Enoch Powell- A Racist or a Prophet?

Time for a reassessment?

Enoch Powell is one of those characters whose voice I have always consigned to the past. A past that was emerging from WW2 and a Britain that was coming to terms with losing its Empire. His voice was (we were told) one of anger and loss. How true is that?As I have come to realise over the last decade much of what we have been told is untrue. Is this just another one of those myths that we have been told to keep us from understanding Enoch Powell’s warning and why he felt impelled to give it? My study of Powell shows a man who cared deeply about Britain and who was not afraid to see the portends of WW2 at an early stage (and with much sadness as loved Germany and England). He was an independent thinker and looked at the big picture,

So what do we know about Enoch Powell?

John Enoch Powell MBE (16 June 1912 – 8 February 1998) was a British politician, scholar, and writer. He served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Wolverhampton South West for the Conservative Party from 1950 to February 1974 and as MP for South Down for the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) from October 1974 to 1987. He was Minister of Health from 1960 to 1963 in the second Macmillan government and was Shadow Secretary of State for Defense from 1965 to 1968 in the Shadow Government of Ted Heath. Before entering politics he was a classical scholar. He served in both staff and intelligence positions during the WW2, reaching the rank of brigadier. Powell also wrote poetry, and several books on classical and political subjects.

This summary of his life does not do justice to the depths and intelligence and independence of thinking of Enoch Powell. And if you are interested in digging a bit deeper I suggest you look at Paul Corthorn’s biography ‘Enoch Powell: Politics and ideas of Modern Britain.

Powell’s Early Life

Powell won a scholarship to King Edward's School in Birmingham in 1925, aged thirteen.The legacy of the First World War loomed large for Powell: almost all his teachers had fought in the war, and some of the pupils who had scratched their names on the desks had subsequently died in the conflict. Powell also read books on the war, which helped form his opinion that Britain and Germany would fight again.

Powell Excells at School

It is quite clear that Powell was a gifted student. He learned Greek in a few weeks, he also won a medal in gymnastics and gained a proficiency in the clarinet. He contemplated studying at the Royal Academy of Music but his parents persuaded him to try for a scholarship at Cambridge. One of his Tutors said of him: ‘Of all my pupils, he always insisted on the highest standards of accuracy and knowledge in those who taught him ... He was a pupil from whom I learnt more than most".

His classmate, Christopher Evans, recalled that Powell was "austere" and "really unlike any schoolboy one had known ... He was quite a phenomenon". Another contemporary, Denis Hills, later said that Powell "carried an armful of books (Greek texts?) and kept to himself ... he was reputed to be cleverer than any of the masters".

What next?

Powell pursued a distinguished academic career and was the youngest professor of Greek at the University of Sydney in 1937 (aged just 25). He was convinced that there was a war brewing in Europe and he wanted to be the first to fight as he wrote to his parents.

During the winter of 1938–1939 he travelled to Britain to arrange his appointment as professor of Greek and classical literature at Durham University, which he was due to take up in 1940. He travelled to Germany. He met again Paul Maas, other German Jews and members of the anti-Nazi movement, and helped Maas obtain a British visa from the British consul, which enabled Maas to escape Germany just before war broke out.

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".

So the picture we get is of a patriot who looks at the facts. Powell is open to new ideas and he is not given to following the status quo. He makes a judgement when he has all the facts and is prepared to change his mind.

Powell’s war was interesting. He struggled to enlist as he had no previous experience so he enlisted as an Australian and was able to join immediately. He eventually ended up in the Intelligence Service. He was sent to Cairo and helped to plan the Battle of El Alamein among other things. He taught himself Portuguese and Russian.

Powell Wakes Up To US Hegemony

It was in Algiers that the beginning of Powell's distrust of the United States began. After socially mixing with senior American officers that he met and exploring their cultural views of the world, he became convinced that one of America's war aims was to destroy the British Empire.

