BBC recreate Powell's Racist Rant as "Windrush" generation face deportation.

 It may be sheer coincidence that  the BBC plans to air a full recitation of Enoch Powell’s infamous “rivers of blood” speech,  have hit the headlines with the news of concern  that Commonwealth citizens who have lived in Britain for decades after arriving as children are being made “destitute and stateless” due to the government’s hostile environment policies, politicians and diplomats are warning.


The BBC plans to recreate Powell's racist rant has seen  a Labour peer writing to Ofcom about the broadcast and one contributor saying she regrets taking part.

The 50th anniversary broadcast on Saturday will feature the actor Ian McDiarmid reading the full text of Powell’s incendiary speech, interspersed with analysis and criticism. If it goes ahead it will be the first time the speech has been broadcast in full on British radio.

The BBC media editor, Amol Rajan, who will present the programme, said on Twitter on Thursday: 

“On Saturday, for 1st time EVER, Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech will be read in full on UK radio.” 

After the announcement, the University of Wolverhampton academic Dr Shirin Hirsch, a contributor to the programme, said she was “disgusted” by how it was being promoted and she now viewed her participation as a mistake.

The Guardian reports that 

The Labour peer Andrew Adonis said he had written to the Ofcom chief executive, Sharon White, calling the decision to broadcast the speech “extraordinary” and asking her to instruct the BBC to cancel the programme.
His request was unlikely to be met because Ofcom is a post-transmission regulator. It also advises viewers to complain to the BBC in the first instance.
A statement from the watchdog said: “Ofcom’s powers, granted by parliament, are as a post-broadcast regulator. This means that we wouldn’t check or approve any broadcaster’s editorial content before transmission.”

In his letter, Adonis wrote:

“The BBC claims in its advance publicity that this is some kind of artistic enterprise. This argument is unsustainable, particularly in context of the BBC’s boast that the broadcast provides a unique opportunity to hear the speech in full.”
He went on: “As a special tribute to the 50th anniversary of ‘rivers of blood’, the BBC is broadcasting the full text of the most incendiary racist speech of modern Britain that was not even broadcast at the time.”

 The Independent  coincidently reports  that

Of around 550,000 people from the Caribbean who migrated to the UK between 1948 and 1973, some 50,000 who are still in the UK may not yet have regularised their residency status, according to information from the Migration Observatory at Oxford University.

Many of these elderly migrants are now being barred from working, being refused access to government services including NHS treatment, and facing the loss of welfare and housing benefits.
One man, Albert Thompson, who has lived in London for 44 years after having arrived from Jamaica as a teenager, went for his first radiotherapy session for prostate cancer only to be told that unless he could produce a British passport he would be charged £54,000 for the treatment.
Despite having worked as a mechanic and paid taxes for more than three decades, Mr Thompson’s free healthcare was denied and he was evicted last summer, leading him to be homeless for three weeks.
In another case, Michael Braithwaite, who arrived in Britain from Barbados in 1961, lost his job as a special needs teaching assistant after his employers ruled that he was an illegal immigrant.
In a third case, 61-year-old Paulette Wilson, who has been in Britain for 50 years, received a letter informing her that she was an illegal immigrant and was going to be removed and sent back to Jamaica, the country she left when she was 10 and has never visited since.

Is this the level that Brexit has brought us to?

The recreation of Racist Rant  claiming to be "art". Whilst  people who have lived in this country  for years and who have assumed that they were British Citizens denied NHS treatment and threatened with deportation.

Surely  we should be granting an amnesty, to these  people who are being threatened with deportation to countries they may not have seen for 50 years.

Whilst rich Russian Oligarchs  many who ave vary dubious pasts are welcomed to live in London with open arms. Those who have worked  for years and paid their taxes faithfully are treated as criminals.

We are surely  are entering a dark period in these Islands  in which the voices of intolerance  and racism are given free rein in our media,  and the BBC flagship program "Question Time" seeming to have a permanent right wing majority on the panel   and an audience that seems to consist of people with similar views, we must be ever-increasing vigilant and continue to speak out.