Well, 40 years on, comes the deluge.
'Infamous', seems to be the consensus. The Independent thought so (unsurprisingly), the Daily Telegraph thought so too (although it should have known better), even the BBC thought so (although I thought it was meant to be vaguely politically neutral about such matters), and The Guardian (predictably) certainly thought so. In fact, The Guardian thought it 'deranged, paranoid, cynical and mean spirited'; the subject, of course, being a certain speech made by a Mr Enoch Powell (whoever he might be) 40 years ago in Birmingham, which came to be known as the 'Rivers of Blood' speech, which seems to have resulted in an outpouring of documentaries on the subject (well, I've counted two at least so far).
'Wickedly racist' also seems to be the consensus, intending to whip up a hatred of racial minorities, although I suppose I tend to think of it as the last, despairing, gasp of a doomed and dying England, a common land shared by a single people, unchanged, in many ways, for more than a thousand years, a people bound together by ties of history, culture, traditions, language and religion. What is a nation, after all, but a Race with Land, rather than a random agglomeration of people sharing neither beliefs or values who just happen to be living in the same place?
And the other thing that might be said to be in the speech's favour, is, as we learned from the BBC documentary, that it earned the undying hatred of Roy Hattersley, and being hated by that fat, egregious, spittle-flecked, fatwa-appeasing tub-of-lard stand-in is almost certainly a good thing in itself; a badge of honour, if you like.
And not, of course, that he was merely grubbing around for votes from all the immigrants in his constituency ignoring the needs and desires of the indigenous English (still, speak of the 'indigenous' English and its wants these days and, to some people on the fascist left, you may as well have 'BNP' tattooed across your forehead).