BBC defends the first broadcast of "Rivers of Blood", the Enoch Powell's famous speech
The has defended a decision to air Enoch Powell's 1968 "Rivers of Blood" speech on Radio 4.
The Archive on 4 programme, presented by media editor Amol Rajan, will on Saturday broadcast the right-wing MP's anti-immigration speech - voiced by an actor - in full, for the first time.
The decision to do so was criticised as an "incitement to racial hatred".
Delivered to local Conservative Party members in Birmingham, days before the second reading of the 1968 Race Relations Bill, then MP Powell referenced observations made by his Wolverhampton constituents including "in 15 or 20 years' time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man".
He ended with a quote from Virgil's Aeneid, when civil war in Italy is predicted with "the River Tiber foaming with much blood".
The anti-immigration speech ended his career in Edward Heath's shadow cabinet.
Lord Adonis has called for the broadcast on Saturday to be cancelled, and has written to the regulator Ofcom :{{file|t=Cd3xz_1523654762}}
He said the speech was the "worst incitement to racial violence by a public figure in modern Britain".
"Obviously this matter will be raised in parliament" should the broadcast go ahead, he wrote to Ofcom.
A number of journalists have also criticised the Rivers of Blood broadcast, suggesting it is evidence of being "normalised".{{file|t=ka5Jl_1523654924}}
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