Farage is now defending the legacy of the politician notorious for his 1968 “Rivers of Blood” speech. The Reform leader claims his accusers are confusing political debate with abuse. What part of Powell’s doctrine does Farage still support?
Nigel Farage claimed Enoch Powell was ‘right’ about opposing ‘vast community change’
The Reform UK leader, who is accused of making racist and pro-Hitler comments while he was a schoolboy, claimed his accusers just had different political views to him
Nigel Farage said he used to agree with Enoch Powell on community change(Image: Getty Images)
Nigel Farage has claimed Enoch Powell was “right” about opposing “vast community change” in Britain.
The Reform UK leader, who is accused of making racist and pro-Hitler comments while he was a schoolboy, claimed his accusers were angry over his support for some of the arguments offered by the ex-Conservative MP.
Mr Powell is notorious for his ” Rivers of Blood ” speech in 1968, which was so hateful he was dismissed from the shadow cabinet.
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Enoch Powell made a hateful speech in 1968 that saw him booted out the shadow cabinet(Image: Getty Images)
Responding to the allegations, Mr Farage said: “If you look at what they said, none of them said I directly attacked or abused them. What they do say very clearly is they had different political views to me.
“That I thought Enoch Powell was right about the Common market, which I did, in the referendum, which was a minority position, but I held it all the way back then, and I thought he was right to talk about not having vast community change.
“That was a source of big political debate, back in the late 1970s.”
There is no suggestion Mr Farage still supports the views of Mr Powell.
Former classmates from his time at Dulwich College, in south London, alleged that the Reform UK leader made pro-Hitler comments, joked about gas chambers, and put someone in detention for the colour of their skin.
Mr Powell had compared Britain to a nation heaping its own funeral pyre, saying: “Like the Roman, I seem to see the river Tiber foaming with much blood.” He also outlined a constituent’s fears that within 20 years “the black man will have the whip hand over the white man”.
Mr Farage also offered an apology to Peter Ettedgui, who was 13 at the time, and told The Guardian last week that the Reform leader would tell him “Hitler was right”, or “Gas them” before adding a hiss to replicate the sound of the gas chambers.
He said: “One person says they were hurt, and if they feel they were hurt, I am genuinely sorry, but I’d never ever ever have said or done anything like that directly to a human being.”
Earlier the PM had urged Mr Farage to apologise over the allegations, and accused the former banker of showing his “true colours”.
The PM said: “His explanation in recent days, in response to stories on what he might have said in the past, is not convincing to say the least. He says he never engaged with racism with ‘intent’. What does that mean? Didn’t engage with racism with ‘intent’. I have no doubt that if a young Jewish student was hissed at, to mimic the sound of a gas chamber, they would find it upsetting.
“He may want to forget it, they won’t. He clearly remembers some of what happened, he should seek those people out and go and apologise to them.”
Elsewhere in the press conference, Mr Farage defended his praise of Vladimir Putin, bizarrely pointing out the Queen had once met with the Russian dictator.
He said: “The Putin stuff is nonsense, just because I said in 2013 ‘I admired him as a political operator but didn’t like him as a human being’, before the Ukrainian invasion, I’m a Putin supporter. By the way, the Queen met Putin, after I said that, whether she was a Putin sympathiser, perhaps you better ask the Prime Minister, I don’t know”.
