There have been incidents of racism in the Conservative Party since at least 1964. Conservative shadow defence minister Enoch Powell's "Rivers of Blood" speech in 1968 was both influential and widely regarded as anti-immigrant with racist overtones; the party's leader at the time, Edward Heath, condemned it, although some Conservative MPs defended Powell's speech. Since then, accusations have been made about several leading members of the party and its policies; these have related to prejudice against non-white people.

History: 1950s–70s Winston Churchill

In 1955, the then Leader of the Conservative Party Winston Churchill expressed his support for the slogan "Keep England White" with regard to immigration from the West Indies.

1964 general election

In the constituency of Smethwick during the 1964 general election, supporters of Conservative candidate Peter Griffiths were reported to have used the slogan "if you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Labour". The Conservatives always denied the slogan was theirs, saying it was the work of far-right activists; neo-Nazi British Movement leader Colin Jordan later claimed responsibility for originating the slogan. However, during the campaign, Griffiths did not condemn the phrase and was quoted in The Times as saying, "I should think that is a manifestation of popular feeling. I would not condemn anyone who said that", adding that the quote represented "exasperation, not fascism".

In 1964, a delegation of white residents of one Smethwick street successfully petitioned the Conservative council to compulsorily buy vacant houses to prevent people of colour from buying them. Richard Crossman, Labour housing minister, prevented this from happening by refusing to allow the council to borrow money to enact their policy.

Griffiths was a personal supporter of segregation. Of apartheid in South Africa, he said "Apartheid, if it could be separated from racialism, could well be an alternative to integration."

Tim Stanley of The Telegraph notes that while "there were pockets of racism on the Left as well as the Right ... there's no denying that the Tory fringes became a bastion of ugliness that the present-day party is still trying to distance itself from". He goes on to argue that this campaign had two legacies — initially, the degradation of race relations in the UK, which consequently "poisoned the debate over immigration" in the UK by "drag[ging] politics into the gutter".

Enoch Powell's "Rivers of Blood" speech

The racialised debate and discourse over immigration in British politics are said to have become popularised by Conservative MP Enoch Powell's "Rivers of Blood" speech in April 1968, and the clamping down on postwar "new Commonwealth" non-white immigration, while allowing concessions to the white-majority "old Commonwealth" (i.e. Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada). Reactions to the 1968 Race Relations Bill, which Powell's speech was aimed against, were considered "a turning point from biological racist discourses to cultural racist discourses", with Powell being the chief articulator of this "new racism" in British politics.

When asked whether he was "a racialist" by journalist David Frost, Powell said:

However, it was seen as a racist speech by many commentators, both at the time and today. The Times said in April 1968, following the speech:

Edward Heath also said in 1968 that the speech was "racialist in tone and liable to exacerbate racial tensions", and The Times went on to record incidents of racial attacks in the immediate aftermath of Powell's speech. Despite this condemnation, according to most accounts, the speech was actually popular among a majority of the white British population at the time. The popularity of Powell's perspective on immigration may even have played a decisive factor in the Conservatives' victory in the 1970 general election.

An opinion poll commissioned by the BBC television programme Panorama in December 1968 found that eight per cent of immigrants believed they had been treated worse by white people since Powell's speech. Subsequent researchers have blamed the speech for leading to a rise in "Paki-bashing", i.e. violent attacks against British Pakistanis and other British Asians, which were unleashed shortly after the inflammatory speech. These attacks peaked during the 1970s and 1980s. However, there is "little agreement on the extent to which Powell was responsible for racial attacks", although Hillman notes that in his speech, Powell "foreshadowed this debate by declaring that 'people are disposed to mistake predicting troubles for causing troubles'." Powell, however, consistently refused to accept any blame for racial violence which occurred after his speech.

Some leading Conservatives in the Shadow Cabinet were outraged by the speech. Iain Macleod, Edward Boyle, Quintin Hogg and Robert Carr all threatened to resign from the front bench unless Powell was sacked. Macleod never spoke to Powell ever again. Consequently, Heath sacked Powell from his post as Shadow Defence Secretary. Some Conservative MPs on the right of the party, such as Duncan Sandys, Gerald Nabarro and Teddy Taylor, spoke out against his sacking and defended Powell's comments.

On 3 June 1970, Labour MP Tony Benn also criticised Powell, saying "the flag of racialism which is being hoisted over Wolverhampton is beginning to look like the one which "fluttered 25 years ago over Dachau and Belsen".Simon Heffer, Like the Roman. The Life of Enoch Powell (1998), p. 556 (en)

Powell later told a November 1995 BBC documentary that "racism is the basis of nationality". Later, Stuart Hall and Paul Foot both claimed that Powell was a racist, with Foot likening Powell's comments to the far-right arguments put forth by the British National Party and National Socialist Movement organisations of the 1960s. Margaret Thatcher denied that Powell was a racist, saying that the "Rivers of Blood" speech had been misquoted in the press. Simon Heffer and Patrick Cosgrave both absolve Powell of racial prejudice, with Cosgrave insisting that Powell was talking in terms of identity, not race.

