The BBC has said listeners should 'wait to hear the programme before they judge it', after receiving a wave of criticism for their scheduled broadcast of Enoch Powell's 'rivers of blood' speech.

Lord Andrew Adonis led the calls for the broadcaster not to transmit the 'incendiary and racist' speech, which is to be discussed by a panel to mark its 50th anniversary.

The anti-immigration speech, which will be read out in segments by actor Ian McDiarmid, was first delivered to local Conservative party members in Birmingham, ahead of a second reading of the 1968 race relations bill.

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The BBC has said listeners should 'wait to hear the programme before they judge it', after receiving a wave of criticism for their scheduled broadcast of Enoch Powell's 'rivers of blood' speech

Powell attacked the government's immigration policy, called for less immigration and urged those already in the UK to return to their country of origin.

The speech referred to a white constituent who feared 'the black man having the whip hand over the white man' and ended by ominously predicting rivers of blood.

It divided a nation and defined Powell's political legacy, serving as inspiration for right wing political movements such as the BNP, EDL and Britain First to follow.

But journalist and programme maker Sathnam Sanghera, whose parents moved from India to Wolverhampton at the time of Powell's speech, said it was intended as a retrospective discussion on why Powell had been proved wrong.

The anti-immigration speech, which will be read out in segments by actor Ian McDiarmid, was first delivered to local Conservative party members in Birmingham, ahead of a second reading of the 1968 race relations bill (Enoch Powell, pictured in 1979)

The speech, will be broken up into segments, and critiqued by a panel, including by BBC media editor Amol Rajan, who will examine the influence of the speech since it was first delivered.

It will be read out on Saturday for the first time ever, on Radio 4's Archive On 4 programme.

In a letter to Ofcom chief executive Sharon White, Labour peer Lord Adonis called on the media regulator to 'instruct the BBC to cancel the proposed broadcast.

He wrote: 'It seems extraordinary that one should have to make the argument in today's Britain that Powell's speech is an incitement to racial hatred and violence which should not be broadcast.

The speech, will be broken up into segments, and critiqued by a panel, including by BBC media editor Amol Rajan, who will examine the influence of the speech since it was first delivered

'If a contemporary politician made such a speech they would almost certainly be arrested and charged with serious offences.'

Lord Adonis added that the BBC's stance 'that this is some kind of artistic enterprise' is an 'unsustainable' argument, 'particularly in context of the BBC's boast that the broadcast provides a unique opportunity to hear the speech in full'.

He said the decision to broadcast the entire speech is 'a special tribute to the 50th anniversary of 'rivers of blood'', which he said was 'the most incendiary racist speech of modern Britain that was not even broadcast at the time'.

Lord Adonis said the matter will be raised in Parliament if the speech is not pulled from the schedule.

In a letter to Ofcom chief executive Sharon White, Labour peer Lord Adonis called on the media regulator to 'instruct the BBC to cancel the proposed broadcast

The BBC said in a statement: 'This is a rigorous journalistic analysis of a historical political speech.

'It's not an endorsement of the controversial views and people should wait to hear the programme before they judge it.'

A spokeswoman for Ofcom said: 'Ofcom's powers, granted by Parliament, are as a post-broadcast regulator.

'This means that we wouldn't check or approve any broadcaster's editorial content before transmission.'