Editing Enoch Powell (section)

==Entry into politics==
Powell voted for the [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour Party]] in their [[1945 United Kingdom general election|1945 landslide victory]] because he wanted to punish the [[Conservative Party (UK)|Conservative Party]] for the [[Munich Agreement]]. 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]].{{sfn|Roth|1970|pp=51–53}}

Powell's ambition to be [[Viceroy of India]] crumbled in February 1947, when [[Prime Minister of the United Kingdom|Prime Minister]] [[Clement Attlee]] announced that [[Indian independence movement|Indian independence]] was imminent. Powell was so shocked by the change of policy that he spent the whole night after it was announced walking the streets of London.<ref name="Roth" />{{rp|51}} He came to terms with it by becoming fiercely anti-imperialist, believing that once India had gone, the whole [[British Empire|empire]] should follow it.{{Citation needed|date=April 2012}} This [[Absolute idealism|logical absolutism]] explained his later indifference to the [[Suez Crisis]], his contempt for the [[Commonwealth of Nations|Commonwealth]] and his urging that the [[United Kingdom]] should end any remaining pretence that it was a world power.{{Citation needed|date=December 2024}}

After unsuccessfully contesting the Labour Party's [[safe seat]] of [[Normanton (UK Parliament constituency)|Normanton]] at a [[1947 Normanton by-election|by-election in 1947]] (when the Labour majority was 62 per cent),<ref>{{cite book |last=Craig |first= F. W. S. |author-link= F. W. S. Craig | title =British parliamentary election results 1918–1949 |orig-year=1969 |edition= 3rd |year= 1983 |publisher= Parliamentary Research Services | location = Chichester |isbn= 090017806X}}</ref> he was elected as a Conservative [[Member of Parliament]] (MP) for [[Wolverhampton South West]] at the [[1950 United Kingdom general election|1950 general election]].{{Citation needed|date=December 2024}}

===First years as a backbencher===
On 16 March 1950, Powell made his maiden speech in the [[House of Commons of the United Kingdom|House of Commons]]. For the rest of his life, Powell regarded this speech as the finest he ever delivered (rather than the much more well-known 1968 anti-immigration speech).{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=184}}<ref name="Collings" />{{rp |230}}<ref>[https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1950/mar/16/defence#S5CV0472P0_19500316_HOC_425 DEFENCE HC Deb 16 March 1950 vol 472 cc1264-399] at api.parliament.uk. Retrieved 16 November 2011.</ref> On 3 March 1953, Powell spoke against the [[Royal Titles Act 1953 (United Kingdom)|Royal Titles Bill]] in the House of Commons.<ref group="nb">Powell said he found three major changes to the style of the United Kingdom, "all of which seem to me to be evil". The first one was "that in this title, for the first time, will be recognised a principle hitherto never admitted in this country, namely, the divisibility of the crown." Powell said that the unity of the realm had evolved over centuries and included the British Empire: "It was a unit because it had one Sovereign. There was one Sovereign: one realm." He feared that by "recognising the division of the realm into separate realms, are we not opening the way for that other remaining unity — the last unity of all—that of the person, to go the way of the rest?"</ref><ref name="Collings">{{Citation | editor-first = Rex | editor-last = Collings | title = Reflections of a Statesman: The Writings and Speeches of Enoch Powell | place = London | publisher = Bellew | year = 1991}}</ref>{{rp |195–202}}<ref group="nb">The second change he objected to was "the suppression of the word 'British', both from before the words 'Realms and Territories' where it is replaced by the words 'her other' and from before the word 'Commonwealth', which, in the [[Statute of Westminster 1931|Statute of Westminster]], is described as the 'British Commonwealth of Nations, "say that he is Monarch of a certain territory and his other realms and territories is as good as to say that he is king of his kingdom. We have perpetrated a solecism in the title we are proposing to attach to our Sovereign and we have done so out of what might almost be called an abject desire to eliminate the expression 'British'. The same desire has been felt&nbsp;... to eliminate this word before the term 'Commonwealth'&nbsp;... Why is it, then, that we are so anxious, in the description of our own Monarch, in a title for use in this country, to eliminate any reference to the seat, the focus and the origin of this vast aggregate of territories? Why is it that this "teeming womb of royal Kings", as Shakespeare called it, wishes now to be anonymous?</ref><ref name="Collings" />{{rp |196–199}}<ref group="nb">Powell said that the answer was that because the [[British Nationality Act 1948]] had removed allegiance to the crown as the basis of citizenship and replaced that with nine separate citizenships combined together by statute. Therefore, if any of these nine countries became republics, the law would not change, as happened with India when it became a republic. Furthermore, Powell went on, the essence of unity was "that all the parts recognise they would sacrifice themselves to the interests of the whole." He denied that there was in India that "recognition of belonging to a greater whole which involves the ultimate consequence in certain circumstances of self-sacrifice in the interests of the whole." Therefore, the title 'Head of the Commonwealth', the third major change, was "essentially a sham. They are essentially something which we have invented to blind ourselves to the reality of the position."</ref><ref name="Collings" />{{rp |199–201}}<ref group="nb">These changes were "greatly repugnant" to Powell: "if they are changes which were demanded by those who in many wars had fought with this country, by nations who maintained an allegiance to the Crown, and who signified a desire to be in the future as were in the past; if it were our friends who had come to us and said: "We want this," I would say: "Let it go. Let us admit the divisibility of the Crown. Let us sink into anonymity and cancel the word 'British' from our titles. If they like the conundrum 'Head of the Commonwealth' in the Royal style, let it be there." However, the underlying evil of this is that we are doing it for the sake not of our friends but of those who are not our friends. We are doing this for the sake of those to whom the very names 'Britain' and 'British' are repugnant.&nbsp;... We are doing this for the sake of those who have deliberately cast off their allegiance to our common Monarchy.</ref><ref name="Collings" />{{rp |201}}

In mid-November 1953, Powell secured a place on the [[1922 Committee]]'s executive at the third attempt. Butler also invited him onto the committee that reviewed party policy for the general election, which he attended until 1955.{{sfn|Heffer|1998|p=189}} Powell was a member of the Suez Group of MPs who were against the removal of British troops from the [[Suez Canal]], because such a move would demonstrate, Powell argued, that the UK could no longer maintain a position there, and that any claim to the Suez Canal would therefore be illogical. However, after the troops had left in June 1956 and the Egyptians nationalised the Canal a month later, Powell opposed the attempt to retake the canal in the [[Suez Crisis]] because he thought the British no longer had the resources to be a world power.<ref name="Roth" />{{rp|99–100}}