After the Axis defeat at the Second Battle of El Alamein, Powell's attention increasingly moved to the Far East theatre, and he wanted to go there to take part in the campaign against the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) because: "the war in Europe was won now", and he wanted to see the Union Flag back in Singapore before, Powell feared, the Americans beat the British Empire to it and secured an imperial domination of their own over the region.

The end of the war saw Powell return as a Brigadier. (He entered the war as a Private and finished as a Brigadier-one of only 2 people to do this).He had served in all the Theatres of War. He had been involved and seen at first hand the reordering of the world that took place at the end of the war. America was to take a leading role as the obvious winner. Britain although a winner had lost much and was looking at complete rebuilding of not just infrastructure but the social order.

Powell and Politics

Though he voted for Labour in their 1945 landslide victory; after the war he joined the Conservative Party and worked for the Conservative Research Department(CRD) under Rab Butler, where his colleagues included Iain Macleod and Reginald Maudling.

Powell had a secret ambition to be Viceroy of India but this crumbled in February 1947, when Atlee announced that Indian independence was imminent.

{Powell’s ambition was not without some basis and he had learned Urdu while serving in the Far East as he felt that it would be important to speak at least one of the Indian languages. This was put to good use as he often spoke to his constituents in Urdu as a serving MP.}

 He came to terms with it by becoming fiercely anti-imperialist, believing that once India had gone the whole Empire should follow it.

This logical absolutism explained his later indifference to the Suez Crisis, his contempt for the Commonwealth and his urging that the United Kingdom should end any remaining pretence that it was a world power.

Powell stood as a Candidate for Labour in the 1947 by-election in Normanton and lost despite a 62% Labour majority. He became a Conservative MP for Wolverhampton South West in the 1950 General Election.

Parliamentary Career

Powell held various posts in both Shadow and Government. He was a man who remained true to his principles and did not like the actions of those who would do anything to preserve their position despite the harm that it might do to people.

He spoke out about the conduct of the British Army in Kenya and in particular during the Hola Massacre he made a speech that moved Denis Healy.

He said that a nation’s standards should not be adjusted to the country they are in.

“Nor can we ourselves pick and choose where and in what parts of the world we shall use this or that kind of standard. We cannot say, "We will have African standards in Africa, Asian standards in Asia and perhaps British standards here at home". We have not that choice to make. We must be consistent with ourselves everywhere. All Government, all influence of man upon man, rests upon opinion. What we can do in Africa, where we still govern and where we no longer govern, depends upon the opinion which is entertained of the way in which this country acts and the way in which Englishmen act. We cannot, we dare not, in Africa of all places, fall below our own highest standards in the acceptance of responsibility.

Powell was involved in developing policy in the Conservative Party and was a loyal party member who had served in various offies of State. He was an intellectual power and his experience and education gave him a long view on history and politics.

That Speech

Some Background

Powell was very worried about the 1968 Race Relation Bill that was progressing through the House he felt that it was adopted to stop what was seen at the time as an attempt to wipe out racism in the country.

Powell was of the opinion that this Bill would only make things worse. He felt that it was treating the symptoms without understanding the underlying cause of the tension manifesting in society.

Powell quoted a letter he received from a woman in Northumberland, about an elderly woman living on a Wolverhampton street where she was the only white resident. The woman's husband and two sons had died in the Second World War and she had rented out the rooms in her house. Once immigrants had moved into the street in which she lived, her white lodgers left. Two black men had knocked on her door at 7:00 am to use her telephone to call their employers, but she refused, as she would have done to any other stranger knocking at her door at such an hour, and was subsequently verbally abused. The woman had asked her local authority for a rates reduction, but was told by a council officer to let out the rooms of her house. When the woman said the only tenants would be black, the council officer replied: "Racial prejudice won't get you anywhere in this country."

