Enoch Powell again: on how third-world immigration to Britain got going
Yesterday I mentioned that I was looking for a video of Enoch Powell explaining the start of substantial third-world immigration to Britain. This isn’t the video I was looking for, but it’s similar. A bonus in this one is hearing how British-y William F. Buckley’s speaking style is. In some ways this clip, made in 1969, seems archaic – even to me.
This first clip is two minutes long:
This second clip is about three and a half minutes long
That’s from 1969, and a lot has happened since then, as you might imagine. Here’s a short summary:
Since 1945, immigration to the United Kingdom, controlled by British immigration law and to an extent by British nationality law, has been significant, in particular from the former territories of the British Empire and the member states of the EU and EFTA. Since the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union, migration from countries outside the European Economic Area has dominated immigration to the UK. The British Nationality Act 1948 granted residency rights to all colonial subjects, approximately 800 million, enabling mass post-war immigration. The Commonwealth Immigrants Acts (1962, 1968) and Immigration Act 1971 rescinded these rights by introducing work vouchers and ancestral requirements that favoured those with parent or grandparent to have been born in the UK. The British Nationality Act 1981 abolished the 1948 citizenship status.
Since the United Kingdom acceded to the European Communities in the 1970s and the creation of the European Union in the early 1990s, people have migrated from member states of the European Union, exercising one of the European Union’s Four Freedoms. Migration to and from Central and Eastern Europe increased since 2004, following the accession of eight Central and Eastern European states to the European Union. Following the end of the Brexit transition period on 31 December 2020 at 11 pm GMT, this freedom of movement ceased. Citizens of EEA+CH member states no longer had an automatic right to move to or reside permanently in the UK without a visa. A smaller number have come as illegal immigrants, many of which have claimed asylum. …
The UK Government can also grant settlement to foreign nationals, which confers on them indefinite leave to remain in the UK, without granting them British citizenship. Grants of settlement are made on the basis of various factors, including employment, family formation and reunification, and asylum …
Long-term net migration is estimated to have reached a record high of 944,000 in the year ending March 2023, with immigration at 1,469,000 and emigration at 525,000. According to the Office for National Statistics’ provisional estimate, released November 2025, long-term net migration in the year ending June 2025 was +204,000 … Total immigration was 898,000: non-EEA+CH nationals accounted for 75% of total immigration (670,000), British nationals comprised 16% (143,000), and EEA+CH nationals constituted 9% (85,000). The top three nationalities from non-EU+ countries immigrating on work-related visas were Indian, Pakistani, and Nigerian.
It’s complicated, to say the least.
White guilt. What a strange idea.
Empathy and altruism only work in certain situations. In others, they are catastrophic.
Related.
“…Muslim Brotherhood has its sights set on Canada”—
https://www.blazingcatfur.ca/2026/06/12/joe-adam-george-muslim-brotherhood-has-its-sights-set-on-canada/
Amending BobS pithy formula, we get: “Empathy and altruism only work in certain WELL-CONSTRAINED situations. In others, IN GENERAL, they are catastrophic.”
In the years I was in England end 78′ end 80 mostly saw Indian or Pakistani. Then seemed there were lots of them but more in London than in sall towns.
Have read Indian immigrants run England immigration so hence they are allowing more Indian immigrants.
Its all going to come to civil war at worse or will turn into a foreign run country.
What an intellectually impressive man was Enoch Powell.
Geoffrey Britain:
Yes. The guys at “The Rest Is History” did a fascinating piece on him. You can find it here. Start watching around 7:50.
I found it interesting to learn that the entire starting eleven of the Moroccan World Cup squad were born in countries other than Morocco. The whole team of 26 has 7 natives to 19 other nationals. Morocco vs Brazil (group C), by the way, ended in a 1-1 tie.
Buckley’s accent was an exaggerated version of the now-extinct mid-Atlantic dialect, a version of which actors had to learn in the Thirties and later.
FDR had some of it. “feeyah but feeyah itself” Not ‘fear but fearitself”.
Whatever out laws were, I wonder when the mechanisms got to the point of actually enforcing them.
