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British politician (1912–1998)

John Enoch PowellMBE (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 ministry and was Shadow Secretary of State for Defence from 1965 to 1968 in the Shadow Cabinet of Edward Heath.

Before entering politics Powell was a classical scholar and a brigadier, having served during the Second World War. As a writer, Powell wrote both poetry and books on classical and political subjects. He is remembered particularly for his radical views on British immigration. In 1968 Powell attracted attention nationwide for his "Rivers of Blood" speech, in which he criticised immigration to the UK, and especially rapid influx from the

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Britain’s Classicist-Politician

I was only twice in a room with the famous, or infamous, British politician Enoch Powell, both times without speaking to him. Sitting on his own, he had a disconcerting expression of passionate intensity, an intensity that was probably characterological and attached itself to anything that he happened to be thinking about, although early Parkinson’s disease might also have added to the impression. On a radio programme called Desert Island Discs, in which a distinguished guest is asked to choose eight pieces of music that he would take with him if marooned on a desert island, four of his choices were extracts from Wagner’s Ring cycle. This seemed emblematic of the man.

Just because he was passionately intense, however, does not mean that he was entirely consistent in his views throughout his long political career. On the contrary, he changed his views often, and then changed them back again: it was the conviction with which he held them that was

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Powell: “best understood as part of our history”

Enoch Powell, born a hundred years ago tomorrow, was perhaps the most significant twentieth century British politician who was never Prime Minister, says Sunder Katwala. Certainly, no political speech echoed down the decades as much as that famously infamous tract now universally known by its “Rivers of Blood” shorthand. It sparked fierce public debates about immigration, race and national identity.

It is hard not to take Enoch Powell’s argument personally, for any Briton of black or Asian heritage.  He wished that we had never been born. He argued that it would, he said, be a matter of national suicide if any significant number of us were.  The fear of Powellism for an earlier generation was more tangible than theoretical. When I spoke last year at Bristol University about the legacy of Powell’s speech for how we do and don’t talk about immigration in Britain, the first questioner, a Sikh in his sixties, gave his pers