Enoch Powell used to complain that his fateful speech on immigration 40 years ago had been widely misinterpreted. Phrases like “rivers of blood”, “strangers in their own country” and colourful quotes like “the black man will have the whip hand over the white man” had, he claimed, been taken out of context. What had been intended as a powerful warning about mass immigration had been turned instead into a racist rant.

I wonder if Trevor Phillips, who went back last Sunday to the same hotel in Birmingham where Powell spoke 40 years ago, shares some of Powell's alarm about how his words were reported. His long and detailed assessment of the state of race relations in Britain today prompted a string of headlines with one recurring theme, summed up in The Times: “Race chief warns of an ethnic cold war”.

Since that single reference has been jumped on, notably by the British National Party, to suggest that Mr Phillips was implying that Powell had been right all along, it is worth repeating in full. He said Powell's predictions of “hot” racial conflict had not been borne out, then added:

“However, we have seen the emergence of a kind of cold war in some parts of the country, where very separate communities exist side by side, increasing the likelihood of little interaction and with poor communication across racial or religious lines. This is not purely an old style anti-black phenomenon. There are divisions between minority communities... and increasingly there is little difference in attitudes to immigration between ethnic minorities and the majority. So how do we reconcile good relations and stable communities with our need to ride the tide of global migration?”

In retrospect, Mr Phillips may conclude that this was an Archbishop of Canterbury moment rather than a Powell moment. Rather as the Archbishop found himself charged with urging the adoption of Sharia in Britain, when all he had been doing was suggesting equality of treatment for Muslims, Mr Phillips has been caricatured as repeating Powell's warnings about the dangers of racial conflict in different language. He should know that, however nuanced the argument, it can be every bit as inflammatory as outspoken comment.

There is, of course, a critical difference between the two. To reread Powell's speech 40 years on is to realise just how inflammatory it was in those early days of mass immigration. He may have been right to complain that some of his remarks were taken out of context, but some of those that were left in still have the capacity to shock. He talked of single immigrants coming into the country to marry fiancées they had never met to start new familes; he said that white people in some places felt themselves to be “the unwanted”; that attempting to outlaw discrimination against blacks was like “throwing a match onto gunpowder”; he accused liberal leader writers of committing the same errors as those who condoned the rise of fascism in the 1930s; and he condemned “archbishops in their palaces faring delicately with the bedclothes pulled right up over their heads”. It was cab-driver language, not that of a serious politician.

Mr Phillips's speech, by contrast, is a reasoned and well-argued demolition of everything Powell predicted. He says that, while Powell was accurate in his estimate of immigrant numbers, few of the fearsome consequences have materialised. Despite the riots of the 1970s, and racial incidents such as the murder of Stephen Lawrence, the chaos and hatred that Powell prophesied have not taken place. Surveys show that the perception of racial prejudice in Britain is declining rather than rising.

That does not mean, says Mr Phillips, that all is well. The consequences of the mass immigration of the past 40 years remain with us in the shape of isolated ethnic communities and white resentment against immigrants who take jobs away. There is huge pressure on hospital places and social services. Racial prejudice remains a reality. “The fear that followed Powellism still stalks Britain,” he cautioned - and that has constrained the way politicians have talked about race in Britain ever since the phrase “rivers of blood” entered the national vocabulary. He calls for “an open, honest and informed debate”.

It is here that Mr Phillips runs into trouble. What is this open debate he calls for? For most of us, race has been openly, even exhaustively discussed in public for as long as we can remember. Managing immigration and seeking active integration have been the themes of that discussion for successive administrations ever since Powell first spoke out. But by suggesting it has been absent, Mr Phillips is implying that free and open debate has somehow been suppressed - that key issues have been censored, and that there has been some form of liberal-left consensus to prevent the hidden truths coming out.

What that must mean is that we have failed to talk sufficiently about the need for tighter control of immigration, and the drastic reduction of numbers. If that is what Mr Phillips means by calling for a debate, then he should say so. And when that debate takes place, which side of the divide will the man who heads Britain's Equality and Human Rights Commission stand on?

As Britain enters what may become a recession, and unemployment grows, the benefits of economic migration may be drowned out in a tide of resentment against incomers. In that climate, anyone who uses expressions such as fear, cold war and the tide of global migration may find themselves the victims of the same misinterpretation that Powell complained of all those years ago.

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