Letter: Enoch Powell was a visionary as to the challenges facing the UK

The riots in Ballymena Northern Ireland had a ring of deja vu about it, with the catalyst being the alleged sexual assault of a teenage girl.

A sleepy market town was enraged with ordinary locals taking to the streets in desperation at the intransigence of politicians ignoring their anxieties. Resentment had been simmering for a long time.

It evoked memories of former Ulster Unionist MP Enoch Powell and Conservative member for Wolverhampton SW in his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech in April 1968 when he got vilified by the liberal assembly for putting a match to a tinderbox.

Literally and metaphorically this has come to light through violence, both now and last year, in both Northern Ireland andGreat Britain, precipitated by political charlatans engendering the wrath of a long suffering frustrated public.

This was more about cultural and ideological differences resulting in community mismatches, nothing to do with bigotry as the left would describe it.

Mr Powell was not 'far right,' as he would be described on current trends, but a visionary.

A key sentence in his speech was, "It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre".

This speech could have been made yesterday.

Ballymena is as much a part of the United Kingdom as Norwich on the mainland, so constitutionally it is a British crisis.

The crows have come home to roost and will continue to do so with multiculturalism being like an Irish Wolfhound chasing its tail.

David Fleming, Norfolk