ENOCH POWELL: 'Until the Civil War comes!'

On 7 November 1977, Enoch Powell was interviewed by Bob McKenzie for the BBC.

During the interview, these things were said:

MCKENZIE: "Mr Powell, we're here in the room in which you made your most famous speech, probably, on immigration in 1968. Nine years after the speech are we still, in your view, on a kind of funeral pyre?"

POWELL: "Yes, I've been guilty of under-estimating rather than over-estimating. And I was just looking back at the figures, that I was then talking about in 1968, for the end of the century. Do you know, my estimates, which were regarded with such ridicule then and denounced by all the academics... they are less than the official estimate which the Franks report, at the beginning of this year, offered. So that, upon the whole, I have leaned towards underestimation of the magnitude and the danger."

MCKENZIE: "And what do you see as the likely prospect now? Still the Tiber foaming with blood?"

POWELL: "The likely prospect is that politicians of all parties will say, 'well, Enoch Powell's right, we don't say that in public but we know it in private... and it will, no doubt, develop as he says, but it's better for us to do nothing now and let it happen, perhaps after our time, than to seize the many poisonous nettles which we would have to seize, if we were, at this stage, going to attempt to avert the outcome.

So let it go on until a third of central London, a third of Birmingham, Wolverhampton are coloured. UNTIL THE CIVIL WAR COMES. Let it go on, we won't be blamed. We'll either have gone or we'll slip out from under somehow."