Who was Enoch Powell?
Enoch Powell was born in Birmingham in 1912 to two schoolteachers. A gifted classicist, he was made professor of Greek in Sydney while still in his twenties, and he served in the army through the Second World War, ending as a brigadier. He entered Parliament as a Conservative for Wolverhampton South West in 1950. He quit as a Treasury minister in 1958 over government spending, and from 1960 he was Minister of Health. His speech in Birmingham in April 1968, urging deep cuts in immigration and predicting violence, split the country and got him sacked from the Shadow Cabinet. He left the Conservatives in 1974 over Europe and later sat for South Down as an Ulster Unionist until 1987.
Political views
- Urged sharp limits on Commonwealth immigration and warned that, in his view, it would bring conflict and bloodshed.Source: ebsco.com
- Wanted tight control of the money supply and a market economy, and he proposed selling off the Post Office and the telephone network.Source: en.wikipedia.org
- Said in 1972 that joining the European Community would take away Parliament's right to make the final law.Source: api.parliament.uk
- Quit the Conservative Party in 1974 because Britain had entered the European Economic Community.Source: ebsco.com
- Rejected the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, giving up his seat in protest and then winning it back at the by-election.Source: ebsco.com
- Put his name to a 1965 bill to reform the law on homosexuality and was against the death penalty.Source: en.wikipedia.org
Legacy
Admirers see Powell as one of the best parliamentary speakers of his day. They praise his steady defence of national sovereignty and say he anticipated the monetarist, free-market ideas that Margaret Thatcher later made policy. Critics, including much of the press at the time, called his 1968 speech racist and inflammatory. Powell rejected the charge, but the speech cost him any chance of top office, and he never held a senior post again. Opinion polls then suggested that many voters shared his worries about immigration, which is part of why he remains such a divisive name. His record is mixed on the axes: very strong on national culture and free markets, yet democratic on authority.
In their own words
“It shows first that it is an inherent consequence of accession to the Treaty of Rome that this House and Parliament will lose their legislative supremacy.”