Eric Clapton stands by Enoch Powell

I go to civil rights rallies
And I put down the old D.A.R.
I love Harry and Sidney and Sammy
I hope every coloured boy becomes a star
But don't talk about revolution
That's going a little bit too far
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

I cheered when Humphrey was chosen
My faith in the system restored
I'm glad the commies were thrown out
of the AFL-CIO board
I love Puerto Ricans and Negros
as long as they don't move next door
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

The people of old Mississippi
Should all hang their heads in shame
I can't understand how their minds work
What's the matter don't they watch Les Crain?
But if you ask me to bus my children
I hope the cops take down your name
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

I read New Republic and Nation
I've learned to take every view
You know, I've memorized Lerner and Golden
I feel like I'm almost a Jew
But when it comes to times like Korea
There's no one more red, white and blue
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

I vote for the Democratic Party.
They want the U.N. to be strong
I go to all the Pete Seeger concerts
He sure gets me singing those songs
I'll send all the money you ask for
But don't ask me to come on along
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

Once I was young and impulsive
I wore every conceivable pin
Even went to the socialist meetings
Learned all the old union hymns
But I've grown older and wiser
And that's why I'm turning you in
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal

To be fair, in the context of the times, this was not such an extreme view. The conventional wisdom among economists at the time was that hard choices had to be made in the trade off between unemployment and inflation (or "stagflation"). Full employment was an inappropriate goal because the last x% of jobs were bought at too high a price for the economy as a whole. Even many left-wing economists accepted this as (regrettably) true.

Right-wing economic view are not necessarily racist. Right-wingers broadly believe that people should keep what they earn and that wealth should not be redistributed to the poor. If a disproportionate amount of the poor are from particular racial groups that may look like racism.

Of course as a generalisation people opposed to any redistribution of wealth to the less well off are more likely to be racist than people who approve of redistribution, but being opposed to redistribution is not necessarily racist in itself.

Have we entered some kind of socialist dream without my noticing. That sounds more like the conventional trade-off now than the one perceived then. I don't thin k it was till New Labour that the goal of full employment was quietly dropped.

Not so. Powell was an early monetarist. The monetarists were the first influential group of post-war economists to argue that higher levels of unemployment were necessary to counter inflation. Thatcher implemented their policies, hence 3M+ unemployed.

In modern terms Brown has been staggeringly successful at combining relatively low inflation with low unemployment. I don't think there's anything particularly socialist about it, but this would certaintly have seemed like a dream to most economists in the 80s.

Wouldn't one think that Powell would have been protectionist, economically speaking (he got support from the dockers, didn't he?)? If only for whites, obviously...

Powell was in many ways on the cusp of the whole contradiction underpinning Thatcherism; a fervent believer in capitalism, his belief in racial and national "purity" and affinity to shared cultural mythology can only be undermined by capitalist expansion. i think he was a classic example of those conservatives who championed the idea of free-market economics as a means of getting us out of what they saw as the entrapping, restrictive post-war corporate state, but weren't so keen on what those theories actually brought about culturally. certainly, despite having championed many New Right economic theories when they were still very marginal in the party, having been passionately anti-Heath, having been slavishly admired by Margaret Thatcher and having seen her vote against the Race Relations Act and almost all similar legislation, he still turned against her in the 1980s because he thought she was too servile to the USA and not sufficiently "independent British". and even though he considered Communism to be evil, he predicted that Britain would be on the Soviet side in a Third World War between the USA and the USSR (many predicted such a war at the time, but even those who believed the whole of continental Europe would go Communist were generally convinced that Britain would hold out), which suspects that his idea of the British people had plenty of room for Statism as an overall concept (such purist ideas have to; they cannot make sense otherwise).

essentially Powell was an even balance of three distinct Right-wing tendencies - monetarist, romantic and straight-up racist. monetarism and breaking down the ideas placed in the mainstream by the Attlee government was very important to him for much of his life, it's true, but he held views on the superiority of the aristocracy to everyone else - going hunting as a young man so as to ape the landed classes, even insisting that Shakespeare's plays must have actually been written by some aristocrat because nobody from such relatively "humble" stock could create such great works - which led to a big gulf developing in the 80s between him and younger monetarists, many of whom were concerned almost above all else with breaking down the culture among the British middle classes of genuflecting towards pre-existing upper-class anti-commercial values (what i call "Wienerisation" after the man who had the biggest influence on it). i suspect that Powell's balance of monetarism, romanticism and racism seemed much much less contradictory when he was actually espousing it than it does now, the Right being so much less divided then.

