Editing Enoch Powell (section)

===Shadow Defence Secretary===
In his first speech to the Conservative Party conference as Shadow Secretary of State for Defence on 14 October 1965, Powell outlined a fresh defence policy, jettisoning what he saw as outdated global military commitments left over from the UK's imperial past and stressing that the UK was a European power and therefore an alliance with Western European states from possible attack from the East was central to the UK's safety. He defended the UK's nuclear weapons and argued that it was "the merest casuistry to argue that if the weapon and the means of using it are purchased in part, or even altogether, from another nation, therefore the independent right to use it has no reality. With a weapon so catastrophic, it is possession and the right to use which count".<ref>Enoch Powell, ''Freedom and Reality'' (Eliot Right Way Books, 1969), p. 224.</ref> Also, Powell called into question Western military commitments [[East of Suez]]:

{{blockquote|However much we may do to safeguard and reassure the new independent countries in Asia and Africa, the eventual limits of Russian and Chinese advance in those directions will be fixed by a balance of forces which will itself be Asiatic and African. The two Communist empires are already in a state of mutual antagonism; but every advance or threat of advance by one or the other calls into existence countervailing forces, sometimes nationalist in character, sometimes expansionist, which will ultimately check it. We have to reckon with the harsh fact that the attainment of this eventual equilibrium of forces may at some point be delayed rather than hastened by Western military presence.{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=391}}}}

The ''Daily Telegraph'' journalist [[David Howell, Baron Howell of Guildford|David Howell]] remarked to Andrew Alexander that Powell had "just withdrawn us from East of Suez, and received an enormous ovation because no-one understood what he was talking about".{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=391}} However, the Americans were worried by Powell's speech as they wanted British military commitments in South-East Asia as they were still fighting in Vietnam. A transcript of the speech was sent to Washington, and the American embassy requested to talk to Heath about the "Powell doctrine". ''[[The New York Times]]'' said Powell's speech was "a potential declaration of independence from American policy".{{sfn|Heffer|1998|pp=391–392}} During the [[1966 United Kingdom general election|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".<ref>[https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/1966-07-07/debates/aece9b04-6b15-4755-a822-51f417952bce/Vietnam Vietnam, debated on Thursday 7 July 1966], ''Hansard'', Volume 731, parliament.uk, accessed 23 May 2021.</ref>

[[Lyndon B. Johnson]] had indeed asked Wilson for some British forces for Vietnam, and when it was later suggested to Powell that Washington understood that the public reaction to Powell's allegations had made Wilson realise he would not have favourable public opinion and so could not go through with it, Powell responded: "The greatest service I have performed for my country, if that is so".{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=406}} Labour was returned with a large majority, and Powell was retained by Heath as Shadow Defence Secretary as he believed Powell "was too dangerous to leave out".{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=410}}

In a controversial speech on 26 May 1967, Powell criticised the UK's post-war world role:

{{blockquote|In our imagination the vanishing last vestiges&nbsp;... of Britain's once vast Indian Empire have transformed themselves into a peacekeeping role on which the sun never sets. Under God's good providence and in partnership with the United States, we keep the peace of the world and rush hither and thither containing Communism, putting out brush fires and coping with subversion. It is difficult to describe, without using terms derived from psychiatry, a notion having so few points of contact with reality.{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=431}}}}

In 1967, Powell spoke of his opposition to the immigration of Kenyan Asians to the United Kingdom after the African country's leader [[Jomo Kenyatta]]'s discriminatory policies led to the flight of [[Indians in Kenya|Asians]] from that country.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.newstatesman.com/199901220021 |title=When Labour played the racist card |work=New Statesman |date=22 January 1999 |access-date=12 August 2009 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090702140542/http://www.newstatesman.com/199901220021 |archive-date=2 July 2009 }}</ref>

The biggest argument Powell and Heath had during Powell's time in the Shadow Cabinet was over a dispute over the role of [[Black Rod]], who would go to the Commons to summon them to the Lords to hear the Royal Assent of Bills. In November 1967, Black Rod arrived during a debate on the EEC and was met with cries of "Shame" to {{"'}}Op it". At the next Shadow Cabinet meeting Heath said this "nonsense" must be stopped. Powell suggested that Heath did not mean it should be ended. He asked whether Heath realised that the words Black Rod used went back to the 1307 Parliament of Carlisle and were ancient even then. Heath reacted furiously, saying that the British people "were tired of this nonsense and ceremonial and mummery. He would not stand for the perpetuation of this ridiculous business etc".<ref>{{Citation | first1 = Andrew | last1 = Alexander | first2 = Alan | last2 = Watkins | title = The Making of the Prime Minister | place = London | publisher = MacDonald | year = 1970 | page = 82}}</ref>