Tory in Enoch Powell race row: 'I could have survived if I had signed gagging order'

Conservative chairman Caroline Spelman was willing to keep race-row candidate Nigel Hastilow if he signed a gagging order, it emerged today.

Mr Hastilow was forced to step down as the parliamentary candidate for Halesowen and Rowley Regis after claiming Enoch Powell was "right" on immigration.

In an article for his local newspaper in Wolverhampton today he said he could have stayed on if he admitted his words had been "incredibly stupid".

Mr Hastilow wrote in the Express & Star that Ms Spelman told him his political career would survive if he signed a press release drawn up by the party's chief spin doctor, Andy Coulson.

He added: "It included this sentence, 'Although I did not - and do not - support Enoch Powell's Rivers of Blood comments, I accept that some of the wording of my column was incredibly stupid.'

"I was also required to submit any future articles to the Conservative headquarters before submitting them to the editor. It was this, even more than the 'incredibly stupid' line, that I couldn't stomach."

Mr Hastilow's version of events will be seen as a gift to Labour, which claimed that David Cameron should have sacked him immediately.

Mr Cameron was said to be furious that his efforts to ditch the Conservatives' "nasty party" reputation had been undermined by one of his own candidates.

Mr Hastilow's departure came only days after Tory leader David Cameron was praised by equality chief Trevor Phillips for "deracialising" the immigration debate.

The head of the new Equality and Human Rights Commission hailed a speech by Mr Cameron last week as a turning point. "For the first time in my adult life I heard a party leader clearly attempting to deracialise the issue of immigration," he added.

Last night Mr Hastilow, 51, insisted his remarks about Mr Powell's notorious 1968 "rivers of blood" speech were not racist and went on to warn that there were "too many" people in the country and that Britain could not afford to accommodate them all.

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His original remarks came in a column in the Wolverhampton Express and Star newspaper.

Mr Hastilow wrote: "When you ask most people in the Black Country what the single biggest problem facing the country is, most say immigration. Many insist 'Enoch Powell was right'. Enoch, once MP for Wolverhampton South-West, was sacked from the Conservative front bench and marginalised politically for his 1968 rivers of blood speech, warning that uncontrolled immigration would change our country irrevocably.

"He was right. It has changed dramatically."

In his official resignation statement, he said: "I am very sorry that any remarks of mine have undermined the progress David Cameron has made on the issue of immigration, as on so many other issues."

Mr Hastilow's comments were condemned by a string of senior Tory MPs - including the Shadow Chancellor George Osborne and the Shadow Home Secretary David Davis.

Mr Osborne told BBC1's Andrew Marr Show: "Candidates of any party - Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat - have to exercise great caution in the language they use about immigration."

He said the country needed controlled immigration, but the debate had to be conducted in "a reasonable way with moderate use of language".

Mr Davis said: "You cannot just stumble around throwing out comments which are insensitive or inflammatory."

It is the second time Mr Hastilow has angered the party leadership. In 2001, when he was Tory candidate for Edgbaston, he said his party was seen as a "lost cause" and that then leader William Hague was "struggling to re-ignite a party which seems to have lost the fire needed to do battle and lost the will to win".

Last night Mr Hastilow said he had received hundreds of messages of support.

He added: "I am amazed and gratified by the hundreds of emails of support I have received from around the country, and indeed around the world. I have had messages of support from America, Australia, Cyprus and Malta, from complete strangers, saying, 'Be strong, be brave'."

He also had the support of Mary Docker, the chairman of Mr Hastilow's Conservative association, who said she did not think he had done anything wrong.

"He's basically just raising issues that have been raised with him when he has been canvassing the area," she added. "All he is doing is just relaying the views of the public, which is what a politician should do."

Peter Hain, the Work and Pensions Secretary, claimed Mr Hastilow's remarks showed the Tories' "racist underbelly".

Mr Cameron told The Observer yesterday that extremist clerics who pose a risk to security should be deported - regardless of whether they face torture.

He said: "I have long been worried about the preachers of hate and other extremists we have harboured in Britain.

"We should never have let them in: the 'Londonistan' approach of having them here so they could be watched over was an historic mistake."