In 1968, while still at school, I demonstrated against Enoch Powell when he was speaking at West Herts College shortly after his 'Rivers of Blood' speech and the Smethwick by-election. I had long hair and was clearly not outside the building to offer my support to Mr Powell. A journalist came over to me and whispered 'He's coming in round the back', hoping to engineer a confrontation. (Ever since then, I have been aware that some journalists do not only report the news). I didn't go round the back to greet Mr Powell, but was allowed in the front, with other demonstrators, to hear the speech (of which I remember nothing). Some weeks later, with my co-editors from the school magazine, I was outside the Houses of Parliament to hear the debate about immigration. It was the day that the Dockers marched on Parliament from the East End Docks to show their support for Enoch Powell's position. It was the first time I had seen a populist demonstration, and it was not pretty. (I  remember the faces). As we queued to get into the Public Gallery, Sir Learie Constantine, the famous West Indian cricketer, arrived in a limousine and was roundly jeered by the dockers who now surrounded the public entrance, simply because he was black. Once again, I gained admittance and listened to the debate at which Enoch Powell spoke in his customary stabbing rhetorical style, widely admired. Again, I remember nothing of the content, only the tone. Fifty years later, when I hear the populist argument expressed now, the tone has been softened, but perhaps not the content. 'There are too many...taking our jobs, housing, schools'. Back then it was black people, now it is refugees from the Middle East. It seems to be an indefatigable aspect of the English psyche that, in times of economic recession (and there are many more years of recession here than buoyancy) immigrants are the scapegoat, while the money that might bolster the social infrastructure disappears into the pockets of the few (particularly in a wealthy country like Britain). But then should I be surprised that little has changed in fifty years? Nearly two thousand years ago the Roman poet Horace wrote about 'stranger-hating Britons' - it was already a feature of our island race . Since then, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, Normans, Jews, Huguenots and so on. That is why I am reading my poem In Dockland in the Poemathon today, which is written in the voice of the 19th century mother of a mixed-race child: