If ever there was an example of how important it can be for politicians to understand how to exploit the news media it has to be Enoch Powell's calculated timing of his "Rivers of Blood" speech. Although Powell's apologists insist to this day that it was never his intention to deliver such a highly-inflammatory speech, the build-up had been prepared with great precision on the advice a close friend, Clem Jones, who had in effect become the MP's personal spin doctor. Jones, editor of the Wolverhampton Express and Star, had been advising Powell on how to maximise his coverage in the press and he followed to the letter the advice he was given on supplying the text in advance to a carefully-selected group of political editors, leader writers and columnists and the speech was under a strict Saturday afternoon embargo, in order to secure maximum exposure in the Sunday newspapers. Former BBC correspondent Nicholas Jones reveals a family drama which throws new light on what many political observers consider is the most controversial speech of the post-war years.
Forty years after his infamous "Rivers of Blood" speech, the arguments continue not just over whether Enoch Powell was right about the impact of mass immigration but if he ever intended his warnings to be as divisive as they became.
Powell was a principled, scholarly politician whose admirers say to this day that he was not a racist and that he had no inkling his remarks about a pensioner being harassed by "wide-grinning piccaninnies" would prove as inflammatory as they did.
On this specific point I beg to differ: admittedly Powell was an enigma but I am convinced he knew precisely what he was doing when he voiced the fears of constituents in Wolverhampton who had become alarmed by an influx of West Indians and Kenyan Asians.
Powell, his wife Pam and two daughters Susan and Jennifer were friends of the family. They lived a few streets away from my family home in Wolverhampton. My father, Clem Jones, then a reporter on the evening newspaper, the Express and Star, had known Powell since he was elected MP for Wolverhampton South West in 1950.
The two men were on a fast-track for promotion: my father became editor of his paper and the local MP became a minister within five years, joining the cabinet as minister of health in 1960.
When I was training to be a journalist, I realised that the animated discussions between them were something of two-way trade. Powell was picking up tips on how to use the media to promote his political career and my father was getting an unprecedented insight into the thinking of a government minister.
By the mid 1960s, with the Conservatives out of office and Powell having lost his bid for the Tory leadership, I noticed there was a harder edge to the family chit chat. Powell was on his own politically, dissatisfied with the party machine, and my father was advising him on how to time his speeches for maximum effect and to which journalists he should supply the text in advance.
Powell called to see my father on the Thursday before the speech in Birmingham in which he delivered the line that reverberates to this day: "As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see the river Tiber foaming with much blood."
My father was promised -- and received -- an advance copy of the speech that Saturday morning but the previous Thursday Powell had given no clue as to the contents except for the one tantalising comment which became fixed in my father’s memory:
"Look, Clem, I’m not telling you what is in the speech. But you know how a rocket goes up into the air, explodes into lots of stars and then falls down to the ground. Well, this speech is going to go up like a rocket, and when it gets up to the top, the stars are going to stay up."
The events that Saturday afternoon in April 1968 are imprinted on family memory. On their way to Birmingham, the Powells left their two daughters at my parents’ home.
I think they already had a sense of foreboding because three weeks earlier, in a speech in Walsall, Powell had for the first time raised the issue of immigration.
He described how one constituent had complained that his daughter was the only white child in her class at primary school. After local journalists failed to find either the child or the class, my father challenged Powell and told him that similar anonymous complaints could be traced back to the National Front. But Powell countered by saying he had received more letters of support than for any previous speech.
When my mother, who was a local magistrate, read what Powell intended to say in Birmingham she was shocked by his racist tone and the cold, calculated way the speech had been planned and executed. My father was equally appalled but said he "funked it" that afternoon and could not bring himself to greet Powell on his return from Birmingham.
My father told me that the look on my mother’s face and her demeanour as she answered the door must have forewarned him. "She was strong willed and she said to Enoch, ‘I don’t think we shall be seeing each other again for a very long time.’ Powell said to her, ‘Well, I suppose it’s the end of a good friendship now, isn’t it?’ And she said, ‘Yes, it is.’ She handed over the two girls and that was it.’
It was only after Powell’s death in 1998 that I heard my father’s full account of the events that unhappy afternoon and it has only been after the death of my parents that I have felt able to relate what was obviously a searing experience.
My father’s newspaper was overwhelmed by readers’ letters praising the speech and as editor he tried to balance out their coverage with result that he received abusive letters containing used toilet paper and had anonymous telephone calls at home saying, "Oh, is that the bloody nigger lover?"
Subsequently, as President of the Guild of British Newspaper Editors, my father led the campaign to persuade journalists to understand that news stories about race and immigration had to be treated with special care.
I admire the stand my parents took. They were on the front line in Wolverhampton trying to pick up the pieces after the fall-out from Powell’s speech. I agree with them that the real tragedy was that Powell did not use his brilliance with words and his skill as an orator to encourage racial harmony.
Having been awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Wolverhampton and having attended recent graduation ceremonies, I have been enormously impressed by the great diversity in the ethnic background of local students, many being the sons and daughters of a generation hurt by Powell’s remarks.
Equally I understand the fears of those who will use the 40th anniversary of the "Rivers of Blood" speech to say "Enoch was right." But the ingenuity and vibrance of successive waves of immigrants has enriched the United Kingdom and despite past and present tensions, we have been able to demonstrate to the world that this is a tolerant country.
(This article first appeared in the Yorkshire Post 29.3.2008)