Editing Enoch Powell (section)

== National figure ==
===1968 "Rivers of Blood" speech===
{{Main|Rivers of Blood speech}}

The Birmingham-based television company [[Associated Television|ATV]] saw an advance copy of the speech on the Saturday morning, and its news editor ordered a television crew to go to the venue, where they filmed sections of the speech. Earlier in the week, Powell said to his friend Clement 'Clem' Jones, a journalist and then editor at the [[Wolverhampton]] ''[[Express & Star]]'', "I'm going to make a speech at the weekend and it's going to go up 'fizz' like a rocket; but whereas all rockets fall to the earth, this one is going to stay up."<ref>{{cite news|title=My father and Enoch Powell|work=Shropshire Star|date=8 October 2016|page=3 (Weekend supplement)}} Article by Nicholas Jones, Clem Jones' son, condensed from book ''What Do We Mean By Local? The Rise, Fall – and possible rise again – of Local journalism'' (Abramis, 2013).</ref>

Powell was renowned for his oratorical skills and his maverick nature. 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. Above all, it is an allusion to the Roman poet [[Virgil]] towards the end of the speech which has been remembered, giving the speech its colloquial name:

{{blockquote|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 20th 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.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/enoch-powells-rivers-blood-speech/|title=Enoch Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speech|newspaper=The Telegraph|date=12 June 2020|via=www.telegraph.co.uk}}</ref>}}

''[[The Times]]'' declared it "an evil speech", stating, "This is the first time that a serious British politician has appealed to racial hatred in this direct way in our postwar history."<ref>''The Times'' editorial comment, Monday 22 April 1968.</ref>

The main political issue addressed by the speech was not immigration as such, however. It was the introduction of the [[Race Relations Act 1968]] (by the Labour Government at the time), which Powell found offensive and immoral. The Act would prohibit discrimination on the grounds of [[Race (human categorization)|race]] in certain areas of British life, particularly housing, where many local authorities had been refusing to provide houses for immigrant families until they had lived in the country for a certain number of years.<ref>{{cite Hansard | url=https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1968/apr/23/race-relations-bill |title=Race Relations Bill | house=HC | date=23 April 1968 | column_start=53 | column_end=198 |volume=763 }}</ref><ref>{{Harvnb|Powell|1969|pp=285–286}}</ref>

One feature of his speech was the extensive quotation of a letter he received detailing the experiences of one of his constituents in [[Wolverhampton South West (UK Parliament constituency)|Wolverhampton]]. The writer described the fate of an elderly woman who was supposedly the last White person living in her street. She had repeatedly refused applications from non-Whites requiring rooms-to-let, which resulted in her being called a "racialist" outside her home and receiving "excreta" through her letterbox.<ref>{{Harvnb|Heffer|1998|p=460}}</ref>

When Heath telephoned [[Margaret Thatcher]] to tell her that he was going to sack Powell, she responded: "I really thought that it was better to let things cool down for the present rather than heighten the crisis". Heath sacked Powell from his [[Shadow cabinet]] the day after the speech, and he never held another senior political post again. Powell received almost 120,000 (predominantly positive) letters and a [[Gallup poll]] at the end of April showed that 74 per cent of those asked agreed with his speech and only 15 per cent disagreed, with 11 per cent unsure.<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_Tl6AAAAMAAJ&q=%22In+general+do+you+agree+or+disagree+with+what+Mr.+Powell+said+in+his+speech |title=Ethnicity, structured inequality, and the state in Canada and the Federal Republic of Germany |publisher=Lang|author=Robin OOstow |year=1991|isbn=9783631437346 |access-date=20 February 2012}}</ref> One poll concluded that between 61 and 73 per cent disagreed with Heath sacking Powell.<ref name="Shepherd 1994, p. 352"/> According to George L. Bernstein, many British people felt that Powell "was the first British politician who was actually listening to them".<ref>{{cite book|author=George L Bernstein|title=The Myth Of Decline: The Rise of Britain Since 1945|year=2004|publisher=Pimlico|isbn=1844131025|page=274}}</ref>

After ''[[The Sunday Times]]'' branded his speeches "racialist", Powell sued it for [[libel]], but withdrew when he was required to provide the letters he had quoted from because he had promised anonymity for the writer, who refused to waive it.<ref>[[Express and Star]], 20 January 2014. [https://www.expressandstar.com/news/2014/01/20/right-or-wrong-the-legacy-of-enoch-powells-speech-lives-on/] Accessed 28 June 2015.</ref>

Powell had also expressed his opposition to the Race Relations legislation being put into place by the [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour]] Prime Minister [[Harold Wilson]] at the time.<ref>{{Citation | url = https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/special/politics97/background/pastelec/ge70.shtml | publisher = BBC | place = UK | title = Background}}</ref>

Following the "Rivers of Blood" speech, Powell was transformed into a national public figure and won huge support across the UK.<ref name="dumbrell"/><ref name="alor"/> Three days after the speech, on 23 April, as the Race Relations Bill was being debated in the [[House of Commons of the United Kingdom|House of Commons]], 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.{{sfn|Shepherd|1997|p=354}}

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".<ref>{{cite book|author=Douglas Murray|title=The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam|page=15}}</ref>

==='Morecambe Budget'===
Powell made a speech in [[Morecambe]] on 11 October 1968 on the economy, setting out alternative, radical free-market policies that would later be called the 'Morecambe Budget'. Powell used the financial year of 1968–69 to show how income tax could be halved from 8s&nbsp;3d to 4s&nbsp;3d in the pound (basic rate cut from 41 to 21 per cent){{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=568}}<ref>Roy Lewis, ''Enoch Powell: Principle in Politics'' (Cassell, 1979), p. 69.</ref>{{rp|484}} and how capital gains tax and [[Selective Employment Tax]] could be abolished without reducing expenditure on defence or the social services. These tax reductions required a saving of £2,855,000,000 and this would be funded by eradicating losses in the nationalised industries and privatising the profit-making state concerns; ending all housing subsidies except for those who could not afford their own housing; ending all foreign aid; ending all grants and subsidies in agriculture; ending all assistance to development areas; ending all investment grants;{{sfn|Shepherd|1997|pp=375–376}} and abolishing the [[National Economic Development Council]] and the Prices and Incomes Board.{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=485}} The cuts in taxation would also allow the state to borrow from the public to spend on capital projects such as hospitals and roads and spend on "the firm and humane treatment of criminals".{{sfn|Heffer|1998|pp=485–486}}

===House of Lords reform===
In mid-1968, Powell's book ''The House of Lords in the Middle Ages'' was published after twenty years' work. At the press conference for its publication, Powell said if the government introduced a Bill to reform the Lords he would be its "resolute enemy".{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=474}} 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. 2) Bill.{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=489}} Crossman, opening the debate on 19 November, said the government would reform the Lords in five ways: removing the voting rights of hereditary peers; making sure no party had a permanent majority; ensuring the government of the day usually passed its laws; weakening the Lords' powers to delay new laws; and abolishing the power to refuse subordinate legislation if it had been passed by the Commons.{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=495}} Powell spoke in the debate, opposing these plans. He said the reforms were "unnecessary and undesirable" and that there was no weight in the claim that the Lords could "check or frustrate the firm intentions" of the Commons.{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=496}}

Powell said that only election or nomination could replace the hereditary nature of the Lords. If they were elected, it would pose the dilemma of which House was truly representative of the electorate. He also had another objection: "How can the same electorate be represented in two ways so that the two sets of representatives can conflict and disagree with one another?" Those nominated would be bound to the Chief Whip of their party through a sort of oath, and Powell asked "what sort of men and women are they to be who would submit to be nominated to another chamber upon condition that they will be mere dummies, automatic parts of a voting machine?" He also stated that the inclusion in the proposals of thirty [[crossbenchers]] was "a grand absurdity", because they would have been chosen "upon the very basis that they have no strong views of principle on the way in which the country ought to be governed".{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=496}}

Powell said the Lords derived their authority not from a strict hereditary system but from its prescriptive nature: "It has long been so, and it works". He then added that there was not any widespread desire for reform: he indicated a recent survey of working-class voters that showed that only one-third of them wanted to reform or abolish the House of Lords, with another third believing the Lords were an "intrinsic part of the national traditions of Britain". 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".{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=497}}

Following more speeches against the Bill during early 1969, and faced with the fact that a bloc of left-wing Labour members were also against reforming the House of Lords as they desired its abolition altogether, [[Harold Wilson]] announced on 17 April that the Bill was being withdrawn. Wilson's statement was brief, with Powell intervening: "Don't eat them too quickly", which provoked much laughter in the House.{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=521}} Later that day Powell said in a speech to the [[Primrose League]]:

{{blockquote|There was an instinct, inarticulate but deep and sound, that the traditional, prescriptive House of Lords posed no threat and injured no interests, but might yet, for all its illogicalities and anomalies, make itself felt on occasion to useful purpose. The same sound instinct was repelled by the idea of a new-fashioned second chamber, artificially constructed by power, party, and patronage, to function in a particular way. Not for the first time, the common people of this country proved the surest defenders of their traditional institutions.{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=521}}}}

Powell's biographer, [[Simon Heffer]], described the defeat of Lords reform as "perhaps the greatest triumph of Powell's political career".{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=521}}

