At the outbreak of war, Powell immediately returned to the UK, but not before buying a Russian dictionary, since he thought "Russia would hold the key to our survival and victory, as it had in 1812 and 1916". == Military service== During October 1939, almost a month after returning home from Australia, Powell enlisted in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment.
He published a biography of Joseph Chamberlain, which treated the split with William Gladstone over Irish Home Rule in 1886 as the pivotal point of his career, rather than the adoption of tariff reform, and contained the famous line: "All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of all human affairs".
He represented the constituency until he was defeated at the 1987 general election. == Early years == John Enoch Powell was born in Stechford, Worcestershire, on 16 June 1912, and was baptised at Newport, Shropshire, a town which was home to his maternal great-grandfather, in the church where in 1909 his parents had married.
John Enoch Powell (16 June 1912 – 8 February 1998) was a British politician, classical scholar, author, linguist, soldier, philologist, and poet.
He represented the constituency until he was defeated at the 1987 general election. == Early years == John Enoch Powell was born in Stechford, Worcestershire, on 16 June 1912, and was baptised at Newport, Shropshire, a town which was home to his maternal great-grandfather, in the church where in 1909 his parents had married.
the nightmare of having one day to fight a decisive sea battle without the benefit of concentration, the perpetual spectre of naval 'war on two fronts'." Powell added: "The Panama Canal from 1914 onwards could never quite exorcise the spectre. ...
At the outbreak of war, Powell immediately returned to the UK, but not before buying a Russian dictionary, since he thought "Russia would hold the key to our survival and victory, as it had in 1812 and 1916". == Military service== During October 1939, almost a month after returning home from Australia, Powell enlisted in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment.
He lived at Stechford for the first six years of his life before his parents moved to Kings Norton in 1918, where he lived until 1930.
They are essentially something which we have invented to blind ourselves to the reality of the position". These changes were "greatly repugnant" to Powell: For the rest of his life, Powell regarded this speech as the finest he ever delivered (not the much more well-known 1968 anti-immigration speech). In mid-November 1953 Powell secured a place on the 1922 Committee's executive after the third time of trying.
Powell also spoke for the Rent Bill, which ended wartime rent controls when existing tenants moved out, thereby phasing out regulation. ===Financial Secretary to the Treasury=== At a meeting of the 1922 Committee on 22 November 1956, Rab Butler made a speech appealing for party unity in the aftermath of the Suez Crisis.
He lived at Stechford for the first six years of his life before his parents moved to Kings Norton in 1918, where he lived until 1930.
He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1930 to 1933, during which time he fell under the influence of the poet A. E.
By the time Powell had left King Edward's School in 1930, he had confirmed his instinctive belief that peace was merely temporary and that the UK would be at war with Germany again.
He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1930 to 1933, during which time he fell under the influence of the poet A. E.
Housman (published as early as 1937), as well as many books on classical and political subjects. Powell attracted widespread attention following his 20 April 1968 address to the General Meeting of the West Midlands Area Conservative Political Centre, which became known as the "Rivers of Blood" speech.
In 1937, he was appointed Professor of Greek at the University of Sydney aged 25 (failing in his aim of beating Nietzsche's record of becoming a professor at 24).
This confession was revealed by James in a letter to The Times on 10 February 1998. Following his appointment as Professor of Greek at the University of Sydney in 1937, he wrote to his parents (on 22 May and 16 June 1938) that he was repelled by his female students, while feeling "an instant and instinctive affection" for young Australian males.
He revised Stuart-Jones's edition of Thucydides' Historiae for the Oxford University Press in 1938, and his most lasting contribution to classical scholarship was his Lexicon to Herodotus, published the same year. Soon after arrival in Australia, he was appointed Curator of the Nicholson Museum at the University of Sydney.
After Neville Chamberlain's first visit to Adolf Hitler at Berchtesgaden, Powell wrote in a letter to his parents of 18 September 1938: In another letter to his parents in June 1939, before the beginning of war, Powell wrote: "It is the English, not their Government; for if they were not blind cowards, they would lynch Chamberlain and Halifax and all the other smarmy traitors".
This confession was revealed by James in a letter to The Times on 10 February 1998. Following his appointment as Professor of Greek at the University of Sydney in 1937, he wrote to his parents (on 22 May and 16 June 1938) that he was repelled by his female students, while feeling "an instant and instinctive affection" for young Australian males.
