Widow in Enoch Powell's Rivers of Blood speech really did exist
by FIONA BARTON
Last updated at 22:00 02 February 2007
The passing of Druscilla Cotterill did not merit an obituary in her local newspaper. A diminutive widow, she was mourned by just family and a small circle of friends, who remember her as a "bit of a character", outspoken and fond of a drink.
But Druscilla had a secret.
For almost 40 years, her identity - indeed, her very existence - has remained a tantalising mystery, known only to a diminishing handful of people.
But it can now be revealed that this apparently unremarkable woman played a pivotal role in a moment of British history.
For she has been identified as the inspiration for Enoch Powell's infamous 1968 'Rivers of Blood' speech, in which he warned of apocalyptic social consequences if the rising tide of immigration was not halted.
Evoking the highly emotive image of 'the River Tiber foaming with much blood', Powell railed against proposed anti-discrimination laws which would make it a crime to refuse services or housing on the grounds of race.
Crucially, he used the potent story of a beleaguered, elderly constituent as evidence that it was Britain's white population who were being victimised in their own country.
The Tory MP told his audience he had received a letter about a widowed pensioner who lived in a "respectable street" in his Wolverhampton South-West constituency. The woman, whom he refused to name, had seen every other white family move out of her street and said she was being forced out by immigrant newcomers.
She told of being woken at 7am by West Indian neighbours wanting to use her telephone and being abused when she refused them entry, how she was told to rent out rooms to immigrants by the local authorities and accused of being a "racialist".
The letter, which Powell read to his audience of Conservatives in Birmingham's Midland Hotel, ended: "She is becoming afraid to go out. Windows are broken. She finds excreta pushed through her letterbox. When she goes to the shops, she is followed by children, charming, wide-eyed picaninnies. They cannot speak English, but one word they know. 'Racialist', they chant.
"When the new Race Relations Bill is passed, this woman is convinced she will go to prison. And is she so wrong? I begin to wonder."
The speech was deliberately provocative in its views and language - with the use of the word "picaninnies", a 19th century slang term used in the southern states of America to describe the children of black slaves, causing particular offence.
It caused deep divisions in public opinion with Powell accused of inflaming racial hatred by many, but applauded by others for saying the unsayable.
He was quickly sacked from Edward Heath's shadow cabinet but he received 120,000 letters of support, while dockers and meat porters demonstrated in the streets to protest against the new Race Relations Act which extended the existing definition of racial discrimination to include areas such as employment, housing and other services.
The speech, and the reaction it provoked, still reverberates today as the debate over immigration and integration continues to dominate the political agenda. But in the midst of it all is the story of one woman.
Apart from his inflammatory language, one of the main charges against Powell was that he had invented the story of the widowed pensioner - a view reinforced by the fact that he repeatedly refused to identify her.
Now, however, brilliant detective work by an academic has led to her name being revealed on the BBC Radio 4 programme, Document.
The Daily Mail has now tracked down relatives, former neighbours and friends to reveal the extraordinary story of the widow, Druscilla Cotterill, a story that casts new light on Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speech.
Druscilla died 30 years ago, in an old people's home in her home town of Wolverhampton, after a life beset by misfortune.
She was born Druscilla Luevina Childs in Bridgnorth, Shropshire, in 1907, the daughter of a farm labourer and the eldest of five sisters and at least three brothers. It was a close-knit family and she married relatively late, at the age of 33. The wedding took place in 1940, against the background of World War II with her new husband, Harry Cotterill, about to be posted overseas.
Harry, a Battery Quartermaster Serjeant with the Royal Artillery was killed at the age of 44 in Singapore. The couple had no children and Druscilla, who was known in the family as "Druie", never remarried.
Her nephew Roland Mytton said last week: "If you do meet the love of your life, you tend not to look again. She had friends and her family, but it must have been a bit lonely for her. She suffered from mental illness at one stage but she recovered with the help of her sisters."
Through it all, Druscilla remained in the marital home - No 4, Brighton Place - one of a crescent of eight terrace houses in the Merridale area of Wolverhampton.
At first, she supplemented her widow's pension by renting out rooms to lodgers - mainly itinerant workers - but all that changed in the late 1950s. Wolverhampton, known as the 'crossroads of the Midlands', began a transformation with the start of mass immigration.
The trickle of Commonwealth workers to Britain began in 1948 with the boat the Empire Windrush, which brought the first 492 West Indians from Jamaica to start a new life here. Many more were to follow.
Thousands of West Indians and Asians opted to settle in Wolverhampton, drawn by its low house prices and jobs at the Goodyear tyre factory, Villiers Engineering (which made motorcycle engines), the steel works and foundries.
Others found work in the NHS, cleaning hospitals and training as nurses. Some became bus drivers for Wolverhampton Transport department - rising from 18 per cent of the workforce of 900 in 1955 to 66 per cent ten years later.
