1.2 Rivers of Blood With David Constantine and Stephen Constantine

The Comma Press Podcast

Hosted by Ra Page, Founder & CEO of Comma Press, a Manchester-based independent publisher specialising in the short story. In this episode author David Constantine and his brother, historian Stephen Constantine, reflect on their experience and the legacy of Enoch Powell’s infamous Rivers of Blood speech, as well as post World War II immigration, Windrush, Brexit and Trump… David Constantine is an award-winning poet, translator, short story writer and novelist. His short story collections include Under the Dam (2005), The Shieling (2009) and Tea at the Midland (2012), which won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, and the title story of which won the BBC National Short Story Award 2010. His second novel The Life-Writer (2014) was one of the New York Times' Top 100 Books of 2016 and in the same year a feature film based on 'In Another Country', titled 45 Years, received an Oscar nomination for star Charlotte Rampling. Stephen Constantine was appointed as a lecturer at Lancaster University in 1971 and retired in 2010 as Professor of Modern British History, while retaining an active research interest in empire and migration. Published in 2017, Protest: Stories of Resistance assembled twenty authors to re-imagine key moments of British protest from the last eight centuries. Written in close consultation with historians, sociologists and eye-witnesses - who also contribute afterwords - these stories follow fictional characters caught up in real-life struggles. Notes: 1) Protest: Stories of resistance (Comma Press, 2017) https://commapress.co.uk/books/protest-stories-of-resistance-1 2) ‘After Enoch Powell’, BBC resources https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/after_enoch_powell 3) ‘Fifty years on…’ , The Observer, 2018 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/14/enoch-powell-rivers-blood-legacy-wolverhampton 4) Enoch Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speech [full text], The Telegraph https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/3643823/Enoch-Powells-Rivers-of-Blood-speech.html 5) Kropotkin 6) Jus soli – ‘right of the soil’ 7) Race Relations Act 1965 8) Race Relations Act 1968 9) ‘And I Always Thought’ by Bertolt Brecht http://apoemaday.tumblr.com/post/114144779832/and-i-always-thought 10) Rainer Maria Rilke (The Poetry Foundation) https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/rainer-maria-rilke 11) ‘Hidden in milk cans’ (The Jewish Historical Institute) http://www.jhi.pl/en/blog/2014-05-09-hidden-in-milk-cans 12) Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse www.iicsa.org.uk 13) Thai cave rescue, BBC 2018 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-44695232 Produced and edited by Becca Parkinson.