The BBC has had to remove an interview with an academic about Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech.

The speech is scheduled to be broadcast in full for the first time tonight to mark its 50th anniversary. It is due to be read by Ian McDiarmid, the actor, on Radio 4 but has led to the BBC being criticised for allowing the broadcast and the risk of stirring racial tensions.

Shirin Hirsch, an academic at the University of Wolverhampton, said she was “disgusted by the way the BBC are promoting this” and had “made a mistake” by being interviewed for the show. She wrote on Twitter yesterday: “I’m not going to be included in [the] BBC programme, thanks all.” Dr Hirsch had claimed that the