After Neville Chamberlain's first visit to Adolf Hitler at Berchtesgaden, Powell wrote in a letter to his parents of 18 September 1938: In another letter to his parents in June 1939, before the beginning of war, Powell wrote: "It is the English, not their Government; for if they were not blind cowards, they would lynch Chamberlain and Halifax and all the other smarmy traitors".
At the outbreak of war, Powell immediately returned to the UK, but not before buying a Russian dictionary, since he thought "Russia would hold the key to our survival and victory, as it had in 1812 and 1916". == Military service== During October 1939, almost a month after returning home from Australia, Powell enlisted in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment.
He also spoke in support of the Slum Clearances Bill, which provided entitlement for full compensation for those who purchased a house after August 1939 and still occupied it in December 1955 if this property would be compulsorily purchased by the government if it was deemed unfit for human habitation. In early 1956, Powell attended a subcommittee on immigration control as a housing minister and advocated immigration controls.
Early in 1940, he was trained for a commission after, while working in a kitchen, answering the question of an inspecting brigadier with a Greek proverb; on several occasions, he told colleagues that he expected to be at least a major-general by the end of the war.
He passed out top from his officer training. Powell was commissioned on the General List in 1940 but almost immediately transferred to the Intelligence Corps.
Suppose further, because this is necessary to the alleged case for our nuclear weapon as the defence of last resort, that, as in 1940, the United States was standing aloof from the contest but that, in contrast with 1940, Britain and the Warsaw Pact respectively possessed the nuclear weaponry which they do today.
where were the European unity merchants in 1940? I will tell you.
Lucky for Europe that Britain was alone in 1940". The Conservative Party would have to ask, preferably at the next election: "Do you intend still to control the laws which you obey, the taxes you pay and the policies of your government?" Five days after this speech, in an interview for The Daily Telegraph, Thatcher praised Powell: "I have always read Enoch Powell's speeches and articles very carefully. ...
He was sent to the Staff College, Camberley. In October 1941, Powell was posted to Cairo and transferred back to the Royal Warwickshire Regiment.
As secretary to the Joint Intelligence Committee, Middle East, he was soon doing work that would normally have been done by a more senior officer and was (May 1942, backdated to December 1941) promoted to major.
As secretary to the Joint Intelligence Committee, Middle East, he was soon doing work that would normally have been done by a more senior officer and was (May 1942, backdated to December 1941) promoted to major.
He was promoted to lieutenant-colonel in August 1942, telling his parents that he was doing the work of three people and expected to be a brigadier within a year or two, and in that role helped plan the Second Battle of El Alamein, having previously helped plan the attack on Rommel's supply lines.
Writing home on 16 February 1943, Powell stated: "I see growing on the horizon the greater peril than Germany or Japan ever were...
Having declined two posts carrying the rank of full colonel (in Algiers and Cairo, which would have left him in the now moribund North African theatre "indefinitely"), and despite expecting to have to accept a reduction in rank to major in order to get the transfer, he secured a posting to the British Imperial Indian Army in Delhi as a lieutenant-colonel in military intelligence in August 1943.
He was promoted to full colonel at the end of March 1944, as assistant director of military intelligence in India, giving intelligence support to the Burma campaign of William Slim. Having begun the war as the youngest professor in the Commonwealth, Powell ended it as a brigadier.
Once let the nuclear hypothesis be questioned or destroyed, once allow it to break down, and from that moment the American imperative in this country's policies disappears with it". At the start of 1987 general election, Powell claimed the Conservatives' prospects did not look good: "I have the feeling of 1945".
However, the programme was criticised by those who believed that Powell had dismissed the Soviet Union's threat to the West since 1945 and that he had been too impressed with Russia's sense of national identity.
At the age of 70 he began learning his 14th and final language, Hebrew. Despite his earlier atheism, Powell became a devout member of the Church of England, thinking in 1949 "that he heard the bells of St Peter's Wolverhampton calling him" while walking to his flat in his (then future) constituency.
Inflation rose to 2.5 per cent, a high figure for the era, especially in peacetime. During the late 1950s, Powell promoted control of the money supply to prevent inflation and, during the 1960s, was an advocate of free market policies, which at the time were seen as extreme, unworkable and unpopular.
Johnson believed it "beyond dispute" that Powell had attracted 2.5 million votes to the Conservatives, but the Conservative vote had increased by only 1.7 million since 1966. Powell had voted against the Schuman Declaration in 1950 and had supported entry into the European Coal and Steel Community only because he believed that it was simply a means to secure free trade.
