I absolutely disagree with you.

Powell was not a man of his time or of any other time. Few were so learned as Powell, so he well knew the implications of what he was saying; people around him may have been less aware, but it does not excuse Powell.

If we are to understand Powell in the context of his times, it must be as the mouthpiece of unfounded fears of the new, the strange and the different. It was pandering to those who would march and riot, claiming that ‘Enoch was right’ and who didn’t make the subtle (but meaningless) distinctions that Powell did.

Even if it was ‘par for the course’, the invocation of his name by Hastilow, particularly given that Hastilow knew how people understood Powell, is unacceptable for someone who aspires to Parliament.

Then you talk about Islam, which has become the shibboleth for immigration today. Firstly, you blanket all ‘black men’ as one, and all ‘Muslims’ as one, despite being very heterogeneous groups. Secondly, you provide no evidence. Certainly, there has been conflict around the increasing visibility of Islam in Britain, but that conflict has been whipped up by modern-day versions of Powell. This follows, I’m afraid, in a long line of realising that past immigration was good but complaining against the modern version of it on the basis that ‘it’s gone too far’. First Jews, the Huguenots, then Irish, Caribbeans, gypsies, asylum seekers and now Muslims. I reject it wholeheartedly.

xD.

He was wrong in the context of the “black man” but right in the context of Islam.