In 1969, when it was first suggested that the United Kingdom should join the [[European Economic Community]], Powell spoke openly of his opposition to such a move.{{Citation needed|date=December 2024}}

===Departure from the Conservative Party===
A [[Gallup poll]] in February 1969 showed Powell to be the "most admired person" in British public opinion.<ref name="dumbrell"/>

In a defence debate in March 1970, Powell said that "the whole theory of the tactical nuclear weapon, or the tactical use of nuclear weapons, is an unmitigated absurdity" and that it was "remotely improbable" that any group of nations engaged in war would "decide upon general and mutual suicide", and advocated enlargement of the UK's conventional forces. However, when fellow Conservative [[Julian Amery]] later in the debate criticised Powell for his antinuclear pronouncements, Powell responded: "I have always regarded the possession of the nuclear capability as a protection against [[nuclear blackmail]]. It is a protection against being threatened with [[nuclear weapons]]. What it is not a protection against is war".{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=549}}

The [[1970 United Kingdom general election|1970 general election]] took place on 18 June and was unexpectedly won by the Conservatives, with a late surge in their support. Powell's supporters claim that he contributed to this surprise victory. In "exhaustive research" on the election, the American pollster Douglas Schoen and University of Oxford academic R. W. 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.{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=568}} However, the Conservative victory was reportedly not to Powell's advantage, who according to friends, "sat in his head in his hands" for many days afterwards.<ref>{{Citation |last=Cockerell |first=Michael |title=Odd Man Out: A Film Portrait of Enoch Powell (1995) |date=1995 |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaTdoxuiKQY |publisher=BBC |language=en |access-date=2023-01-03}}</ref>

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 March 1969, he opposed the UK's joining the [[European Economic Community]]. Opposition to entry had hitherto been confined largely to the Labour Party but now, he said, it was clear to him that the sovereignty of Parliament was in question, as was UK's very survival as a nation. 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.{{citation needed|date=February 2022}}

During 1970, Powell gave speeches about the EEC in [[Lyon]] (in French), [[Frankfurt]] (in German), [[Turin]] (in Italian) and [[The Hague]].<ref>{{cite book |last= Howard | first = Lord | year = 2014 | title = Enoch at 100: A re-evaluation of the life, politics and philosophy of Enoch Powell | publisher = Biteback publishing | isbn = 9781849547420 | page = 20}}</ref>

The Conservatives had promised at the 1970 general election<ref>{{cite web | work = Politics Resources | url = http://www.politicsresources.net/area/uk/man/con70.htm | title = Not updated: British Conservative Party election manifesto | orig-year = 1970 | publisher = Keele | location = UK | date = 11 March 2008 | access-date = 10 August 2009 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20100110125744/http://www.politicsresources.net/area/uk/man/con70.htm | archive-date = 10 January 2010 | url-status = dead }}</ref> in relation to the Common Market, "Our sole commitment is to negotiate; no more, no less." The second reading of the Bill to put the Treaty into law was passed by just eight votes on second reading, and Powell declared his hostility to his party's line. He voted against the government on every one of the 104 divisions in the course of the European Communities Bill. When Britain finally entered the EEC in January 1973, 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.{{Citation needed|date=December 2024}}

A ''[[Daily Express]]'' opinion poll in 1972 showed Powell to be the most popular politician in the country.<ref name="alor"/> In mid-1972, he prepared to resign the Conservative whip and changed his mind only because of fears of a renewed wave of immigration from Uganda after the accession of [[Idi Amin]], who had expelled Uganda's Asian residents. He decided to remain in parliament and in the Conservative Party, and was expected to support the party in Wolverhampton at the [[February 1974 United Kingdom general election|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.<ref>{{Citation|url=https://www.expressandstar.com/days/1950-75/1974.html |title=1974 |work=Express & Star |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120717052230/http://www.expressandstar.com/days/1950-75/1974.html |archive-date=17 July 2012 }}</ref> The monetarist economist [[Milton Friedman]] sent Powell a letter praising him as principled,{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=703}} and notably, there was a breakaway faction of the Conservative Party in [[Gloucester (UK Parliament constituency)|Gloucester]] which selected a candidate who stood under the party name of "Powell Conservative", securing 366 votes, 0.7% of the overall vote share in the constituency.<ref>{{cite web |url= http://spprd.insec.netcopy.thompsonjames.co.uk/article/23rd-february-1974/11/1-oucester-a-l-ocal-correspondent-he-intervention-
 |title=Reports From the Marginals − Gloucester
 |publisher=The Spectator Archive
 |access-date=12 October 2024
 |df=dmy 
}}</ref> There was also a candidate listed in the neighbouring constituency of [[Stroud (UK Parliament constituency)|Stroud]] who obtained 470 votes, 0.8% of the overall vote share in the constituency.{{Citation needed|date=December 2024}}