Powell had a copy of a State Department Policy Statement from 15 August 1950, in which the American government said that the "agitation" caused by partition in Ireland "lessens the usefulness of Ireland in international organisations and complicates strategic planning for Europe".
Margaret's, Westminster. On 2 January 1952, the 39-year-old Powell married 26-year-old Margaret Pamela Wilson, a former colleague from the Conservative Central Office.
They are essentially something which we have invented to blind ourselves to the reality of the position". These changes were "greatly repugnant" to Powell: For the rest of his life, Powell regarded this speech as the finest he ever delivered (not the much more well-known 1968 anti-immigration speech). In mid-November 1953 Powell secured a place on the 1922 Committee's executive after the third time of trying.
Their first daughter, Susan, was born in January 1954, and their second daughter, Jennifer, was born in October 1956. Powell firmly believed that William Shakespeare of Stratford on Avon was not the writer of the plays and poems of Shakespeare.
Rab Butler also invited him onto the committee that reviewed party policy for the general election, which he attended until 1955.
However, after the troops had left in June 1956 and the Egyptians nationalised the Canal a month later, Powell opposed the attempt to retake the canal in the Suez Crisis because he thought the British no longer had the resources to be a world power. ==In and out of office== ===Junior Housing Minister=== On 21 December 1955, Powell was appointed parliamentary secretary to Duncan Sandys at the Ministry of Housing.
He also spoke in support of the Slum Clearances Bill, which provided entitlement for full compensation for those who purchased a house after August 1939 and still occupied it in December 1955 if this property would be compulsorily purchased by the government if it was deemed unfit for human habitation. In early 1956, Powell attended a subcommittee on immigration control as a housing minister and advocated immigration controls.
However, after the troops had left in June 1956 and the Egyptians nationalised the Canal a month later, Powell opposed the attempt to retake the canal in the Suez Crisis because he thought the British no longer had the resources to be a world power. ==In and out of office== ===Junior Housing Minister=== On 21 December 1955, Powell was appointed parliamentary secretary to Duncan Sandys at the Ministry of Housing.
In early 1956, he spoke for the Housing Subsidies Bill in the Commons and argued for the rejection of an amendment that would have hindered slum clearances.
He also spoke in support of the Slum Clearances Bill, which provided entitlement for full compensation for those who purchased a house after August 1939 and still occupied it in December 1955 if this property would be compulsorily purchased by the government if it was deemed unfit for human habitation. In early 1956, Powell attended a subcommittee on immigration control as a housing minister and advocated immigration controls.
Powell also spoke for the Rent Bill, which ended wartime rent controls when existing tenants moved out, thereby phasing out regulation. ===Financial Secretary to the Treasury=== At a meeting of the 1922 Committee on 22 November 1956, Rab Butler made a speech appealing for party unity in the aftermath of the Suez Crisis.
Their first daughter, Susan, was born in January 1954, and their second daughter, Jennifer, was born in October 1956. Powell firmly believed that William Shakespeare of Stratford on Avon was not the writer of the plays and poems of Shakespeare.
However, when Macmillan replaced Eden as Prime Minister, Powell was offered the office of Financial Secretary to the Treasury on 14 January 1957.
This office was the Chancellor of the Exchequer's deputy and the most important job outside the Cabinet. In January 1958 he resigned, along with the Chancellor of the Exchequer Peter Thorneycroft and his Treasury colleague Nigel Birch, in protest at government plans for increased expenditure; he was a staunch advocate of disinflation, or, in modern terms, a monetarist, and a believer in market forces.
In his 1958 resignation over public spending and what he saw as an inflationary economic policy, he anticipated almost exactly the views that during the 1980s came to be described as "monetarism". ===Hola Massacre speech=== On 27 July 1959, Powell delivered a speech on the Hola Camp of Kenya, where eleven Mau Mau were killed after refusing work in the camp.
In his 1958 resignation over public spending and what he saw as an inflationary economic policy, he anticipated almost exactly the views that during the 1980s came to be described as "monetarism". ===Hola Massacre speech=== On 27 July 1959, Powell delivered a speech on the Hola Camp of Kenya, where eleven Mau Mau were killed after refusing work in the camp.
Inflation rose to 2.5 per cent, a high figure for the era, especially in peacetime. During the late 1950s, Powell promoted control of the money supply to prevent inflation and, during the 1960s, was an advocate of free market policies, which at the time were seen as extreme, unworkable and unpopular.
