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Enoch Powell's April 20, 1968 address to the General Meeting of the West Midlands Area Conservative Political Centre (commonly called "Rivers of Blood") was a speech criticising Commonwealth immigration, and anti-discrimination legislation that had been proposed in the United Kingdom. Powell (1912–1998) was the Conservative Member of Parliament for Wolverhampton South West. Though Powell referred to the speech as "the Birmingham speech", it is otherwise known as the "Rivers of Blood" speech, a title derived from its allusion to a line from Virgil's ''Aeneid''. Although the phrase "rivers of blood" does not appear in the speech, the name alludes to the line, "As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see 'the River Tiber foaming with much blood.'" The speech caused a political storm, making Powell one of the most talked about, though divisive, politicians in the country, and leading to his controversial dismissal from the Shadow Cabinet by Conservative party leader Edward Heath. According to most accounts, the popularity of Powell's perspective on race may have played a decisive contributory factor in the Conservatives' surprise victory in the 1970 general election, and he became one of the most persistent rebels opposing the subsequent Heath government.〔 == Background == Powell made the speech on 20 April 1968 in Birmingham, to a meeting of the Conservative Political Centre. The Labour government's Race Relations Bill 1968 was to have its second reading the following Tuesday, and the Conservative Opposition had tabled an amendment significantly weakening its provisions.〔 〕 The Bill was a successor to the Race Relations Act 1965. The Birmingham-based television company ATV saw an advance copy of the speech on the Saturday morning, and its news editor ordered a television crew to go to the venue, where they filmed sections of the speech. Earlier in the week, Powell said to his friend Clement Jones, who was a journalist at the Wolverhampton ''Express & Star'', "I'm going to make a speech at the weekend and it's going to go up 'fizz' like a rocket; but whereas all rockets fall to the earth, this one is going to stay up." 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Rivers of Blood speech」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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