Farage commemorated Enoch Powell speech with pledge to throw out refugees
Nigel Farage chose the anniversary of his political hero Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech to pledge to deport hundreds of thousands of refugees and to review all successful asylum claims from the past five years if Reform UK wins the next general election.
Farage said 400,000 people granted refugee status would be “in scope” of deportation by an enforcement body a Reform government would set up called the ‘UK Deportation Command’.
He promised a ‘review’ to decide whether those with refugee status could be expelled because their country of origin was now considered ‘safe’ by Reform UK leaders, and whether they had entered Britain ‘illegally’ or ‘overstayed’ a visa.
Powell was a leading Tory and MP for Wolverhampton who on April 20, 1968, delivered a viciously racist speech attacking legislation that would outlaw racist discrimination in employment and housing.
He claimed in the speech that “the existing population” of Britain had become “strangers in their own country”, a phrase subsequently used by Keir Starmer, ridiculed the idea that black and white “should be equal before the law” and demanded “re-migration”.
The speech triggered a wave of racist attacks.
Farage’s decision to make his deportations announcement on the 58th anniversary of Powell’s speech was no coincidence. The Reform leader admits to being a ‘Powellite” and has said: “The Powell speech taught me a lot.”
In book entitled Enoch was Right, published by a far-right former aide to the Reform leader, Farage recalled telling Powell: “Some of us completely believe in the things you fought for, and I will go on fighting for them.”
These deportations of people with the legal right to live in Britain would be on top of Farage’s previously announced intention to “track down, identify and deport all illegal migrants”.
Reform has tried to play down the fact that attempting to detain and deport hundreds of thousands of people would inevitably involve violence and repression like that in the US perpetrated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers. So it has christened the policy ‘Operation Restore Justice’.
But Reform home affairs spokesperson Zia Yusuf gave the game away last year when he said the party’s immigration plans would be like those of President Trump and revealed he had discussed his plans with Trump officials.
Reform leaders have previously said they plan to deport 600,000 people if they win a general election. But analysis by the business newspaper the Financial Times this week suggested Farage would seek to expel two million people.
The newspaper noted Reform’s policy announcements on deportations have been “ambiguous”, with “details not yet set out”. However, the party has claimed more than one million people are living in Britain “illegally” and has also said it would target people living here legally.
Plus, Reform has said it would end all grants of ‘indefinite leave to remain’ to asylum seekers, which allows people to settle and work, and that it would revoke previous grants of indefinite leave to remain.