His emotion was justified, for he had made a great and sincere speech". ===Minister of Health=== Powell returned to the government in July 1960, when he was appointed Health minister, although he did not become a member of the Cabinet until 1962.
However, the Minister of Health was not responsible for recruitment (this was left to health authorities) and Sir George Godber, Chief Medical Officer for Her Majesty's Government in England from 1960 to 1973, stated that the allegation was "bunk ...
As Powell's biographer I have been thoroughly through the Ministry of Health papers at the Public Record Office and have found no evidence to support this assertion". During the early 1960s, Powell was asked about the recruitment of immigrant workers for the NHS.
Powell was worried about the strain by NHS immigrants, and papers show that he wanted a stronger restriction on Commonwealth immigration than what was passed in 1961. == 1960s == ===Leadership elections=== In October 1963, along with Iain Macleod, Reginald Maudling and Lord Hailsham, Powell tried in vain to persuade Rab Butler not to serve under Alec Douglas-Home, in the belief that the latter would be unable to form a government.
In his famous 1961 "Water Tower" speech, he said: The speech catalysed a debate that was one of several strands leading to the Care in the Community initiative of the 1980s.
Powell was worried about the strain by NHS immigrants, and papers show that he wanted a stronger restriction on Commonwealth immigration than what was passed in 1961. == 1960s == ===Leadership elections=== In October 1963, along with Iain Macleod, Reginald Maudling and Lord Hailsham, Powell tried in vain to persuade Rab Butler not to serve under Alec Douglas-Home, in the belief that the latter would be unable to form a government.
His emotion was justified, for he had made a great and sincere speech". ===Minister of Health=== Powell returned to the government in July 1960, when he was appointed Health minister, although he did not become a member of the Cabinet until 1962.
Kennedy had done). In this job, he developed the 1962 Hospital Plan.
Powell was worried about the strain by NHS immigrants, and papers show that he wanted a stronger restriction on Commonwealth immigration than what was passed in 1961. == 1960s == ===Leadership elections=== In October 1963, along with Iain Macleod, Reginald Maudling and Lord Hailsham, Powell tried in vain to persuade Rab Butler not to serve under Alec Douglas-Home, in the belief that the latter would be unable to form a government.
Powell advocated the privatisation of the Post Office and the telephone network as early as 1964, over 20 years before the latter actually took place; and 47 years before the former occurred.
However, at the meeting at his house on the evening of 17 October, Powell, who still enjoyed a liberal reputation on racial issues after his Hola Massacre Speech, reportedly said of Home: "How can I serve under a man whose views on Africa are positively Portuguese?" During the 1964 general election, Powell said in his election address, "it was essential, for the sake not only of our own people but of the immigrants themselves, to introduce control over the numbers allowed in.
After all, who in 1964 had ever heard of a former Conservative cabinet minister thinking that immigration was an important political issue?" Following the Conservatives' defeat in the election, he agreed to return to the front bench as Transport Spokesman.
In July 1965, he stood in the first-ever party leadership election but came a distant third to Edward Heath, obtaining only 15 votes, just below the result Hugh Fraser would gain in the 1975 contest.
His supporters claim that the first two charges clash with his voting record on most social issues, such as [law reform (he was actually a co-sponsor of a bill on this issue in May 1965 and opposed the
During the election campaign of 1966, Powell claimed that the British government had contingency plans to send at least a token British force to Vietnam and that, under Labour, "Britain has behaved perfectly clearly and perfectly recognisably as an American satellite". Lyndon B.
Johnson believed it "beyond dispute" that Powell had attracted 2.5 million votes to the Conservatives, but the Conservative vote had increased by only 1.7 million since 1966. Powell had voted against the Schuman Declaration in 1950 and had supported entry into the European Coal and Steel Community only because he believed that it was simply a means to secure free trade.
In November 1967, Black Rod arrived during a debate on the EEC and was met with cries of "Shame" to "'Op it".
Housman (published as early as 1937), as well as many books on classical and political subjects. Powell attracted widespread attention following his 20 April 1968 address to the General Meeting of the West Midlands Area Conservative Political Centre, which became known as the "Rivers of Blood" speech.
They are essentially something which we have invented to blind ourselves to the reality of the position". These changes were "greatly repugnant" to Powell: For the rest of his life, Powell regarded this speech as the finest he ever delivered (not the much more well-known 1968 anti-immigration speech). In mid-November 1953 Powell secured a place on the 1922 Committee's executive after the third time of trying.