And the numbers of newcomers continued to grow. In 1954, there were ten Indian families in the town. Just two years later, the Indian workers' organisation had 150 members.
The impact extended to Druscilla's little world in Brighton Place. The electoral registers tell the story. In 1950, the list shows Brighton Place was occupied wholly by British families - the Routledges, the Pannells, the four Hunt sisters, the Walls and the Griffiths.
But ten years later, four West Indian families had moved in and by 1968, Druscilla and the Paynes at No 6 were the last British-born residents left.
Druscilla told her friend Geoff Bangham, who ran the Alexandra pub close to her home, that she felt uncomfortable and outnumbered.
He said last week: "She was a very lively little lady but she was having it rough. She felt the change in the area, and she was getting concerned. She wasn't happy because of the invasion of the immigrants."
It was a concern shared by many in the town in the early days of immigration and ugly divisions quickly emerged between the two communities.
Immigrants found themselves barred from boarding houses and pubs because of their colour, and in 1963 there was a silent protest by 12 West Indian men after they were refused a drink in the Bermuda Tavern in Queen's Square.
Later, the local newspaper reported that white women were refusing to use the same washing machines as black women in the town's launderettes.
Meanwhile, a member of Druscilla's extended family was disowned by his parents for marrying a West Indian woman.
It was amid this mounting tension, which was replicated in towns all over Britain, that the Race Relations Bill was drawn up to try to legislate for 'harmonious community relations'.
This was all too much for Druscilla, who began to withdraw from society. She stopped taking in lodgers because she was accused of discriminating against immigrants, and decided to lock up her spare rooms. According to her nephew, Roland, she only used the kitchen at the back of the house and her bedroom.
"She was felt uncomfortable to find herself the only white person in the road," he said.
And she also confided her fears to a friend - who wrote to Enoch Powell, with extraordinary consequences.
The image of the pensioner held hostage in her own home as excrement was pushed through her letterbox and windows smashed fuelled the already incendiary atmosphere in the country.
According to contemporary witnesses, it is certain that Druscilla was teased by local children who, now adults, admit knocking on her door and running away to annoy her.
But when asked about the allegation that excrement was put through Druscilla's letterbox, Joy Barnes, who was eight when she and her Jamaican parents, Kenneth and Pearline Scarlett, moved into Brighton Place, said the incident happened, but not to Mrs Cotterill.
"It wasn't her house, it was the other British family at No 6 who had it put through the door. There was also a dead dog thrown through their window but it was nothing to do with race. It was all to do with a family feud."
Now married with two children, Mrs Barnes recalled: "Brighton Place was a happy place to grow up because there were so many children to play with. In the street, there were five of us from the West Indies, one family from India and a white family and Mrs Cotterill.
"My dad came to Britain in 1956 and my mum followed him out in 1957. I was born the next year. Dad was a carpenter and cabinet maker in Jamaica but he thought he would have better opportunities here. He started off on building sites but then worked as a carpenter for the council. Mum worked on the assembly line of a factory and they bought their house."
Mrs Barnes, who still lives in Wolverhampton, remembers how the children used to tease Druscilla by knocking on her front door and running away before she answered and being cheeky to her in the street: "It was the sort of thing kids do and wasn't meant nastily. She used to shout at us. She was a bit strange and used to stagger home from the pub.
"I don't know why she used to drink so much. Perhaps she was lonely."
Carol Antonio, who, as a teenager in a Jamaican family, also lived in Brighton Place during the Fifties and Sixties, added: "Mrs Cotterill lived next door to my family and she would come round to our house and have dinner and a drink with us.
"Other times, she could be quite miserable and difficult. I think it might have been the drink. No one disliked her - we got used to her behaviour. She was a bit of a character."
A friend of Enoch Powell, a former high-ranking police officer, is adamant the letter was a true record.
The former officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said: "I saw the letter and I read it. And I knew the woman. It was Druscilla Cotterill. I know that the incidents described by her were officially reported and investigated but nothing came of it.
"Enoch felt it was the most momentous letter he had ever received. Unfortunately, perhaps, it sent him off on a tangent which ended his ministerial career, but he could never be accused of telling lies.
"She existed - but Enoch never named her, in order to protect her."
Whatever criticism may have been levelled at Powell for his opinions, it was a noble decision to keep Druscilla's identity a secret.
His brave stance, which meant abandoning a libel action against the Sunday Times when it became clear he would have to disclose the letter and Mrs Cotterill's name, encouraged accusations from opponents that the letter was a fabrication, and helped end his political career.
His silence also enabled Druscilla to live out her life in anonymity.
But there is a postscript which perhaps provides a fascinating insight into how far race relations have developed in the 40 years since the Rivers of Blood speech.
Despite her claims of feeling driven out, Druscilla stayed in Brighton Place until ill-health forced her to move to sheltered accommodation.
When she died in 1978, among the bouquets at her funeral there were flowers sent by the West Indian neighbours who she once claimed made her feel like a stranger in her own street.
