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A researcher for a Welsh Conservative Assembly Member has apologised after he suggested Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech may have been visionary.

Daniel Mason caused a storm on social media after he wrote on Facebook that the speech is worth reading today.

There were calls for the Welsh Conservatives to suspend the researcher but his boss, South Wales East AM William Graham , says he is to give him a written warning.

'Worth reading today'

The post was written in the wake of the Paris attacks claimed to be conducted by so-called Islamic State that killed more than 120 people. It is understood that Mr Mason has since deleted his entire Facebook profile.

Mr Mason wrote: “Enoch Powell gave a speech “Rivers of Blood”... worth reading today”.

He added: “‘Blood on the streets’ the ranting of a mad racist or a visionary?”

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Huw Price, who works for Welsh Labour, tweeted demands to the Welsh Conservatives that they suspend Mr Mason.

Political commentator Daran Hill said he couldn’t “believe a member of Assembly support staff voicing such views”.

“These views are abhorrent and need to be challenged,” he added.

'I want to apologise unreservedly'

After Mr Hill challenged Mr Mason on Facebook, accusing the researcher of being racist. “I am not a racist nor have what I have said is in any way racist,” Mr Mason replied.

But in a statement released later Daniel Mason, a researcher for William Graham, said: “I want to apologise unreservedly for this Facebook post.

"Ignorance is no excuse but had I fully understood the meaning behind the speech I would never have shared it.”

William Graham said: “It was a very foolish and ill-timed thing to say.

“I’m confident that Dan does not hold those views. He’s made a full apology. I will give him a written warning tomorrow that he does not repeat these actions.”

Mr Graham said that he did not see Mr Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech as visionary.

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'Totally at odds'

A spokesman for William Graham AM said: “This misinformed, disappointing and deeply disrespectful post is unacceptable and totally at odds with the views of any right-thinking person.

“Clearly this is a matter for William as the employer and he will be taking appropriate action.”

Mr Powell made his original Rivers of Blood speech to a Conservative meeting in Birmingham in 1968.

He had said: “We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependants, who are for the most part the material of the future growth of the immigrant descended population. It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre.”

The speech was hugely controversial and led to his dismissal from the Conservative shadow cabinet of the time.