His successors had not, Powell claimed, provided the money for local authorities to spend on mental health care and therefore institutional care had been neglected while at the same time there was not any investment in community care. After his speech on immigration in 1968, Powell's political opponents sometimes alleged that he had, when Minister of Health, recruited immigrants from the Commonwealth into the National Health Service (NHS).
On 20 April 1968, he gave a speech in Birmingham in which he warned his audience of what he believed would be the consequences of continued unchecked mass immigration from the Commonwealth to the UK.
It was the introduction of the Race Relations Act 1968 (by the Labour Government at the time), which Powell found offensive and immoral.
Powell used the financial year of 1968–69 to show how income tax could be halved from 8s 3d to 4s 3d in the pound (basic rate cut from 41 to 21 per cent) and how capital gains tax and Selective Employment Tax could be abolished without reducing expenditure on defence or the social services.
Later in 1968, when the Labour government published its Bills for the new session, Powell was angry at Heath's acceptance of the plan drawn up by the Conservative Iain Macleod and Labour's Richard Crossman to reform the Lords, titled the Parliament (No.
He repeated his call to vote Labour because of their policy on the EEC. Since 1968, Powell had been an increasingly frequent visitor to Northern Ireland, and in keeping with his general British nationalist viewpoint, he sided strongly with the Ulster Unionists in their desire to remain a constituent part of the United Kingdom.
This, he added, might be "deplored, but it cannot be altered", and it therefore had to be "endured - and (alas!) camouflaged." The letters are now in the Churchill College Archives (POLL 1/1/1). Following a long illness, Pamela Powell died in November 2017 at the age of 91, 19 years after her husband. == Political beliefs == Powell delivered his Rivers of Blood speech on 20 April 1968.
Powell deduced from this, "As so often, the ordinary rank and file of the electorate have seen a truth, an important fact, which has escaped so many more clever people—the underlying value of that which is traditional, that which is prescriptive". After more speeches against the Bill during early 1969, and with left-wing Labour members also against reforming the House of Lords because they wanted its abolition, Harold Wilson announced on 17 April that the Bill was being withdrawn.
In March 1969, he opposed the UK's joining the European Economic Community.
His supporters claimed that the large public following which Powell attracted helped the Conservatives to win the 1970 general election, and perhaps cost them the February 1974 general election, when Powell turned his back on the Conservatives by endorsing a vote for Labour, which returned as a minority government in early March following a [parliament].
What it is not a protection against is war". The 1970 general election took place on 18 June and was unexpectedly won by the Conservatives, with a late surge in their support.
This nationalist analysis attracted millions of middle-class Conservatives and others, and as much as anything else it made Powell the implacable enemy of Heath, a fervent pro-European; but there was already enmity between the two. During 1970, Powell gave speeches about the EEC in Lyons (in French), Frankfurt (in German), Turin (in Italian) and The Hague. The Conservatives had promised at the 1970 general election in relation to the Common Market.
Powell said the issue of British membership of the EEC was one where "if there be a conflict between the call of country and that of party, the call of country must come first": Powell went on to criticise the Conservative government for obtaining British membership despite the party having promised at the general election of 1970 that it would "negotiate: no more, no less" and that "the full-hearted consent of Parliament and people" would be needed if the UK were to join.
This was the first election since 1970 that Powell was advocating a vote for the Conservative Party.
From early 1971, he opposed, with increasing vehemence, Heath's approach to Northern Ireland, the greatest breach with his party coming over the imposition of direct rule in 1972.
When finally he lost this struggle, after three years of campaigning on the question, he decided he could no longer sit in a parliament that he believed was no longer sovereign. A Daily Express opinion poll in 1972 showed Powell to be the most popular politician in the country.
From early 1971, he opposed, with increasing vehemence, Heath's approach to Northern Ireland, the greatest breach with his party coming over the imposition of direct rule in 1972.
"Grim" was Powell's response when he was asked what he thought of Thatcher's victory because he believed she would renege like Heath did in 1972.
On 5 November, the European printed an article by Powell in which he said he did not expect the European Communities Act 1972 to be amended or repealed but added, "Still, something has happened.
In April 1996, he wrote an article for the Daily Express where he said: "Those who consented to the surrender made in 1972 will have to think again.
However, the Minister of Health was not responsible for recruitment (this was left to health authorities) and Sir George Godber, Chief Medical Officer for Her Majesty's Government in England from 1960 to 1973, stated that the allegation was "bunk ...
