A bit of context:
"John Enoch Powell, MBE (/ˈdʒɒn ˈiːnɒk paʊl/; 16 June 1912 – 8 February 1998) was a British politician, classical scholar, linguist and poet. He served as a Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) (1950–74), Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) MP (1974–1987), and Minister of Health (1960–63). He attained most prominence in 1968, when he made a controversial speech on immigration, now widely referred to as the "Rivers of Blood" speech. In response, he was dismissed from his position as Shadow Defence Secretary (1965–68) in the Shadow Cabinet of Edward Heath..
on 20 April 1968, he made a controversial speech in Birmingham in which he warned his audience of what he believed would be the consequences of continued unchecked immigration from the Commonwealth to Britain. Above all, it is an allusion to the Roman poet Virgil towards the end of the speech which has been remembered, giving the speech its colloquial name:
As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see 'the River Tiber foaming with much blood'. That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect. Indeed, it has all but come. In numerical terms, it will be of American proportions long before the end of the 20th century. Only resolute and urgent action will avert it even now.
The Times declared it "an evil speech", stating,
"This is the first time that a serious British politician has appealed to racial hatred in this direct way in our postwar history."[23]
The main political issue addressed by the speech was not immigration as such, however. It was the introduction by the Labour Government of the Race Relations Act 1968, which Powell found offensive and immoral. The Act would prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race in certain areas of British life, particularly housing, where many local authorities had been refusing to provide houses for immigrant families until they had lived in the country for a certain number of years.[24][25]
One feature of his speech was the extensive quotation of a letter he claimed to have received detailing the experiences of one of his constituents in Wolverhampton. The writer described the fate of an elderly woman who was supposedly the last white person living in her street. She had repeatedly refused applications from nonwhites requiring rooms-to-let, which resulted in her being called a "racialist" outside her home and receiving "excreta" through her letterbox.[26][27]"
Wikipedia
Gentlemen... calm and civility please. Address the topic, no ad-hominem attacks.