Enoch Powell & Jonathan Miller Debate Issues Around UK Immigration | The Dick Cavett Show

i was saying uh it's mr powell uh it was said for example that you became the hero of the skinheads uh who this kid i i became the hero of 90 of the people of this country for having said what they were waiting for somebody to say for identifying a danger of which they were conscious but couldn't believe that nobody would see it or point it out and i still am and you still are but i mean there was a certain amount uh you will admit of reaction uh the the hero of the skinheads was a phrase used in an article that was nonviolent as if uh we've seen them reported in america as these kids with the hair shaved down who go out and occasionally beat up pakistani people and that happened before my speech as well and has not happened more since than before yeah i'm just saying uh nor has there been nor was there any act of violence associated with that speech and the one which was alleged was investigated by the police and found to be a false report what there was as i say was a tremendous explosion of emotion indeed that at last something which threatened this country which people had been watching coming was recognized was talked about that's what happened and since then at least we've been able to talk about it at least so we've discussed at least we've uh been able gradually to elicit some of the facts do you know the very facts of numbers were grossly underestimated two or three years ago i myself underestimated them in 1964 1965 i myself supposed that this immigrant population which i've explained uh would stabilize at roughly a million and while i thought that this was something which would have been better if it had been avoided still it didn't seem to me that it represented a major problem for the future of this country it is the numerical facts that have changed the outlook yes um i think that you as a philosopher will recognize that one of the dangers a reasonable argument is that it's often rationalistic to the exclusion of empirical arguments and that rationalism is not necessarily a recommendation may in fact seriously undermine the empirical and reasonable social validity of such an argument there are so many splendid there are so many uh there are so many empirical falsehoods uh in in what you've said that uh i think i'd like to take one or two of them uh uh rather carefully first of all it's my program and not yours no it's it belongs to no one it belongs to it belongs to no one at all shall i take one point first of all the program belongs to no one it's mr cavett's program and we're here simply talking to them so you and i must be careful not to hog it and you know what it is as i did as i didn't interrupt your contribution i'm sure you will only interrupt my contribution very briefly i i'm not interrupting your contribution i'm simply offering a point what i want to ask point one or two one or two issues um are you worrying about the increase in numbers or the increase in the number of people who people feel who the population at large feel anxious about because of some certain recognizable feature they have are you worrying about the increase in the size of the population or the increase of a certain element of the population which is uh in some way uh yes have features which are like of course we are not concerned with the increase in the total population from say 55 to 60 million we are concerned with the increase in an element of a population which is profoundly different thinks itself different is seen as different from the rest and that is where the significance both of number and of concentration comes in now it could be as serious indeed it could be more serious if that different population were white and not colored i can well imagine that if they were for example germans or russians who were going to be occupying two-fifths or a half of birmingham at the beginning of the next century we should yes in occupation living but as with some of your american cities a considerable proportion in the case of birmingham it will be at least two-fifths will be occupied by the immigrants and their descendants by the early years of the next century above all their descendants yes indeed but they will those descendants will still be thoroughly separate for the most part from the rest of the population because of the numbers if the numbers were small then of course like any very small minority they would filter into the population but nobody seriously imagines that if two-fifths of birmingham consists of a first generation of descendants born here of people from the west indies from africa and from asia there will not be a profound difference between that part of the population and the rest i think there may be a difference in fact there certainly will be a difference whether that difference is enough to promote anxiety unless someone declares you think nobody would notice no i think they'll notice certainly the question about is whether they will notice with fear and horror unless someone announces to them that fear and horror are our appropriate response to such effects you think that human nature is such that unless somebody referred to this nobody would notice that their own native cities were transformed that the white population was moving out and the different population was moving that well you think the then that it would be noticed but that it would not be merely be tolerated but would be taken as a desirable or acceptable development no i didn't say that that is what you have to say that is what you have to say if this is not to be a problem you're simply putting words which you would find convenient in my mouth what i said was that i didn't say that there would be no difficulties difficulties are in the nature of human coexistence what i said was that the differences that there would be are not necessarily the differences which would excite fear and horror unless someone stands up and says that fear and horror are an appropriate response someone invested with the authority of public office when you do that the charisma of your office and the charisma of your role as a politician will often convince people that fear and horror are an appropriate response if that is what is being told them it's what philosophers call a performative utterance no doubt you're familiar with it and and [Applause] that if you believe that you will believe anything it is stark nonsense to say that if i had never been born the same dangers and problems would have existed in this no i didn't say that either well you didn't know i did not i did not say i made it easier for you no no you haven't at all i did not say that the same dangers would not exist i did not say that that that ethnic frictions don't exist between groups that are drawn from different uh areas and from that have different racial origins social cooperation is a hard and a difficult thing i feel that you would have done your duty as a politician as an ethical politician much