Powell had been talking to Wilson irregularly since June 1973 during chance meetings in the gentlemen's lavatories of the "aye" lobby in the House of Commons.
His supporters claimed that the large public following which Powell attracted helped the Conservatives to win the 1970 general election, and perhaps cost them the February 1974 general election, when Powell turned his back on the Conservatives by endorsing a vote for Labour, which returned as a minority government in early March following a [parliament].
Powell was returned to the House of Commons in October 1974 as the Ulster Unionist Party MP for the Northern Ireland constituency of South Down.
He decided to remain in parliament and in the Conservative Party, and was expected to support the party in Wolverhampton at the snap general election of February 1974 called by Edward Heath.
However, on 23 February 1974, with the election only five days away, Powell dramatically turned his back on his party, giving as the reasons that it had taken the United Kingdom into the EEC without having a mandate to do so, and that it had abandoned other manifesto commitments, so that he could no longer support it at the election.
According to the Telegraph journalist Simon Heffer, both Powell and Heath believed that Powell had been responsible for the Conservatives' losing the election. == Ulster Unionist == ===1974–1979=== In a sudden general election in October 1974, Powell returned to Parliament as Ulster Unionist MP for South Down, having rejected an offer to stand as a candidate for the far-right National Front, formed seven years earlier and fiercely opposed to non-white immigration.
He refused to join the Orange Order, the first Ulster Unionist MP at Westminster never to be a member (and, to date, one of only four, the others being Ken Maginnis, Danny Kinahan and Sylvia Hermon), and he was an outspoken opponent of the more extremist loyalism espoused by Ian Paisley and his supporters. In the aftermath of the Birmingham pub bombings by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) on 21 November 1974, the government passed the Prevention of Terrorism Act.
He said terrorism was a form of warfare that could not be prevented by laws and punishments but by the aggressor's certainty that the war was impossible to win. When Heath called a leadership election at the end of 1974, Powell claimed they would have to find someone who was not a member of the Cabinet that "without a single resignation or public dissent, not merely swallowed but advocated every single reversal of election pledge or party principle".
I sometimes wonder if, when we shed our power, we omitted to shed our arrogance". When Thatcher was challenged by Michael Heseltine for the leadership of the Conservative Party during November 1990, Powell said he would rejoin the party, which he had left in February 1974 over the issue of Europe, if Thatcher won, and would urge the public to support both her and, in Powell's view, national independence.
In July 1965, he stood in the first-ever party leadership election but came a distant third to Edward Heath, obtaining only 15 votes, just below the result Hugh Fraser would gain in the 1975 contest.
During February 1975, after winning the leadership election, Margaret Thatcher refused to offer Powell a Shadow Cabinet place because "he turned his back on his own people" by leaving the Conservative Party exactly 12 months earlier and telling the electorate to vote Labour.
Powell also attributed Thatcher's success to luck, saying that she was faced with "supremely unattractive opponents at the time". During the 1975 referendum on British membership of the EEC, Powell campaigned for a 'No' vote.
The electorate voted 'Yes' by a margin of more than two to one. On 23 March 1977, in a vote of confidence against the minority Labour government, Powell, along with a few other Ulster Unionists, abstained.
"It is desirable", the document continued, "that Ireland should be integrated into the defence planning of the North Atlantic area, for its strategic position and present lack of defensive capacity are matters of significance." Though he voted with the Conservatives in a vote of confidence that brought down the Labour government on 28 March, Powell did not welcome the victory of Margaret Thatcher in the May 1979 election.
In his 1958 resignation over public spending and what he saw as an inflationary economic policy, he anticipated almost exactly the views that during the 1980s came to be described as "monetarism". ===Hola Massacre speech=== On 27 July 1959, Powell delivered a speech on the Hola Camp of Kenya, where eleven Mau Mau were killed after refusing work in the camp.
In his famous 1961 "Water Tower" speech, he said: The speech catalysed a debate that was one of several strands leading to the Care in the Community initiative of the 1980s.
Who then is likely to listen, let alone to respond, to the proof that nothing short of major movements of population can shift the lines along which we are being carried towards disaster?" In the 1980s Powell began espousing the policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament.
His name had been passed to police by Paul Butler, the Bishop of Durham, after allegations of Powell's involvement in historic child abuse had been made by one individual in the 1980s to the then Bishop of Monmouth, Dominic Walker.