The Conservative government acknowledged that the 1971 Immigration Act would be seen as disproportionately benefiting "the 'white' Commonwealth", but Home Secretary Reginald Maudling defended the partiality clause, saying it "recognised the family connection with the British diaspora abroad and was not a racial concept".

1980s–1990s

Margaret Thatcher In 1978, while still leader of the opposition, Thatcher told ITV's World in Action that "People [in Britain] are rather afraid that this country might be swamped by people with a different culture", which was seen as politicising the issue of race in UK politics. In 2014, the then Defence Secretary Michael Fallon apologised for saying that British towns were being "swamped" and "under siege [with] large numbers of migrant workers and people claiming benefits"; these comments were likened by freelance writer Stuart Jeffries in The Guardian to Thatcher and Enoch Powell's rhetoric.

Matthew Parris argues that, as a clerk handling Thatcher's general correspondence at the time, he received 5,000 letters reacting to the interview, almost all of them positive. Fraser Nelson argued that Thatcher's speech was necessary to combat the rise of the National Front by using "plain-speaking" rhetoric to attract their voters. Parris also argues that Thatcher regretted the tone of her words in later years.

Race riots occurred in Thatcher's Britain, such as those in St. Paul's (1980), Brixton and Toxteth (1981) and Tottenham (1985), which brought heightened political saliency to the 'race issue' in British politics. It is commonly assumed that the Conservative Party under Thatcher had adopted a strong assimilationist stance and was hostile to the concept of multiculturalism.

Apartheid Former Conservative PM Margaret Thatcher was warned by her Foreign Secretary, Geoffrey Howe, that she would be seen as a "friend of apartheid" due to her government's refusal to impose sanctions on apartheid South Africa in the run-up to the 1986 Commonwealth Games. They were boycotted by 32 of the 59 eligible countries due to Britain's refusal to sever sporting ties with South Africa. In his memoirs, he commented that "Margaret would quite rightly denounce the violence of ANC terrorism, but without ever acknowledging, even by the tone of voice, that the whole white-controlled repressive structure of the apartheid legal system was bound itself to provoke inter-racial conflict".

Thatcher also refused Howe's pleas to make a speech in the House of Commons condemning apartheid. Patrick Wright, former head of the Diplomatic Service, alleged that Thatcher wanted "a whites-only South Africa". Conservative MP Terry Dicks described Mandela as a "black terrorist"; at the same time, the Federation of Conservative Students had conferences "littered" with "Hang Nelson Mandela" posters, and Conservative MP Teddy Taylor argued that "Mandela should be shot".

Thatcher opposed sanctions imposed on South Africa by the Commonwealth and the European Economic Community (EEC). She attempted to preserve trade with South Africa, while persuading the government there to abandon apartheid. This included "[c]asting herself as President Botha's candid friend", and inviting him to visit the UK in 1984, in spite of the "inevitable demonstrations" against his government. Notes by Botha's foreign minister written on his 1984 trip to the UK claim that Thatcher told him that "apartheid had to be dismantled, Mandela and other prisoners released" as well as stopping the "forcible removal of urban blacks".

Alan Merrydew of the Canadian broadcaster BCTV News asked Thatcher what her response was "to a reported ANC statement that they will target British firms in South Africa?" She replied, "when the ANC says that they will target British companies. This shows what a typical terrorist organisation it is. I fought terrorism all my life and if more people fought it, and we were all more successful, we should not have it and I hope that everyone in this hall will think it is right to go on fighting terrorism."

Anti-apartheid activists saw Thatcher's comments as making excuses for the apartheid government while "placing the blame for government repression firmly on the side of the anti-government opposition"; however, Thatcher later acknowledged to a Conservative backbencher that: The exclusion of blacks from the political process has inevitably led to increasing dissatisfaction. Although not to be condoned, this has been a powerful factor in impelling black political leaders to seek by violence what is denied them by the laws under which they live. The institutionalised discrimination and second-class status accorded to blacks in South Africa ... continues to be an affront to the rest of Africa and to those of us who live in a free society and uphold its values.

During his visit to Britain five months after his release from prison, Nelson Mandela praised Thatcher: "She is an enemy of apartheid ... We have much to thank her for", but noted that they were in disagreement on how to end the practise.

Anti-apartheid activist Reverend Desmond Tutu was highly critical of the attitude of the Conservative Party and Thatcher towards apartheid. In the 1980s, he also condemned Western political leaders, including Thatcher, for retaining links with the South African government, stipulating that "support of this racist policy is racist". He and his wife boycotted a lecture given at the Federal Theological Institute by former British prime minister Alec Douglas-Home in the 1960s; Tutu noted that they did so because the Conservative Party had "behaved abominably over issues which touched our hearts most nearly".