Powell's insistence about Shakespeare's plays being written by some other aristocrat is truly barmy, and very suggestive of someone who wants to compartmentalise culture in a very rigid way. The man was supposed to be a scholar; did he have much evidence for these specific views on WS' plays' authorship...?

It is amazing to me that the Tories could hold themselves together as they did... the pursuit of power and the common objective to defeat Labour and to restrain 'socialism' are clearly the reason, but it's still strange that Heath, Maudling and MacLeod (whose views and policies are closer to today's left than to the right) could be of the same party as Joseph, Powell and Peter Griffiths (IIRC the name of the candidate who won a Birmingham seat against Labour's Patrick Gordon Walker, in the 1964 GE with an openly racist campaign)...

'Powell's insistence about Shakespeare's plays being written by some other aristocrat is truly barmy'

I'm afraid it isn't actually. He may have chosen to believe it for snobbish, classist reasons, indeed so have many others over the last few centuries (Shakespeare Conspiracy Theories do have a long pedigree). But they can't be dismissed that easily. Even Jonathan Bate and Stanley Wells, two of the most prominent Shakespeare scholars, had trouble providing a decent defence in the recent 'Much Ado About something' documentary (which explored the 'Marlowe was Shakespeare' theory). The oft cited' Shakespeare couldn't have written the plays because he wasn't educated enough' reason is contemptible, but also plausible. Not enough to change my mind, but still problematic. Even those candidates who weren't aristocrats, like Marlowe, (who went to Cambridge) had further education. Shakespeare's success in the dramatic/poetic world based on his origins is 'unusual', there's no denying it.

So disbelieving Shakespeare as the Folio author is not 'barmy'. Some barmy people have taken up the cause however.

From all I have experienced of the academic debate; it seems there's little doubt that some works were collaborative; i.e. say, some scenes of "Macbeth" were definitely of the mark of a different writer than the established Shakespeare. I remain to be convinced that there is strong enough evidence for people to assume that an aristocrat wrote WS' plays rather than assume the conventional wisdom.

I have never myself said I was sure of WS' full authorship of the Folio texts. It is not that fact itself, but more the way Powell seems to be taking the stand; i.e. making it a class issue.

I would advise everyone who has been defending Clapton's comments on the grounds that he was drunk to check out my thread over on ILE on the subject of drunken utterances:

It Must've Come from Somewhere!

I think I only like one thing by Clapton - Blind Faith "Can't Find My Way Home"...did he write that, or was it written by S. Winwood?

Hated Cream, hated his solo career, hated his boring guitar playing style, hated the way he's been bankrolled by his cover versions whilst all the time somehow taking the credit- Marley, Dylan, Greg Philinganes (sp.)....

Losing a child is always tragic; cashing in on the fact that you've lost one through a record is unforgiveable. It doesn't help that the song is totally dire, of course, but Clapton prolly doesn't care - he's laughing all the way to the bank, people are buying the record because of their sympathy, their empathy. Ker-ching!

(thanks fer the link tho, MarkH, will check it out)

Hey, for the non-anglophile, could someone give me a hint as to what Enoch Powell stood for/did in the 70s and what Clapton said to align himself with him? While Marcello summed up the Uncut comments, no one's really said what he did in the first place. Was it just a dumb, disingenuous "the blacks will be better off if they don't come here at all" comment?

There was an episode of "Mr. Show" where they made fun of this. It was great.

Everything else OTM.

