Like the Roman: 50 years on we ask — Was Enoch Powell right?
Interview with Raheem Kassam
I’m delighted to present an interview with Raheem Kassam talking about his new book, Enoch was Right. Kassam analyses in depth the changing nature of UK demographics, crime statistics, integration, the race relations industry, and more. More often than not, Kassam finds that “Enoch was right” in his predictions for the future of the United Kingdom. Kassam is the author of the bestselling No Go Zones: How Shariah Law is Coming to a Neighborhood Near You.
Following the success of his last book ‘No Go Zones’ Kassam has produced a book that should spark a national debate. I say should because mainstream media does not find a cogent, nuanced and critical debate around Enoch Powell’s infamous 1976 speech to be all that convenient.
The political and media classes don’t really want to speak about how communities within the United Kingdom have seemingly atomised, slowly pulling themselves apart into mental and physical ghettos acclimatised to their own thought belief, political and cultural outlook and inability to take a cohesive approach to communal relations.
But is that too simplistic a conclusion to draw 50 years on from when Powell addressed this issue head on? Whatever your opinion of Enoch Powell, simply ignoring him or calling him a bigot and virulent racist doesn’t change the fact that he was essentially a messenger, delivering an argument that was at once uncomfortable and as compelling as he intended to be. So, was Enoch right?
Saurav: What was your immediate reaction when you heard Lord Adonis object to the broadcast of the Powell speech on BBC radio, specifically that it was “an incitement to racial hatred and violence which should not be broadcast” ?
Raheem Kassam: He said worse than that. He said if Powell were alive today he would be arrested and charged ‘with serious offences’. This is how deranged the globalists have become now. 2016 was a real shock to them, and a lot of them are operating with political PTSD. Adonis, Blair, Campbell, and a whole bunch of others have fully lost their minds. Look at what Vicente Fox recently said in a debate with Nigel Farage. He said he believes China has a better way of governing because democracy is outdated. They’re now lauding authoritarian regimes because the people are fighting back against decades of mass migration and so forth. This is why Adonis wants to bring ‘hate crimes’ and all that stuff up when it comes to Powell. Because they can’t refute his arguments historically or philosophically, and they cannot admit he was right about so much that he warned about. We’re in gulag territory now.
Saurav: What was the compelling need for you to write this book, and why is its message important?
Raheem Kassam: I look around the London I knew as a kid, and the Britain my parents emigrated to, which gave them the opportunities which they handed down to me in turn. That Britain is disappearing. When they came to Britain, and when Powell gave his speech, migration was in the tens of thousands. Now gross migration is about 600,000 a year into the UK. It’s extraordinary. Nothing can cope. The transport, the health service, housing, none of it. It’s all creaking and crumbling and we’re stacking on more and more debt to finance our growing, ageing population. Enoch Powell knew what was coming and I was tired of his legacy and intellect people maligned and marginalised by an establishment who just couldn’t afford for people to know he was right all along. God knows what happens when a majority figure it out.
Saurav: Do you think continual criticism of the speech-especially now-has led to it being misunderstood and even helping close the debate on immigration in the UK and at large?
Raheem Kassam: Very few people understood it even when he made the speech in 1968. I think even he wasn’t sure. He had given a similar speech in Walsall a few months before, but without the aggression and violent imagery and anecdotes from constituents. He said he wanted the speech to go up like a rocket and stay there and surely enough if did. But I think he underestimated just how much fuel was in that rocket. It’s not just stayed there, it’s still rising. Of course the establishment used it to undermine the arguments on immigration. But that wasn’t necessarily Powell’s fault. It was down to their ignorance that they didn’t get what he was saying, especially the part from Virgil’s Aeneid. Mind you, he should have probably recognised that his political colleagues at the time were not exactly Britain’s brain trust. It’s a shame really because if he hadn’t given the speech he’d probably have become Prime Minister and Britain would never have become a party of the European Economic Community as we know it today (the European Union). But on balance I guess he was looking around and thinking ‘Oh God what if I don’t become Prime Minister’ and felt he had to say something about an issue becoming more and more important to him and his constituents.
Saurav: What do you think of the point of view that nothing has transformed post-war Britain as much as immigration, and yet politicians are, because of Powell’s speech, not allowed to discuss it?
Raheem Kassam:It’s not Powell’s speech that makes politicians unable to talk about it. It’s their own cowardice and the fact the political and media establishments have settled, together, on the view that Britain must be fundamentally changed. Culturally, demographically, and that history should be rewritten as a result of the guilt of Empire. Anyone can talk about it if they want, they just have to weather the storm. We weathered the storm when I worked for UKIP, and we weathered the storm during Brexit. Politicians just use Powell and the speech as an excuse because they’re cowards.
Saurav: Would you accept that much of what became known as Paki-bashing can be traced to the impact of his speeches?
Raheem Kassam: No. Xenophobia is a relatively consistent thing in the course of human history. Rival tribes fear one another. Rival nations go to war. And mass migration introduces cultures, languages, and people that ‘natives’ might naturally fear when it comes about en masse. If you look at the polling from back then, very few people felt inherently hostile because of where someone else came from. It was more about the numbers, and whole streets and now neighborhoods changing. Why shouldn’t people feel angry about that? Unfortunately a very small minority chose to aim this anger at the immigrants themselves rather than the political establishment who brought about their arrival.
Saurav: What did you learn about Enoch Powell and his work after writing this book that you were not aware of prior to your research?
Raheem Kassam: Oh gosh, so much. I mean, really, loads. His illustrious career both pre and post-war, being one of the youngest professors (25) and having been crucial to Rommel’s defeat in El Alamein. You’ll have to get the book to find out the rest!
Saurav: Do you think the U.K population is being robbed physically, culturally and morally because of lack of integration and assimilation by migrants; particularly some groups more than others?
Raheem Kassam: This is what Powell’s constituent called ‘the whip hand’. He said in 15 or 20 years the black man will have the whip hand over the white man. What he meant, which I have no doubts about, was that due to the new ‘Race Relations Act’ and the political correctness that was taking root, that native Britons would be unable to stand their ground over many affairs because state-sponsored multiculturalism would attack them for doing so. Look at crime nowadays in London. We’re not even allowed to talk about where it is coming from and why. Look at how they treated people telling the truth about Muslim grooming gangs in their neighborhoods 10 years ago. Now we know it was true all along, but only after thousands of girls were raped, and hundreds of thousands of ordinary people were called “racist” etc etc.
Saurav: Do you think closing down any criticism of Powell and his speech is a convenient tool for critics to avoid having a more cogent discussion of immigration and migrants?
Raheem Kassam: Of course. I don’t have much more to add than that.
Saurav: What would you consider to be the main takeaways for those who read your book?
Raheem Kassam: To maintain an open mind about Powell and what his entire life was dedicated to: the idea of the nation-state. Everything else is just noise. Intentional noise, designed to distract and debilitate Britain
Breitbart London editor-in-chief Raheem Kassam’s new book marking the anniversary of the late Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech can be purchased here.