Powell advocated voluntary re-emigration by "generous grants and assistance" and he mentioned that immigrants had asked him whether it was possible. He said that all citizens should be equal before the law, and that:

This does not mean that the immigrant and his descendants should be elevated into a privileged or special class or that the citizen should be denied his right to discriminate in the management of his own affairs between one fellow-citizen and another or that he should be subjected to an inquisition as to his reasons and motives for behaving in one lawful manner rather than another.

He argued that journalists who urged the government to pass anti-discrimination laws were "of the same kidney and sometimes on the same newspapers which year after year in the 1930s tried to blind this country to the rising peril which confronted it". Powell described what he perceived to be the evolving position of the White British population:

For reasons which they could not comprehend, and in pursuance of a decision by default, on which they were never consulted, they found themselves made strangers in their own country. They found their wives unable to obtain hospital beds in childbirth, their children unable to obtain school places, their homes and neighbourhoods changed beyond recognition, their plans and prospects for the future defeated; at work they found that employers hesitated to apply to the immigrant worker the standards of discipline and competence required of the native-born worker; they began to hear, as time went by, more and more voices which told them that they were now the unwanted. On top of this, they now learn that a one-way privilege is to be established by Act of Parliament; a law which cannot, and is not intended to, operate to protect them or redress their grievances, is to be enacted to give the stranger, the disgruntled and the agent provocateur the power to pillory them for their private actions.

Chilling prophesy or angry rant?

Many people in the Country supported Powell’s view (over 60%) and desired greater immigration regulation. It was even said that this speech was instrumental in Heath’s subsequent victory. It certainly was widely discussed as it was delivered over a weekend and the media were tipped off as to the content.

Powell argued that he felt that although "many thousands" of immigrants wanted to integrate, he felt that the majority did not, and that some had vested interests in fostering racial and religious differences "with a view to the exercise of actual domination, first over fellow-immigrants and then over the rest of the population".

Powell's summary of the speech gave rise to its popular title. He quotes the Sibyl’s prophecy in the epic poem Aeneid of "Terrible war, and the river Tiber foaming / With streams of blood".^[12]

As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see "the River Tiber foaming with much blood". That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect. Indeed, it has all but come. In numerical terms, it will be of American proportions long before the end of the century. Only resolute and urgent action will avert it even now. Whether there will be the public will to demand and obtain that action, I do not know. All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal.

What happened next?

The speech was well received at the meeting and it was only when the Labour MP Ted Ledbitter said he would refer the speech to the Director of Public Prosecutions, and the Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe spoke of a prima facie case against Powell for incitement that he started to be challenged.

Powell’s reply to was that ‘it needed to be said’.

Following the "Rivers of Blood" speech, Powell was transformed into a national public figure and won huge support across the UK. Three days after the speech, on 23 April, as the Race Relations Bill was being debated in Parliament, 1,000 dockers marched on Westminster protesting against the "victimisation" of Powell, with slogans such as "we want Enoch Powell!" and "Enoch here, Enoch there, we want Enoch everywhere". The next day, 400 meat porters from Smithfield market handed in a 92-page petition in support of Powell, amidst other mass demonstrations of working-class support, much of it from trade unionists, in London and Wolverhampton.

Conservative politician Michael Heseltine stated that in the aftermath of the "Rivers of blood" speech, if Enoch Powell had stood for leadership of the Conservative party he would have won "by a landslide" and if he had stood to be Prime Minister he would have won by a "national landslide".

Powell was removed by Edward Heath from his Shadow Government (even though Margaret Thatcher advised against it) and was never to hold public office again.

Powell’s Legacy

It’s hard not to see the significance of Powell’s prophetic words in the current ‘rape gangs’ scandal that has returned to public prominence. It’s quite clear that Powell saw the consequences of mass immigration of people who were openly hostile to British culture. He understood that blaming the indigenous people for being fearful was never the solution.

Successive Governments have continued to dismiss these concerns. People have been blamed and even imprisoned for complaining.

This issue is only part of the links between paedofilia in the wider context and the political and public environments in the UK.

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