The story begins with footage from 1968 Rivers of Blood speech, delivered in Birmingham. In it Powell’s famous lines ‘It is like a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre’ are heard.
We then cut to the interview and Reg Harcourt recalls the most famous line of the speech, ‘As I look ahead I am filled with foreboding, like the Roman I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood.’
Talking about the effect of the speech Powell says that the content was not so important but practical effects on his career were, as it altered his position in politics, and gave him an independent position [after he was ejected from the Conservative shadow cabinet].
Reg Harcourt asks if he has any regrets about the speech. He says he has no regrets, that none of the people who heard it, or read it before, realised the impact it would have. He says that he does have typographical regrets; one that in the quoted passages he did not insert quotations at the beginning of every paragraph and people attributed the words directly to him words like ‘picanini’.
Harcourt asks if Powell was trying to arouse emotion in delivering the speech. He answers that, no, he was trying to create a sense of foreboding. Looking back five years, Harcourt ask what the speech had achieved. Powell replies that it brought the issue out into the public domain for discussion. He acknowledges that it had little effect on policy or government, but says that it may have had something to do with the Conservative winning the 1970 election by a narrow margin. Harcourt and Powell discuss a possible policy of repatriation of migrant communities.
Harcourt asks, where does Enoch Powell go now, how does he see his future? Powell says he doesn’t think about it, he has better things to do, and, he says that politics is ultimately changeable. They discuss his construction as the anti-type to Edward Heath.
The interview ends with Powell responding to Harcourt’s suggestion of him as a voice in the wilderness, saying that voices in the wilderness reverberate more than those in crowded spaces.
No credits specified
Enoch Powell was MP for Wolverhampton South West from 1950 until February 1974.