It is probably a good thing that Sir Roger Scruton didn’t live to see the streets of London brimming with protesters chanting in favor of Hamas.

The podcast The Rest Is History has done a very nice job with an episode on Enoch Powell, one of the most famous British political figures of the last century, and his career-ending anti-immigration speech, known as the “Rivers of Blood” speech because toward the end of it he quotes Virgil: “As I look ahead,” said Powell, “I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood.'”

Powell was a prophetic politician in many senses. First, he was an economic liberal in a time of Tory “squishes,” foreshadowing the turn by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. Second, in the 1970s he was one of the few to campaign against entry into the European Common Market. He believed it was a threat to the sovereignty of the nation. In this he previewed Brexit. And last, yes, though his speech was wrong in certain important respects, the United Kingdom’s present political turmoil, one that threatens to destroy both of the dominant parties of the last 100 years, is primarily the result of out-of-control immigration.

I tend to think Roger Scruton had the last word on Powell and his speech nearly 20 years ago, writing in the New Criterion:

In the Platonic scheme of things, Powell’s vision of England might be seen as a noble lie. He was exhorting his countrymen to live up to something, and that thing was an ideal image of their country, shaped by myth in the style of Hesiod. The England of Powell’s dream was fashioned from heroic deeds and immemorial customs, from sacred rites and solemn offices whose meaning was inscrutable from any point outside the social context that defined them. By fixing their sights on this vision, the British people would be in some way perfecting themselves, and establishing their right to their ancestral territory. In place of this noble vision, however, they were also being offered an ignoble lie. The emerging multicultural community would make no place for a common obedience, a common loyalty, or a shared history: It would inevitably deprive the British people of their geographical, cultural, and political inheritance. And yet they were being told that it would not harm them, that they would even be improved by it, since it would inject energy, variety, and youth into a tired old way of life.

The problem with Plato’s theory of the noble lie is that noble lies have to be believed by the one who utters them. Otherwise people will see through the deception and withdraw their support. And a lie that is believed is not really a lie. It was impossible to discern, in Powell’s steely manner, ancestor-laden syntax, and fixed, expressionless gaze, whether he really believed in the nation that he described with his toneless incantations. He was invoking England in the way that a Professor of Classics (which once he was) invokes Greece—as an idea whose roots are buried deep in the archaeology of consciousness.

Indeed. But Scruton’s conclusion is just as dark as Powell’s:

The truth about immigration is beginning to show itself in Europe, notwithstanding all the liberal efforts to conceal it. It is not an agreeable truth; nor can we, in the face of it, take refuge in the noble lies of Enoch Powell. The fact is that the people of Europe are losing their homelands, and therefore losing their place in the world. I don’t envisage the Tiber one day foaming with much blood, nor do I see it blushing as the voice of the muezzin sounds from the former cathedral of St. Peter. But the city through which the Tiber flows will one day cease to be Italian, and all the expectations of its former residents, whether political, social, cultural, or personal, will suffer a violent upheaval, with results every bit as interesting as those that Powell prophesied.

I miss Sir Roger terribly. He faced all things with a gentleman’s reserve but also a manful bravery in the face of reality. But part of me is glad that he never saw the streets of London brimming with protesters chanting in favor of Hamas.

There is no more damning verdict on a nation than that it spent several decades avoiding a debate and conclusion about immigration, by debating over Enoch Powell instead.