DAN HODGES: Jeremy Corbyn is NOT as bad as Enoch Powell... his mocking of 'Zionists' being insufficiently English was far worse

This time it was a rabbi, rather than the ancient Roman, who saw the Tiber foaming with blood. 

‘The recently disclosed remarks by Jeremy Corbyn are the most offensive statement made by a senior British politician since Enoch Powell’s 1968 “rivers of blood” speech,’ Lord Sacks, Britain’s former chief rabbi, said in an explosive New Statesman interview.

‘It was divisive, hateful and, like Powell’s speech, it undermines the existence of an entire group of British citizens by depicting them as essentially alien,’ he stormed.

No sooner were these words transiting across social media than the condemnation began. 

Labour branded Lord Sacks’s remarks ‘absurd and offensive’. 

Corbyn’s army of online supporters accused him of hypocrisy after discovering he had once recommended a book that contained positive passages about Powell. 

Even some of Corbyn’s usual critics thought the comparison was ill-judged.

Those critics were right. Corbyn’s words – in which he mocked ‘Zionists’ for being insufficiently English – were not as dangerous or inflammatory as Powell’s infamous address. They were far, far worse.

Over the past 50 years, Powell’s speech has been the subject of some artful deconstruction and recontextualisation. 

 It needs, his defenders argue, a broader historical perspective. He was no racist, merely an opponent of uncontrolled migration who was echoing the words of ordinary Britons.

His sentiments were seized upon and traduced by a hostile political establishment, threatened by one man’s visionary populism. 

Just look at the global social upheaval mass migration has unleashed. Enoch Powell has been shown to be on the right side of history.

In other words, precisely the same defence that has been deployed by the Corbyn cultists in support of their own hero. 

Jeremy is not anti-Jewish, but anti-Zionist, they claim. His actions have to be set against the Palestinians’ long and lonely struggle for emancipation. He is merely giving them a voice.

His critics in the Labour and media establishment are smearing him, and taking his words out of context. They, too, are threatened by a man who has been shown time and again to be on the right side of history.

To some of Lord Sacks’s detractors, these are cosmetic comparisons. They point to the visceral backlash Powell’s speech unleashed: dockers with placards that read ‘Back Britain, not Black Britain’. A spike in racial attacks. Dog excrement pushed through letterboxes.

So again, let’s compare and contrast. In 1968, an estimated 4,000 of Britain’s 66,000 dockworkers demonstrated as part of unofficial action in support of Powell. 

Yet two weeks ago, Len McCluskey entered the anti-Semitism debate on behalf of his 1.4 million Unite members. And on the side of Jeremy Corbyn. Jewish leaders were guilty of ‘truculent hostility’. 

He was at a loss to understand their ‘motives’. It was time to ‘dial down the rhetoric’.

In July, the Community Security Trust announced that attacks on Britain’s Jewish community were running at their second highest level on record, with over 700 incidents in the first half of 2018 alone. 

Children as young as 11 were being targeted. Graffiti was being daubed on homes as well as synagogues. 

According to chief executive David Delew, the spike was part of a trend that had lasted two years. 

The reason? ‘A debate on anti-Semitism within the Labour Party and violence on the border of Israel and Gaza.’

Methods of intimidation have also developed since 1968. Where excrement once appeared in hallways, it now also arrives through in-boxes.

When Jewish Labour MP Margaret Hodge said the opening of disciplinary procedures into her claim that Corbyn was an anti-Semite had reminded her of her father’s warning to always leave a bag packed, she found herself viciously attacked on social media. 

Then her virtual persecutors switched their attacks to her daughter.

Emily Benn, granddaughter of Left-wing stalwart Tony Benn, was taunted over his death after her own criticism of Corbyn.

When a group of Jewish religious leaders signed an unprecedented joint letter urging action over Labour anti-Semitism, the head of Corbynite website Novara Media took to Twitter: ‘[the] first thing leader of the opposition’s office should have done was examine record of 68 Rabbis signing letter.’

But there are indeed areas where Powell and Corbyn’s toxic interventions diverge. 

And a key one is the differing reactions to those interventions. When word reached the Shadow Cabinet of Powell’s speech, there was a clear and instantaneous response. 

Iain Macleod, Quintin Hogg, Robert Carr and Edward Boyle threatened to resign if he was not sacked. 

Deputy Leader Reginald Maudling successfully lobbied for his dismissal. And having dispatched Powell by telephone, Edward Heath issued the following statement: ‘I consider the speech… to have been racialist in tone and liable to exacerbate racial tensions. This is unacceptable from one of the leaders of the Conservative Party.’

To date there has been only one resignation from the Labour Party over Corbyn’s ‘racialist’ comments – that of maverick Frank Field. And while Field is highly respected across Parliament, it is a simple matter of fact that his own departure only came after he had been subject to a no-confidence motion from the Corbynites infesting his constituency party.

In 1968, a single racist speech was enough to get Powell sacked from the Tory front bench. 

Yet in 2018 you can be shown to have met Holocaust deniers and the peddlers of blood libel. 

To have supported a Nazi-style mural in East London. To have organised conferences comparing Israel to Hitler’s Reich. To have honoured the men who organised the torture and butcher of Israeli athletes at Munich. To have mocked ‘Zionists’ for being insufficiently English.

Half a century later you can do all these things, and not just be one of the leaders of the Labour Party, but the actual leader.

Which leads us to the single most important reason Corbyn’s words and actions are far, far worse than those of Powell. 

From the moment Powell uttered ‘like the Roman, I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood’, his political career was over. His defenders are right in this respect. The British Establishment did indeed close ranks and cast him aside.

But it still has not done so with Corbyn. The debate about racism within Labour is now over. Everyone can see who and what Corbyn is. Yet he still stands on the cusp of power. 

One more major blunder from the Conservatives, and the anti-Semites and social media thugs and cultists will be in government. The police, the Army, the security services, the judiciary, the media – each will fall within their grasp.

Enoch Powell was a racist. But his racism is consigned to the history books. Jeremy Corbyn is a racist, too. But this morning he stands on the brink of Downing Street.