Den konservative kandidaten Nigel Hastilow skrev at det altoverskyggende tema velgerne i hans distrikt var opptatt av, var innvandring, og at mange mente Enoch Powell hadde fått rett. Det ble for mye for ledelsen som forlangte at Hastilow trakk tilbake sine ord. Det ville ikke Hastilow som ble overdynget med støtteerklæringer. Han trakk seg heller.

Saken illustrerer en voksende kløft mellom en politisk ledelse som tenker taktikk og PR og bryr seg lite om hva som foregår på grasrota. Tory-leder David Cameron ble kritisert fordi han ventet 24 timer før han krevde at Hastilow beklaget. Han skulle han gitt ham sparken med en gang, mente medlemmer av regjeringen.

Hastilow er tidligere avisredaktør, det kan ha noe med hans frittalenhet å gjøre.Han er kandidat i Halesowen i West Midlands, hvor innslaget av innvandrere er stort. Det var i en artikkel i Express and Star newspaper in Wolverhampton at han trakk frem Powells famøse tale fra 1968. Powell var skyggeminister og var spådd en lysende politisk karriere. Men den sluknet med talen, som på grunn av et kjent sitat av Vergil nå er kjent som «Rivers of Blood»-talen. Powell advarte allerede den gang mot for høy innvandring og spådde at Storbritannia var i ferd med å pådra seg store fremtidige problemer. Men det var Vergil-sitatet om Tiberen som skummmer av blod, som ble for mye for den politiske ledelsen. Det er det visst fremdeles. Hastilow skrev:

«When you ask most people in the Black Country what the single biggest problem facing the country is, most say immigration,» he wrote. «Many insist: ‘Enoch Powell was right.’

Hastilow ble innkalt til møte med partileder Caroline Spelman og bedt om å trekke tilbake uttalelsene. Men det så Hastilow ingen grunn til. Han foretrakk heller å gå av.

The candidate, the former editor of The Birmingham Post, was asked during the one-hour meeting at Ms Spelman’s home in Solihull to make a full public apology as a condition of staying a parliamentary candidate.

In the official statement announcing his resignation Mr Hastilow said that he was sorry if his article had «undermined the progress David Cameron has made on the issue of immigration» but he failed to retract his remarks. Afterwards, he said that he had been unable to «come to terms» with the Tory party chairman.

He said: «They wanted me to issue a statement apologising and I didn’t feel I had anything to apologise for,» he said. «If I had said sorry I could have stayed on, but I am not sorry.» He repeated that immigration was an important issue. «As far as I am concerned, there are too many people coming into the country and we cannot afford to accommodate them.»

He told The Times that he had been taken aback by the support that he had received. «I have had hundreds of e-mails from all over the country telling me to keep at it. I left a pile of them with Caroline.»

He added that he accepted that his political career was now at an end.

Det hører med til historien at det lokale torylaget sluttet helhjertet opp om Hastilow. Den lokale Labour-kandidaten er sikkert lettet, for Hastilow var meget populær.

‘Rivers of blood’ candidate forced to resign

Hva Enoch Powell sa:

We must be mad, literally mad . . . ’

These are extracts from Enoch Powell’s speech on April 20, 1968 to Conservatives in the West Midlands:

Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependants who are for the most part the material of future growth of the immigrant-descended population.

«It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre. As I look ahead I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood’. That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect.

«Indeed, it has all but come in numerical terms, it will be of American proportions long before the end of the century. Only resolute and urgent action will avert it even now.

«Whether there will be the public will to demand and obtain that action, I do not know. All I know is that to see and not to speak would be the greatest betrayal.»