ABSTRACT
The origins of the longstanding race relations advocacy body called the Runnymede Trust lie partially in the political environment engendered by Enoch Powell’s polarizing series of speeches about Britain’s immigration policy and the country’s future race wars given in 1968. Alongside his Institute of Race Relations work, Jim Rose chaired the Public Relations Panel of the National Committee for Commonwealth Immigrants, where his media capacity and strident liberalism helped champion responsibility in media reports on race and immigration. Rose wanted the organization to refute the misleading and ill-cited facts that fuelled Powell’s arguments. Dipak Nandy reluctantly left his academic post in the summer of 1968 to prepare for a start date in October, at a time when Powell’s vitriolic rhetoric had initiated a political storm about the state of British migration, citizenship and race relations. Nandy’s prospectus for Runnymede, then, went beyond Rose and Anthony Lester’s original aims and well beyond a plan for merely providing instant rebuttal to Powell.