Powell had arranged for his friend [[Andrew Alexander (journalist)|Andrew Alexander]] to talk to [[Joe Haines (journalist)|Joe Haines]], the press secretary of the Labour leader [[Harold Wilson]], about the timing of Powell's speeches against Heath. 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.{{sfn|Heffer|1998|pp=701–702}} Wilson and Haines had ensured that Powell would dominate the newspapers of the Sunday and Monday before election day by having no Labour frontbencher give a major speech on 23 February, the day of Powell's speech.{{sfn|Heffer|1998|pp=704–705}} Powell gave this speech at the Mecca Dance Hall in the [[Bull Ring, Birmingham|Bull Ring]], Birmingham, to an audience of 1,500, with some press reports estimating that 7,000 more had to be turned away. 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":

{{blockquote|Curiously, it so happens that the question "Who governs Britain?" which at the moment is being frivolously posed, might be taken, in real earnest, as the title of what I have to say. This is the first and last election at which the British people will be given the opportunity to decide whether their country is to remain a democratic nation, governed by the will of its own electorate expressed in its own Parliament, or whether it will become one province in a new European superstate under institutions which know nothing of the political rights and liberties that we have so long taken for granted.<ref name="Collings" />{{rp|454}}}}

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. He also denounced Heath for accusing his political opponents of lacking respect for Parliament while also being "the first Prime Minister in three hundred years who entertained, let alone executed, the intention of depriving Parliament of its sole right to make the laws and impose the taxes of this country".<ref name="Collings" />{{rp|456–457}} He then advocated a vote for the Labour Party:

{{blockquote|The question is: can they now be prevented from taking back into their own hands the decision about their identity and their form of government which truly was theirs all along? I do not believe they can be prevented: for they are now, at a general election, provided with a clear, definite and practicable alternative, namely, a fundamental renegotiation directed to regain free access to world food markets and recover or retain the powers of Parliament, a renegotiation to be followed in any event by a specific submission of the outcome to the electorate, a renegotiation protected by an immediate moratorium or stop on all further integration of the UK into the Community. This alternative is offered, as such an alternative must be in our parliamentary democracy, by a political party capable of securing a majority in the House of Commons and sustaining a Government.<ref name="Collings" />{{rp|458}}}}

This call to vote Labour surprised some of Powell's supporters who were more concerned with beating socialism than the supposed loss of national independence.{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=707}} On 25 February, he made another speech at [[Shipley, West Yorkshire|Shipley]], again urging a vote for Labour, saying he did not believe the claim that Wilson would renege on his commitment to renegotiation, which Powell believed was ironic because of Heath's premiership: "In acrobatics Harold Wilson, for all his nimbleness and skill, is simply no match for the breathtaking, thoroughgoing efficiency of the present Prime Minister". At this moment a heckler shouted "Judas!" Powell responded: "Judas was paid! Judas was paid! I am making a sacrifice!"{{sfn|Heffer|1998|pp=708–709}}<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGkAou2uqBA |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211211/CGkAou2uqBA| archive-date=11 December 2021 |url-status=live|title=Enoch Powell denies he is a Judas|publisher=YouTube |date=4 February 1974 |access-date=14 October 2013}}{{cbignore}}</ref> Later in the speech Powell said, "I was born a Tory, am a Tory and shall die a Tory. It is part of me&nbsp;... it is something I cannot alter".{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=709}} 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".{{sfn|Shepherd|1997|p=404}}

Powell, in an interview on 26 February, said he would be voting for [[Helene Middleweek]], the Labour candidate, rather than the Conservative [[Nicholas Budgen]].{{sfn|Heffer|1998|pp=709–710}} Powell did not stay up on election night to watch the results on television, and when on 1 March he picked up his copy of ''The Times'' from his letterbox and saw the headline "Mr Heath's general election gamble fails", he reacted by singing the ''[[Te Deum]]''. He later said: "I had had my revenge on the man who had destroyed the self-government of the United Kingdom".{{sfn|Heffer|1998|pp=710–711}} The election result was a [[hung parliament]]. Although the Tories had won the most votes, Labour finished five seats ahead of the Conservatives. The national swing to Labour was 1 per cent; 4 per cent in Powell's heartland, the [[West Midlands conurbation]]; and 16 per cent in his old constituency (although Budgen won the seat).{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=712}} According to the ''Telegraph'' journalist [[Simon Heffer]], both Powell and Heath believed that Powell had been responsible for the Conservatives' losing the election.{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=712}}