Nigel Farage says he thought Enoch Powell was right amid ‘smears’ | Politics | News

Nigel Farage has claimed Enoch Powell was right to oppose “broad social change” in the UK. The Reform UK leader has been accused of making racist and pro-Hitler comments while at school. He suggested those making the allegations were angry about Mr. Powell’s support for some of his claims. Mr Farage said: “When you look at what they said, none of them said I directly attacked or abused them. They say very clearly that they have different political views to me.”

“I thought Enoch Powell was right about the Common Market, which I had done in the referendum, which was a minority position, but I defended it to the end at the time and thought he was right to say there would be no broad community change. This was the source of a huge political debate in the late 1970s.” There is nothing to suggest that Mr Farage still supports Mr Powell’s views.

The former Wolverhampton MP made the speech known as “Rivers of Blood” in 1968 and was subsequently expelled from the shadow cabinet by the then Conservative leader Edward Heath.

Likening Britain to a country piling up its own funeral pyre, he said: “Like the Romans, I see the Tiber raging with so much blood.”

He also said part of his thinking is that in 20 years “the black man will have the whip on the white man.”

Some of Mr Farage’s former classmates at Dulwich College in London claimed he joked about gas chambers and detained someone because of his skin colour.

The former UKIP leader apologized to Peter Ettedgui, who was 13 at the time.

He told The Guardian last week that Mr Farage told him “Hitler was right” or “Gas them gas” before hissing to imitate the sound of gas chambers.

The reform leader said: “A person says they’re hurt, and if they feel hurt I’m really sorry, but I’ve never said or done anything like that directly to a person.”