Buckley’s first language was Spanish, with French second. IIRC, he actually learnt English in Britain, at first.
EDIT: I think that was Jeffrey Goldberg in the 2nd clip. The one who has done such a bang up job in pushing falsehoods about Trump.
Jeff Greenfield
@Richard Aubrey,
These are only my opinions, but- maybe Mr. Buckley doesn’t have one, but- I think the accent that most people [think] Buckley has, is called,
“the Northeastern elite accent”, aka, “the patrician accent”.
Here’s a wikipedia article, describing this kind of accent:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeastern_elite_accent
The, [my words], fun + accomplished author/journalist, George Plimpton, and-[the fictional, wealthy + snooty, + maybe snobby couple, The Howells, from the Gilligan’s Island (tv show) ], have this kind of accent.
That’s just my thoughts on Mr. Buckley’s accent, + accents that are like it.
p.s.- please read the George Plimpton book, “The Paper Lion”. It’s an interesting + intriguing, football book.
In it- Mr. Plimpton describes how he, as an [undercover reporter(?)], tried out for the Detroit Lions…pro, NFL football team, to report on- “how very unlikely” it would be for the regular, non-athlete, man-on-the-street, to:
try out for a pro-football team, and then survive the rigors of that try-out experience, + then win himself a place on that team.
To me, the language/common phrases in the book can be a little tricky for me to figure out, but to be realistic- today’s…2026 authors + 1963’s authors, are kind-of, way different animals, now.
Cheers.
😀
Oh, also:
As a follow up to my last comment: in comedy films, + comedy-films about:
high schools, you find that a LOT of them give the stereotypical…rich bullies, + the stereotypical…snobby/prep-school bullies, the Northeastern elite accent.
Cheers.
🙂 😀
Bill Buckley didn’t learn English in England, but his father was amazed when after a year in boarding school there, WFB Jr. came back with an English accent.
Last week I was curious about the population of Wales, Scotland, and England.
Wales has 3.2 million people. It’s mountainous.
Scotland has 5.5 million. Pretty mountainous.
England has 58.6 million. Is it larger than Wales and Scotland? Of course. But it’s not ten to twenty times as large. That’s a lot of people squeezed into 130,000 square kilometers (51,000 square miles). That’s 400+ per square kilometer and 1100 per square mile.
That’s yet another reason why inviting hundreds of thousands of immigrants over the last decade is difficult to understand.
My brother and I attended a British school for two years. Took about three months to pick up the accent. Although we never picked up the distinctly English AH for short A as in words like half or pass.
— Rick67
It’s not hard to understand at all. The motives are exactly the same as the reason the transnational governing class wants open borders in France, in Canada, in the USA, pretty much everywhere.
1. Business wants downward wage pressure and a supply of cheap, motivated, and scared workers. They also want to import customers.
2. The educated global elite tends to be cosmopolitan and to disdain local loyalties and local identities. Mass immigration dilutes that.
2a. Local details matter on this point. For ex, even though it’s illegal for non-citizens to vote in most of the USA, they are still counted by the census and used for apportionment of Congressional seats and Electoral College seats. Even illegals are counted for this.
3. The professional class wants nannies, servants, etc. who will work for low wages.
4. The cultural mindset of the Boomer-age dominant educated class is built around an ideal expressed in John Lennon’s Imagine, and this old Coke commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zCsFvVg0UY Yes, it’s just a soda ad, but the image captures an ideal, the global, international, everybody getting along ideal that just isn’t reality-compatible, but is ingrained in that social class as how things ‘should’ be.
5. Class disdain. In the UK that takes the form of contempt for what they call ‘Little Englanders’. It’s been an issue for a century or more.
Strange, though, that this impressive, comprehensive checklist sounds relatively benign.
Rational.
That is bad choices, but rational ones.
Me? I prefer the WEF/WTF / CPC / Obama-Biden-DPOTUS / Starmer / Trudeau-Carney / EU / UN / WHO / TRANSFORMATION / etcetera / arc-of-history / tear-it-all-down-because-it’s-the-RIGHT-and-MORAL-thing-to-do explanation.
(I’m pretty certain that’s what Occam’s been whispering in my ear…)