The post you are reporting:
To give, perhaps a more rounded view of Enoch Powell.
Take a look at his speech, The Water Tower in which he signalled a change in the treatment of the mentally ill. It was given in Brighton in 1961 at the National Association for Mental Health's annual conference.
Powell indicated the end of the old mental asylums and said: "There they stand, isolated, majestic, imperious, brooded over by the gigantic water-tower and chimney combined, rising unmistakable and daunting out of the countryside."
Another speech he made was about the Hola massacre in Kenya.
It happened in 1959 when 11 Mau Mau were killed for refusing to work in the camp.
Dennis Healey described Powell's speech as the greatest parliamentary speech he had ever heard.
Here is a piece: "Nor can we ourselves pick and choose where and in what parts of the world we shall use this or that kind of standard. We cannot say, 'We will have African standards in Africa, Asian standards in Asia and perhaps British standards here at home'. We have not that choice to make. We must be consistent with ourselves everywhere. All Government, all influence of man upon man, rests upon opinion. What we can do in Africa, where we still govern and where we no longer govern, depends upon the opinion which is entertained of the way in which this country acts and the way in which Englishmen act. We cannot, we dare not, in Africa of all places, fall below our own highest standards in the acceptance of responsibility."
As I say, Powell was a controversial politician who is unfairly labelled racist and was in fact and in many ways quite enlightened. This is why it is wrong to try to just blank out any kind of sensible debate about him through suggesting, as PaulB has, that we are not ready to evaluate his time in public life. To accept what PaulB said is to agree to perpetuate myths and lies.
In some ways the same can be true of someone like Churchill. He was a great man and known as our greatest Briton due to his contribution to the war effort. But he too was a complex and flawed individual who said many things in his time that would enrage today's left wing pc brigade. It is only his status as the great war leader that stops his memory from being denigrated in the same way Powell's has. I see Churchill's flaws and mistakes as a part of what went in to make him such a great man rather than detracting from his greatness.
