Fifty Years On, U.K.’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ Still Flow
Theresa May’s Windrush scandal exposes British populism’s racist roots.
A lingering shadow over England’s green and pleasant land
Photographer: Evening Standard/Hulton ArchiveOn April 20th, 1968, the conservative British Member of Parliament Enoch Powell made a notorious speech advocating repatriation for non-white people and outlining a racially exclusive future for Britain. This week, near the 50th anniversary of Powell’s speech, came several reminders that the past is not dead; it is not even past.
Britain’s Home Secretary Amber Rudd was forced to resign, following revelations that she was aware, contrary to her denials, of arbitrary targets set by her office for the deportation of “illegal” immigrants. This policy of creating a “hostile environment” was explicitly defined in 2012 by the present Prime Minister Theresa May when she was Home Secretary. It had been invisibly shattering lives for years. But outrage erupted when the Guardian exposed May’s victims as elderly men and women from the Caribbean who started to arrive in Britain in June 1948 to help rebuild the war-ravaged country.