Powell was no racist
Sir: Randhir Singh Bains (Letters, 17 November) is being disingenuous when he argues that Enoch Powell was, indeed, a racist because the main thrust of his concern was against 'coloured, not white, immigration'.
But Powell was concerned about culture — not race or colour 'per se'. Powell was warning the indigenous British population about the dangers of uncontrolled large-scale immigration from countries whose religion and culture were wholly alien to that of the host nation, particularly where they chose to settle in large numbers in close proximity to each other.
He feared the consequences of allowing them to replace the host's culture with their own and establish ghetto monocultures, created parallel to, but separate from, that of their host country. He believed (rightly as events have proved) that such immigrant cultures were, as they remain today, incapable of being integrated into mainstream Britain.
No one can deny that this has happened, and on a scale vaster than even Powell could have imagined. The fact that such immigrants were of a different colour was simply not an issue to him — but he did believe that he had a duty as a politician to warn the British people of the dangers to their society should their government continue to permit such immigration to continue.
Richard Longfield Basingstoke, Hants
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