In a debate on the nuclear deterrent on 3 March 1981, Powell claimed that the debate was now more political than military; that the UK did not possess an independent deterrent and that through NATO the UK was tied to the nuclear deterrence theory of the United States.
On 16 July 1981, Powell gave a speech in the Commons in which he said the riots could not be understood unless one takes into consideration the fact that in some large cities between a quarter and a half of those under 25 were immigrant or descended from immigrants.
Powell said that the government should be honest to the people by telling them that in thirty years' time, the black population of Lambeth would have doubled in size. John Casey records an exchange between Powell and Thatcher during a meeting of the Conservative Philosophy Group: ===Falklands conflict=== When Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands in April 1982, Powell was given secret briefings on Privy Councillor terms on behalf of his party.
In the debate on the address shortly after the general election of 1983, Powell picked up on Thatcher's willingness, when asked, to use nuclear weapons as a "last resort".
In the 1983 general election, Powell had to face a DUP candidate in his constituency and Ian Paisley denounced Powell as "a foreigner and an Anglo-Catholic". On 31 May Powell gave a speech at Downpatrick against nuclear weapons.
After Macmillan's death in 1986 Powell said "Macmillan was a Whig, not a Tory ...
In 1986, Powell stated that the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) had not killed Neave but that "MI6 and their friends" were responsible: Powell cited as his sources for such an astonishing accusation by a British parliamentarian information that had been disclosed to him from within the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
When inflation crept up that year, he condemned the Chancellor Nigel Lawson's policy of printing money so sterling would shadow the German deutschmark and said that it was for the UK to join the European Monetary System. In early September 1989, a collection of Powell's speeches on Europe was published titled Enoch Powell on 1992 (1992 being the year set for the creation of the Single Market by the Single European Act of 1986).
He represented the constituency until he was defeated at the 1987 general election. == Early years == John Enoch Powell was born in Stechford, Worcestershire, on 16 June 1912, and was baptised at Newport, Shropshire, a town which was home to his maternal great-grandfather, in the church where in 1909 his parents had married.
In 1987, Powell said there was no contradiction between urging people to vote Labour while proclaiming to be a Tory: "Many Labour members are quite good Tories". Powell, in an interview on 26 February, said he would be voting for Helene Middleweek, the Labour candidate, rather than the Conservative Nicholas Budgen.
Once let the nuclear hypothesis be questioned or destroyed, once allow it to break down, and from that moment the American imperative in this country's policies disappears with it". At the start of 1987 general election, Powell claimed the Conservatives' prospects did not look good: "I have the feeling of 1945".
When German reunification was on the agenda in mid-1989, Powell claimed that the UK urgently needed to create an alliance with the Soviet Union in view of Germany's effect on the balance of power in Europe. After Thatcher's Bruges speech in September 1988 and her increasing hostility to a European currency in the last years of her premiership, Powell made many speeches publicly supporting her attitude to Europe.
The solution, he claimed, was repatriation on a large scale and the cost of doing this in welfare payments and pensions was well worth paying. In early 1989, he made a programme (broadcast in July) on his visit to Russia and his impressions on that country.
When Heath attacked Thatcher's speech in May 1989 Powell called him "the old virtuoso of the U-turn".
When inflation crept up that year, he condemned the Chancellor Nigel Lawson's policy of printing money so sterling would shadow the German deutschmark and said that it was for the UK to join the European Monetary System. In early September 1989, a collection of Powell's speeches on Europe was published titled Enoch Powell on 1992 (1992 being the year set for the creation of the Single Market by the Single European Act of 1986).
He appears on an episode of Frontline, "The Shakespeare Mystery," 19 April 1989, where he said, "My astonishment was to discover that these were the works of someone who'd 'been in the kitchen.' They are written by someone who has lived the life, who has been part of a life of politics and power, who knows what people feel when they are near to the centre of power.
However, the Labour Party won the seat from the Conservative Party, mainly because of the community charge. After Iraq invaded Kuwait on 2 August 1990, Powell said that since the UK was not an ally of Kuwait in the "formal sense" and because the balance of power in the Middle East had ceased to be a British concern after the end of the British Empire, the UK should not go to war.
I sometimes wonder if, when we shed our power, we omitted to shed our arrogance". When Thatcher was challenged by Michael Heseltine for the leadership of the Conservative Party during November 1990, Powell said he would rejoin the party, which he had left in February 1974 over the issue of Europe, if Thatcher won, and would urge the public to support both her and, in Powell's view, national independence.
