In Defence of Edward Heath

One story has dominated the news this week, the almighty cock up made by recent governments over the handling of records belonging to immigrants to Britain during the late 20th century. Named after the infamous ship that carried one of the first major groups of immigrants to post-war Britain, the Empire Windrush, the legal position around the Windrush generation is simple- when they arrived in the United Kingdom, they were citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies, and had the right to move to the United Kingdom, live and work here. Britain was affectionately known as 'the Mother Country,' and thousands of people all around the world looked up to us, and chose to move and help us in our times of hardship after the Second World War. So leave it to the UK to manage to get into a tangle about whether or not now, some 65 plus years later, the people who moved here should be allowed to stay.

Today also marks a linked, particularly repulsive anniversary, 50 years since Enoch Powell, former youngest professor in the British Empire, former youngest Brigadier in the British army, and now a senior Conservative politician, rose to his feet in Birmingham's Midland Hotel, and gave a speech. His speech was a broadside against the Labour government's Race Relations Bill then working its way through the Commons. Powell cited examples of terrified white constituents in Wolverhampton, isolated in their schools and on their streets. To continue with immigration at this level, Powell argued, was proof we were "mad, literally mad, as a nation." "It is like watching a nation, busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre." Although his final line was delivered in Latin, it was a chilling image which gave the speech the name by which it is known: "I am filled with much foreboding. Like the Roman, I see the Tiber foaming with much blood."

The impact of the Rivers of Blood speech was immediate and dramatic. Thousands of London dockers, Labour supporters to the core, marched on Parliament, chanting Powell's name and offering him support. Telegrams and letters poured into politicians and newspapers across Britain, the vast majority of them in support of the views Powell had expressed. In years to come, the phrase 'Enoch was right' was adopted by the far-right, and it was effective. Clearly, there was a powerful groundswell of support for Powell's ideas. When he backed the Conservatives in 1970, and Labour in 1974, support in opinion polls and at the ballot box noticeably shifted.

This post is in defence of a man I wrote my undergraduate thesis about. Edward Heath was the leader of the Conservative party from 1965-1975, and Prime Minister from 1970-1974. History has not been kind to him. He was a pretty poor leader of the Conservative party, and his election win in 1970 was a total shock to everyone apart from himself. He was not easy to get on with, and inspired loathing amongst his many critics. In office, he presided over economic turbulence, with widespread strikes, pay and price freezes, and the drastic imposition of the Three Day Week in 1974, arguably the nadir of post-war British history. Heath also struggled to deal with the total collapse of order in Northern Ireland, with sectarian carnage and the horrific events of Bloody Sunday. Even his one definitive achievement, taking Britain into the European Economic Community, now lies in tatters. When Heath lost his third of four elections in late 1974, his detractors were circling. To finish him off, they persuaded his Education minister to challenge him for the leadership of the Conservatives, even though she was a fairly dreadful candidate herself. But she did better than anyone expected, and so Heath was ousted by a Mrs Margaret Thatcher. And so the world turned.

And yet, Heath deserves credit for two actions , one linked to Powell, one linked to a handling of immigration from the Commonwealth.

When Heath heard what Powell had said in April 1968, he acted instantly. Even though it was fast becoming apparent that Powell's position was immensely popular, Heath moved fast. Before the weekend was over, he had sacked Powell from the front bench of the Conservative party, by phone. The two men never spoke again.

This sent a powerful message to all those itching to follow in Powell's footsteps. Overt racism was a death knell for your career. Powell never held senior office again, eventually leaving the Conservative party, joining the Ulster Unionists, before being ousted from Parliament in 1987. Sacking Powell didn't stop racism in Britain. It didn't even stop racialist coding in British public life. And the ugly genie of racism seems to have been more fully let out of the bottle in recent years. But Heath did draw a line in the sand; overt, crude racism had no place in mainstream British politics.

Heath's other action to be praised for puts this, and indeed most subsequent, governments to shame. In 1972, Uganda's despotic and unhinged leader, Idi Amin, suddenly announced that the substantial Indian population of Uganda had 90 days to leave. Uganda was already a country wracked by violence, and this was seen as a removal of protection for the Ugandan Asians. The Ugandan Asian community numbered around 60,000 people, and it had originated in the days of the British control of Uganda, when they had been forcibly moved there by British colonial administrators. Amin was looking to expropriate the wealth of the Ugandan Asians to enrich himself and his supporters. As Uganda had been a part of the British Empire, most of these Ugandan Asians held British passports, much like the Windrush migrants.

In 1967, a similar situation had arisen in Kenya. In response, the Labour government of Harold Wilson had retroactively changed the law governing citizenship, effectively stripping the Kenyan Asians of their British passports and preventing them from fleeing to the UK. And Heath's government had tightened immigration controls only the year before. Many Conservative backbenchers were off the opinion that Britain had no obligation to these people, and shouldn't take them in, no matter how dire their predicament.

However, after failing to reason with Amin, Heath's government ignored the critics, and the precedent set by Labour in 1967, and agreed to take all those Ugandan Asians who were citizens of the UK and Colonies. Some 30,000 people upped and moved to the UK. Heath persisted with this policy in the face of ferocious opposition, much of it in the name of Powell and his message. It was a courageous policy, and one governments since should look on with a certain amount of shame that they have never made such a bold move to help those in need.

So, on this 50th anniversary of the Rivers of Blood speech, and as the government currently makes an absolute hash out of the issue of whether people who moved here when they were British citizens should be allowed to stay, it is worth remembering the example of Edward Heath. Racialism is beyond the pale. And Britain should help out those in need.