more productively if instead of exciting the notion of future strife you had encouraged the notion of future cooperation on the basis of understanding [Music] then will you tell me why it is that those in the race revations industry who profess to be trying to do just that find it necessary to draw attention to the dangers of future strife and indeed do so in terms as strong as any of it i have ever used i will not be saddled with the follies of the other side as well the mere fact that errors are made by people who have the best intentions does not mean that i have to adopt their methods or favor them i i deplore your techniques and i deplore some of their techniques what i ask for is not rationalism or reasonableness but um a sense of the variety of human existence and also an attention to the capacities of human beings to absorb each other's differences rather than an encouragement and an exhortation to excite the sense of difference and to deplore it and what i ask for is that you should not live in a fool's paradise may i ask for what's left of my part of the program we will return after this message from our local station uh i'm talking with enoch powell and uh with jonathan miller um would you then have to admit that if all of the immigrants that are in question here were white anglo-saxon protestants you would be less exercised over this subject than you are but they're not immigrants those wouldn't be immigrants would they if there were an influx of the eq of an equal number of of white anglo-saxons for populations the same the population's the same a problem doesn't arise that's it well i i think i'm stating the question clearly aren't they it isn't what i'm i'm saying that is it not logical uh conceivable um probable that uh part of your concern is the difference in culture of these people and the difference in race well of course if there were no difference there would be no problem of course if there were well shall we shall we start our program again if in fact um the and i i recognize what it is that that worries you about the arrival what is me or that where is the people who you supposedly represent um the what is the people of this country all right why is the people that's got it but let's leave it at this moment if you are worried and they are worried about the arrival of a group of people in the culture who by reasons of differences of behavior are going to represent a stress upon that culture i'm very surprised that one of the other forms of immigration one of the largest influxes that has ever occurred in the history of this island which has occurred in the last 25 30 years as a result of the introduction of antibiotics it's the influx from the land of the dead who are not usually recognized as such an extraordinary proportion of people who are now allowed to live beyond ages which as a result of diseases of the chest and cardiovascular system they would not you have recalled from another country if you like a very large group of people who by virtue of their age are throwing acute stresses upon the culture of the country precisely because families find it very hard to live on very large numbers of occasions with old people for precisely the reasons that you are talking about because they have different habits due to their age now no one suggests for example that this population from the other side of the sticks are going to be given their fare and kyron's pennies to return them because they are an inconvenience due to their cultural differences from the young group upon whom they now become a burden what we are learning to do is to accommodate old people or should be doing although in fact in the next 30 years they will represent perhaps an even greater danger to the structure of our society if we cannot intelligently accommodate these people that we have rescued from this other foreign country from much further away than jamaica or from india and i just wonder how you feel about that sort of problem because i feel that from the metaphor of that problem we can learn how to handle other people who've also come from other countries well you called it a metaphor and of course it is a metaphor and a very striking and moving metaphor of course they didn't come back they were prevented from going there and these people and these people are our parents our relatives our own flesh and blood part of the inhabitants of this island whose age structure and whose numbers for the reasons which you've explained have changed of course there are problems there and there are problems which unless we were to forswear the use of antibiotics and so on something which is suggested by a large number of doctors after the age of the world i said unless we were to force where that um is inevitable but the immigration was not inevitable this was due to a state of the law of this country to which is there is no parallel in any other country this was due to the government of this country and i take my share of the blame for it deferring for too long to bring the law of this country into accord uh with reality it is therefore something preventable in its growth and a tenerate in part reversible since unlike the land of the dead a great majority of the immigrants here and their children born here are the citizens of their home countries so that is to generate that along with other basic differences the difference between something which is remediable or partly remediable and something which uh failing euthanasia and so on uh is not but i think it's i i think if i must say so that the the contrast which the metaphor imports is is a very instructive one [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: The Dick Cavett Show

Views: 414,624

Rating: 4.9087019 out of 5

Keywords: The Dick Cavett Show, Talk Show, Musician, Celebrities, Dick Cavett, United States, Chat Show, Interview, Enoch Powell, #enochpowell, Roger Moore, Jonathan Miller, #jonathanmiller, British politician, classical scholar, #politics, Minister of health, conservative member, India independence, Post-imperialist Britain and India, post-imperialism, John Enoch Powell MBE, Rivers of Blood Speech, Britain commonwealth, immigration, UK immigration, #thedickcavettshow, May 14th 1971, debate

Id: MEPtyb9OHP8

Length: 14min 4sec (844 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 02 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Spiracle]

Well worth watching past 10:30 when Miller brings up the subject of antibiotics.

[u/ScunneredWhimsy]

So getting past the "Powell was evil, boo hiss" auto-da-fé; can't help but feel that watching Miller slowly go in a huff over the course of the interview was really funny.

[u/Scaevola_books]

People who found this video interesting (and those who find Powell's ideas to be racist for that matter) should also read Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities by Eric Kaufmann. I's a rigorous, non-partisan and dispassionate examination of these issues. The most thorough and reasonable I have come across.