Rivers of Blood speech

Enoch Powell's 20 April 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 to the United Kingdom and the then-proposed Race Relations Bill. Powell (1912–1998) was the Conservative Member of Parliament for Wolverhampton South West. Powell referred to the speech as "the Birmingham speech" but it is otherwise known as the "Rivers of Blood" speech, a title derived from its allusion to a line from Virgil's Aeneid. 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, and 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 immigration 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.

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.

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