanting Roman Protection just at the time when it could no longer respond economically. You are all perfectly right to say that Rome took no notice of race , the concept of Rome was that you paid Roman Taxes. But part of the pressures at the end were caused in part by the expansion of another empire, namely the Chinese. Ironically we are getting to a point in this country that have striking parrallels in terms of economic capability and I suspect that Powell may have seen these problems just as we were divesting ourselves of empire, so the pressures of migration are in fact divisive. It's certainly true that we need or that some migration is bound to take place but I suspect that our political leaders already know the game's up because the EU largely dictates our policy. The Roman empire collapsed because they couldn't defend their borders, the same is essentially true of this country.

Originally Posted by Suddick

By coincidence I am presently reading Simon Hefferlump's biography, "Like the Roman". Powell wasn't approached and was retrospectively happy not to have be sequestered for Bletchley as, in the mid '30s, he fantasised about a soldier's death on the battlefield.

Ta - thinking more about it what I saw in Kew was a letter from Cambridge flagging him up as a 'possible' to Denniston (Head of GC&CS). Never been moved to find out more - he's not someone who particularly interests me.