“It was Enoch’s fervent wish that I might never be born”  John
Rentoul  Kevin Keegan 300x208 It was Enoch’s fervent wish that I
might never be bornI have only just caught up with Sunder
Katwala’s Ralph Miliband Memorial Lecture, delivered at the LSE
on 3 December. Better late than never: it’s a lovely piece of
writing. The section on his own life story as an example of the
modern British identity is particularly affecting.  Katwala’s
father, who had been born British, in India, before becoming
Indian on independence at the age of three or four, arrived in
the UK two weeks after Enoch Powell’s “Rivers of Blood” speech
in 1968. His mother, from Cork, was in some ways less British,
but didn’t need a passport to come to the UK:  If you happened
to be British-born, and the child of migrants to Britain, it
would be quite hard not to take Enoch’s infamous speech at least
a little personally. It was a speech about my national identity,
its difficulty, in all probability its impossibility, and the
devastating social c