His Collected Poems appeared in 1990.
will have to listen". In December 1991, Powell said that "Whether Yugoslavia dissolves into two states or half a dozen states or does not dissolve at all makes no difference to the safety and well being of the United Kingdom".
When inflation crept up that year, he condemned the Chancellor Nigel Lawson's policy of printing money so sterling would shadow the German deutschmark and said that it was for the UK to join the European Monetary System. In early September 1989, a collection of Powell's speeches on Europe was published titled Enoch Powell on 1992 (1992 being the year set for the creation of the Single Market by the Single European Act of 1986).
During the 1992 general election Powell spoke for Nicholas Budgen in his old seat of Wolverhampton South West.
He praised Budgen for his opposition to the Maastricht Treaty and condemned the rest of the Conservative Party for supporting it. ==Final years== In late 1992, aged 80, Powell was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.
Powell's opinion of Thatcher had declined after she endorsed John Major at the 1992 general election, which he believed to be a repudiation of her fight against European integration after the Bruges speech. On 16 May 1994, Powell spoke at the Bruges Group and said Europe had "destroyed one Prime Minister and will destroy another Prime Minister yet" and demanded powers surrendered to the European Court of Justice to be repatriated.
In 1993, however, Powell claimed that his policy could have worked.
the British people, somehow or other, will not be parted from their right to govern themselves in parliament". In 1993, the twenty-fifth anniversary of Powell's "Rivers of Blood" speech, Powell wrote an article for The Times, in which he claimed the concentration of immigrant communities in inner cities would lead to "communalism", which would have grave effects on the electoral system: "communalism and democracy, as the experience of India demonstrates, are incompatible".
In 1994, he published The Evolution of the Gospel: A New Translation of the First Gospel with Commentary and Introductory Essay.
Powell's opinion of Thatcher had declined after she endorsed John Major at the 1992 general election, which he believed to be a repudiation of her fight against European integration after the Bruges speech. On 16 May 1994, Powell spoke at the Bruges Group and said Europe had "destroyed one Prime Minister and will destroy another Prime Minister yet" and demanded powers surrendered to the European Court of Justice to be repatriated.
In June 1994, he wrote an article for the Daily Mail, where he stated that "Britain is waking from the nightmare of being part of the continental bloc, to rediscover that these offshore islands belong to the outside world and lie open to its oceans".
The deterioration will not have been irreversible". In his book The Evolution of the Gospel, published in August 1994, Powell said he had arrived at the view that Jesus Christ was not crucified but stoned to death by the Jews.
He also turned down two invitations to stand for the party in elections, citing retirement. In April 1995, he said in an interview that for the Conservatives "defeat [at the next election] would help.
The same month, he took part at a debate on Europe at the Cambridge Union and won. In July 1995, there was a leadership election for the Conservative Party, in which Major resigned as leader of the party and stood in the election.
Patience will evidently have to be exercised—and patience is the greatest of the political virtues—by those of us who want to keep Britain independent and self-governed". During the final years of his life, he managed occasional pieces of journalism and co-operated in a BBC documentary about his life in 1995 (Odd Man Out was broadcast on 11 November).
In April 1996, he wrote an article for the Daily Express where he said: "Those who consented to the surrender made in 1972 will have to think again.
When Labour won the 1997 general election, Powell told his wife, Pamela Wilson, "They have voted to break up the United Kingdom." She rejoined the Conservative Party the next day, but he did not.
John Enoch Powell (16 June 1912 – 8 February 1998) was a British politician, classical scholar, author, linguist, soldier, philologist, and poet.
On 8 February 1998 Powell died aged 85 at the King Edward VII Hospital for Officers in Westminster, London.
This confession was revealed by James in a letter to The Times on 10 February 1998. Following his appointment as Professor of Greek at the University of Sydney in 1937, he wrote to his parents (on 22 May and 16 June 1938) that he was repelled by his female students, while feeling "an instant and instinctive affection" for young Australian males.
In The Trial of Enoch Powell, a Channel 4 television broadcast in April 1998, on the thirtieth anniversary of his Rivers of Blood speech (and two months after his death), 64 per cent of the studio audience voted that Powell was not a racist.
This, he added, might be "deplored, but it cannot be altered", and it therefore had to be "endured - and (alas!) camouflaged." The letters are now in the Churchill College Archives (POLL 1/1/1). Following a long illness, Pamela Powell died in November 2017 at the age of 91, 19 years after her husband. == Political beliefs == Powell delivered his Rivers of Blood speech on 20 April 1968.
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