I know this is a thread about Eric Clapton and what kind of racist he might be, but what was the purpose of qualifying 'cleaning lady' with 'Puerto Rican' in that statement? Does it mean that the fact that she is Puerto Rican contributes to her being dumb?

If so, isn't this whole thread a case of the pot calling the kettle... err... black?

Back on the Eric Clapton-racist issue, I'm a darkie and a fan of some of his music. He is a deeply flawed and stubborn person, which makes him a good bluesman.

I think some of the following facts are of interest when considering his Enoch Powell remarks:

1. In 1967 in an interview with Rolling Stone, he stated that he's uncomfortable with the idea that people concern themselves with his views on anything other than music as that is all he knows anything about.

2. He lives in Antigua in the Caribbean for most of the year (surrounded by darkies), where he founded and still runs the Crossroads drug & alcohol rehabilitation centre - and offers heavily subsidised treatment for local Antiguans.

3. One of his best friends was George Harrison, possibly the least racist person ever born.

4. He once made the following remark when asked about Hendrix in the late 60s: "everyone and his brother knows that spades have big dicks". Does that reveal some kind of insecurity not only about his playing (which was widely publicized) but in sexual matters too? His early goal as a guitarist, he has revealed on many occasions, was to sound like a black guitar player - and until Hendrix's arrival in London, Clapton did the best impersonation of one. Then with Hendrix on the scene, he though 'who needs an impersonation now that they have the real thing?'. The stupid thing about this was that Hendrix came to London specifically to meet Clapton, a hero of his. Clapton soon overcame his insecurity enough for the two of them to become great friends.

5. Clapton loves black music (obviously), and not just the blues, but rock n' roll, rhythm n' blues, soul, reggae and some jazz.

6. He's been out with black women, including Naomi Campbell - as people above have pointed out.

7. For the past 20 years, most of his band has been black.

8. When he first arrived in America, touring with Cream, he spent the entire trip speaking in a faux Southern cotton-picker accent.

9. He was a junkie.

10. He was an alcoholic.

11. He quit every band he was ever in as they were getting big or bigger (even Cream).

12. The best music he did was pre-heroin.

12. He was best friends with George Harrison but that didn't stop him from 'stealing' his wife.

13. He married George Harrison's mrs only when his manager informed him that was what he was doing as it would be good for his image at the time.

14. He treated Patti Boyd (Harrison's ex) like crap the whole time they were married, and only began to regret it after they were divorced.

15. I think the most interesting thing about his Enoch Powell comments is that he's done a complete turn-around to explain what he meant by his comments. I think that's better than an apology in a way because it shows how wrong he thinks 'the keep Britain white' mentality is.

you've never met ethan trife.

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/eric_claptons_disgusting_racist_tirade

refers to this thread in the article.

were those quotes in that article reported at the time?

Looks that way, as Rock Against Racism was formed, at least in part, in response to them:

Originally conceived as a one-off concert with a message against racism, Rock Against Racism was founded in 1976 by Red Saunders, Roger Huddle and others. According to Huddle, "it remained just an idea until August 1976" when Eric Clapton made a drunken declaration of support for former Conservative minister Enoch Powell (known for his anti-immigration Rivers of Blood speech) at a concert in Birmingham.[2] Clapton told the crowd that England had "become overcrowded" and that they should vote for Powell to stop Britain from becoming "a black colony". He also told the audience that Britain should "get the foreigners out, get the wogs out, get the coons out", and then he repeatedly shouted the National Front slogan "Keep Britain White".[3][4]

Huddle, Saunders and two members of Kartoon Klowns responded by writing a letter to NME expressing their opposition to Clapton's comments, which they claimed were "all the more disgusting because he had his first hit with a cover of reggae star Bob Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff" ... Come on Eric... Own up. Half your music is black. Who shot the Sheriff, Eric? It sure as hell wasn't you!". At the end of the letter, they called for people to help form a movement called Rock Against Racism, and they report that they received hundreds of replies.[2]