Editing Enoch Powell (section)

===1987–1992===
[[File:After Dark 3 July 1987.JPG|thumb|350px|Powell debating on the television discussion programme ''[[After Dark (TV programme)|After Dark]]'' in 1987 (more [[After Dark (TV programme)#Edward Teller and "Peace in Our Time"|here]])]]
Powell was critical of the [[Special Air Service]] (SAS) [[Operation Flavius|shootings]] of three unarmed IRA members in [[Gibraltar]] in March 1988.{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=918}} Powell claimed in an article for ''The Guardian'' on 7 December 1988 that the new Western-friendly foreign policy of Russia under [[Mikhail Gorbachev]] heralded "the death and burial of the American empire". Chancellor [[Helmut Kohl]] of [[West Germany]] had decided to visit Moscow to negotiate [[German reunification]], signalling to Powell that the last gasp of American power in Europe to be replaced by a new balance of power not resting on military force but on the "recognition of the restraints which the ultimate certainty of failure places upon the ambitions of the respective national states".{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=922}}

In an interview for the ''Sunday People'' in December 1988, Powell said the Conservative Party was "rejoining Enoch" on the [[European Community]] but repeated his warning of civil war as the consequence of immigration: "I still cannot forsee how a country can be peaceably governed in which the composition of the population is progressively going to change. I am talking about violence on a scale which can only be described as civil war. I cannot see there can be any other outcome". It would not be a race war but "about people who revolt against being trapped in a situation where they feel at the mercy of a built-in racial majority, whatever its colour" and claimed that the government had made contingency plans for such an event. The solution, he said, was repatriation on a large scale and the cost of doing this in welfare payments and pensions was well worth paying.{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=922}}

In early 1989, he made a programme (broadcast in July) on his visit to [[Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic|Russia]] and his impressions on that country. The [[BBC]] originally wanted him to do a programme on India but the [[India House, London|Indian High Commission]] in London refused him a visa. When he visited Russia, Powell went to the graves of 600,000 people who died during the [[Siege of Leningrad]], saying that he could not believe a people who had suffered so much would willingly start another war. He also went to a veterans' parade (wearing his own medals) and talked with Russian soldiers with the aid of an interpreter. However, the programme was criticised by those who believed that Powell had dismissed the Soviet Union's threat to the West since 1945 and that he had been too impressed with Russia's sense of national identity.{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=925}} When [[German reunification]] was on the agenda in mid-1989, Powell said that the UK urgently needed to create an alliance with the Soviet Union in view of Germany's effect on the balance of power in Europe.{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=925}}

Following Thatcher's [[Bruges speech]]<ref>{{cite web | url= http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=107332 |title= Margaret Thatcher.org | access-date =10 August 2009 | format = Speech}}</ref> in September 1988 and her increasing hostility to a European currency in the last years of her premiership, Powell made many speeches publicly supporting her attitude to Europe. When Heath criticised Thatcher's speech in May 1989, Powell called him "the old virtuoso of the U-turn".{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=925}} When inflation crept up that year, he condemned Chancellor [[Nigel Lawson]]'s policy of printing money so sterling would shadow the [[Deutsche Mark]] and said that it was for the UK to join the [[European Monetary System]] (EMS).{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=926}}

In early September 1989, a collection of Powell's speeches on Europe was published, titled ''Enoch Powell on 1992'' (1992 being the year set for the creation of the Single Market by the [[Single European Act]] of 1986). In a speech at [[Chatham House]] for the launch of the book on 6 September, he advised Thatcher to fight the next general election on a nationalist theme as many Eastern European nations previously under Russian rule were gaining their freedom.{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=927}} At the Conservative Party conference in October, he told a fringe meeting, "I find myself today less on the fringe of that party than I have done for 20 years".{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=927}} After Thatcher resisted further European integration at a meeting at [[Strasbourg]] in November, Powell asked her parliamentary private secretary, [[Mark Lennox-Boyd]], to pass to her "my respectful congratulations on her stand&nbsp;... she both spoke for Britain and gave a lead to Europe—in the line of succession of [[Winston Churchill]] and [[William Pitt the Younger|William Pitt]]. Those who lead are always out in front, alone". Thatcher replied, "I am deeply touched by your words. They give me the greatest possible encouragement".{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=927}}

