Article of the day: ‘Black Britain's darkest hour’ - Sarfraz Manzoor

The best article in today's papers was this 4300-word article detailing the impact of Enoch Powell's speech to the Conservative Association in a Wolverhampton hotel in 1968: the so-called Rivers of Blood speech.

The piece shows how Powell drew on what were until then buried resentments, changing many parts of the country from places where there was ‘not antipathy of any kind’ into places where workers could expect to see gangs lying in wait for them.

What makes the article special is the excellent set of quotes gathered from interviews with locals, including people who were new to the country at the time, who had felt that shift take place. Seeing a list of the quotes alone would be readable enough, but the writing serves to fill in the logical gaps between them, taking us through why people thought what they did. The piece is also rich with long-forgotten facts showing the impact of Powell's speech in other ways - like the fact that a special Royal Mail van was tasked with delivering the 100,000-odd letters of support sent to Powell in the weeks after he sent up what he called his ‘rocket.’

There's also an attempt to question exactly why Powell, then Conservative MP for Wolverhampton South West, of whom a neighbour said ‘Nobody knew who he was’ and who in 1964 pledged to resist racial discrimination, decided to prepare to give the nation a firebrand speech.

This has everything you'd want in a feature: a strong, almost academically well-supported argument; impressive evidence of some serious legwork; a sprinkling of trivia and a weighty closing line – and all given enough space to develop fully.