IT IS half a century since the death of Martin Luther King, gunned down just when he was making real progress on race relations in America.

In England it is also 50 years since the infamous “rivers of blood” speech by the Tory politician Enoch Powell.

There is another anniversary not much talked about these days but equally significant.

In 1958 race riots took place in Notting Hill.

I was a teenager living nearby at the time. Word reached me on the street that something terrible was going on

What I saw was unforgettable and unacceptable.

Thugs were attacking and abusing West Indians simply because of the colour of their skin.

The innocent victims were scared out of their wits. There was not much they could do and little help was forthcoming.

I thought then and I still believe today that racial equality is essential in Britain and that it can be achieved.

Now, despite all the setbacks over the last 60 years in other parts of London and in big provincial cities like Liverpool, real progress has been made.

Even in Notting Hill there were encouraging signs right from the start.

The despicable Sir Oswald Mosley and his dim-witted acolytes tried to stir up more trouble through inflammatory speeches but largely failed.

I remember bumping into some of them by chance after a Mosley meeting and hearing vile abuse against a friend who happened to be a Kenyan Asian.

Another friend, larger and braver than me, confronted them and they fled.

The following year we started a cricket club based in Kensington and Notting Hill. Anyone could join for a fee of six old pence plus a match fee of the same amount.

We had Indians, West Indians, Pakistanis and players from many other nations. For good measure we had a white South African and a few Canadians who played the game like baseball and with varying results.

There was never a hint of racial tension and the only arguments were between white fast bowlers about which of them should bowl first.

It was hard to keep the club going because the population was so mobile and we never fielded the same 11 players during the many years I acted as club secretary.

Eventually one of the Indians was appointed captain which was rare even in a multi-racial club. There was no dispute. He was unquestionably the right man for the job.

Founding that club and maintaining it was easily the best thing I have ever done, surpassing any writing or reporting I did later.

But its impact was minimal outside Notting Hill. There were people on the national and international stages who made a real impact.

Listening to King 50 years on, his great speeches have an almost musical sound. They have rhythm and they are beautiful. That is one reason they have lasted so long.

King was not yet 40 when he died and who knows what he might have achieved had he lived. How he would have welcomed a black president like Barack Obama, but like Jack Kennedy five years earlier, he was also flawed and his reputation might have suffered.

Powell was a strange man. He was not a rabid racist like many people on the far right but he did sometimes make racist remarks.

He never used the words “river of blood” in his speech but referred obscurely to the River Tiber instead.

Hearing the speech today, I am struck by how ugly and grating Powell’s voice was in stark contrast to the mellifluous sound of King.

The content is also even more unpleasant than I recall with slighting references made to black people which would now rightly be regarded as illegal.

There was a lot of support for him all over the country. Even in Brighton, there was a Powell for Premier group founded by a Major Hodgkinson who called his house Hodge Lodge.

But it did not last long and neither did Powell as a serious politician. Opposition leader Ted Heath, certainly no racist, removed him from the Shadow Cabinet and never spoke to him again. Powell retreated to the political wilds of Northern Ireland and did not hold office after that.

A few days after his celebrated speech, Powell was due to speak at a forum in Brighton and the world’s press went there hoping for more headlines. But typically he treated the audience to an abstruse lecture on economics and said not a word on race.

Most young people today know about Martin Luther King but few have heard of Powell.

He is deservedly forgotten but the Notting Hill riots are worth studying as proof that racism as raw as that does not finally win the day.