On 5 January 1990, addressing Conservatives in Liverpool, Powell said that if the Conservatives played the "British card" at the next general election, they could win; the new mood in the UK for "self-determination" had given the newly independent nations of Eastern Europe a "beacon", adding that the UK should stand alone, if necessary, for European freedom, adding: "We are taunted—by the French, by the Italians, by the Spaniards—for refusing to worship at the shrine of a common government superimposed upon them all&nbsp;... where were the European unity merchants in 1940? I will tell you. They were either writhing under a hideous oppression or they were aiding and abetting that oppression. Lucky for Europe that Britain was alone in 1940".{{Citation needed|date=December 2024}}

The Conservative Party would have to ask, preferably at the next election: "Do you intend still to control the laws which you obey, the taxes you pay and the policies of your government?"{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=928}} Five days after this speech, in an interview for ''The Daily Telegraph'', Thatcher praised Powell: "I have always read Enoch Powell's speeches and articles very carefully.&nbsp;... I always think it was a tragedy that he left. He is a very, very able politician. I say that even though he has sometimes said vitriolic things against me".{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=928}} On the day of the [[1990 Mid Staffordshire by-election|Mid-Staffordshire by-election]], Powell said that the government should admit that the [[community charge]] was "a disaster" and that what mattered most to the people of Mid-Staffordshire was the question of who should govern the UK and that only the Conservative Party was advocating that the British should govern themselves. Thatcher had been labelled "dictatorial" for wanting to "go it alone" in Europe: "Well, I do not mind somebody being dictatorial in defending my own rights and those of my fellow countrymen&nbsp;... lose self-government, and I have lost everything, and for good". This was the first election since 1970 in which Powell was advocating a vote for the Conservative Party.{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=929}}

After [[Iraqi invasion of Kuwait|Iraq invaded Kuwait]] on 2 August 1990, Powell said that since the UK was not an ally of [[Kuwait]] in the "formal sense" and because the [[Balance of power (international relations)|balance of power]] in the Middle East had ceased to be a British concern after the end of the British Empire, the UK should not go to war. Powell said that "[[Saddam Hussein]] has a long way to go yet before his troops come storming up the beaches of [[Kent]] or [[Sussex]]". On 21 October, he wrote, "The world is full of evil men engaged in doing evil things. That does not make us policemen to round them up nor judges to find them guilty and to sentence them. What is so special about the ruler of Iraq that we suddenly discover that we are to be his jailers and his judges?&nbsp;... we as a nation have no interest in the existence or non-existence of Kuwait or, for that matter, Saudi Arabia as an independent state. I sometimes wonder if, when we shed our power, we omitted to shed our arrogance".{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=933}}

When Thatcher was challenged by [[Michael Heseltine]] for the [[1990 Conservative Party leadership election|leadership of the Conservative Party]] during November 1990, Powell said he would rejoin the party, which he had left in February 1974 over the issue of Europe, if Thatcher won, and would urge the public to support both her and, in Powell's view, national independence. He wrote to one of Thatcher's supporters, [[Norman Tebbit]], on 16 November, telling him Thatcher was entitled to use his name and his support in any way she saw fit. Since she resigned on 22 November, Powell never rejoined the Conservatives. Powell wrote the following Sunday: "Good news is seldom so good, nor bad news so bad, as at first sight it appears. Her downfall was due to having so few like-minded people on European integration amongst her colleagues, and as she had adopted a line that would improve her party's popularity, it was foolish of them to force her out." He added, "The battle has been lost, but not the war. The fact abides that, outside the magic circle at the top, a deep-rooted opposition has been disclosed in the UK to surrendering to others the right to make our laws, fix our taxes, or decide our policies. Running deep beneath the overlay of years of indifference is still the attachment of the British public to their tradition of democracy. Their resentment on learning that their own decisions can be overruled from outside remains as obstinate as ever". Thatcher had relit the flame of independence and "what has happened once can happen again&nbsp;... sooner or later those who aspire to govern&nbsp;... will have to listen".{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=934}}

In December 1991, Powell said that "Whether [[Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia|Yugoslavia]] dissolves into two states or half a dozen states or does not dissolve at all makes no difference to the safety and well being of the United Kingdom". The UK's national interests determined that the country should have "a foreign policy which befits the sole insular and oceanic state in Europe".{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=936}} During the [[1992 United Kingdom general election|1992 general election]] Powell spoke for [[Nicholas Budgen]] in his old seat of [[Wolverhampton South West]]. He praised Budgen for his opposition to the [[Maastricht Treaty]] and condemned the rest of the Conservative Party for supporting it.{{sfn|Heffer|1998|pp=936–937}}