Tuesday 24 February 2009

Revisiting My Jottings of March 2008, Leicester.

Last night on the 8th of March I watched on BBC2, Rivers of Blood, an examination of "former shadow Cabinet Minister Enoch Powell's controversial speech in 1968", part of BBC's White Season. This is an excerpt of Powell's speech from You Tube.

Here is the review of the documentary from The Guardian Guide.



Forty years ago in April, the then Conservative MP Enoch Powell made what remains one of the most famous - if not one of the most deranged, paranoid, cynical and mean-spirited - speeches in British history. This film examines Powell's melodramatic rant on immigration, its context, and its consequences. Interesting, but incomplete - Powell, were he still alive, might derive sour satisfaction from noting that the producers appear to have made little effort to interview anyone who still agrees with him. And it is extraordinarily naive to pretend they don't exist. AM

This is the Daily Telegraph's Review.

To commemorate the 40th anniversary of Enoch Powell's infamous speech , the film 'Rivers of Blood' re-examines Powell's argument, asking whether he was right to predict that ultimately, multiculturalism would herald disaster. Andrew Pettie

I find it ironic that this Great Britain has so much angst about 'multiculturalism' or what in Malaysia is described as 'multiracialism'. They agonise about how they have been flooded with foreigners when these people make for less than 10% of the British population.

The British , in fact 'created' at the turn of the 20th century, for their political convenience and rapacious greed, a 'multicultural-multiracial' construct in Malaya - when they opened the gates for Chinese and Indian migrants to work on the tin mines and plantations to 'develop' the Golden Chersonese.

The result? Today out of a total population of about 27 million, the Malays make up 60%, the Chinese 25% and the Indians 8%. What would the bleating Brits do if today, the immigrants (especially the 'coloured' ones) make up 33% of their citizenry? Rivers of Blood and Tears? However the EU saved their skin, (white, that is) because white, mainly Christian immigrants from Eastern Europe can now settle onthis island. Perhaps this is why Turkey cannot be an acceptable member of the EU - slightly wrong colour and wrong religion, despite all that Mustafa Kamal Ataturk had done to 'wogify' his country.

Following this documentary came another about the arrival of the Poles.
This is the review by the Guardian.

Tim Samuels trademark approach of tackling serious issues through insouciant humour works well on this documentary about the impact of half a million Polish workers coming to Britain.

I am amused by this insouciant humour in dealing with this documentary about the Poles. 'Rivers of Blood' had no injection of humour, insouciant or not. It was dressed in ominous doom and gloom - a kind of doomsday scenario. Most telling was the way the documentary slid into anti-Muslim/Islam diatribe, making the insidious and crooked connection that the Muslim immigrants have proven true Powell's predictions: what with the 7/7 London bombs and the Salman Rushdie brouhaha.

Muslim reactions have little to do with the negative outcome of multiculturalism. It has a lot to do with the 1500 years of anti-Islam hostility and the barbaric onslaught of Anglo-Saxon, Judaeo-Christian army into the Muslim world. How then do they account for all the bloodshed by white, Catholic IRA in Britain?

Well, that was what I wrote a year ago in my notebook. Today we have witnessed the Flood of Blood in Gaza and the western economy is falling to pieces. What will it be like one year from now?

N.B. Let me clarify some parts of the posting .

1. I was writing about BBC2"s documentary made on the 50th anniversary of Enoch Powell's speech of 'Rivers of Blood" on 8 March 2008, and another documentary on Polish immigrant workers in Britain.
2. I placed an excerpt of Powell's speech of 1968 taken from You Tube for the benefit of some who are not familiar with his ideas.
3.I wish I could find a way to post all of that first documentary because it tells a lot about the nature of western 'serious' documentaries. Somehow they always manage to home in on Islam and Muslims as a problem they have to live with in their 'open and democratic societies'.

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