What If Gordon Banks Had Played, Part 25

The Telegraph, Obituaries, 5th April 1998

JOHN ENOCH POWELL was a man of contradictions: a staunch defender of Parliament who rendered the House of Commons no more than a redundant rubber stamp; a constitutionalist who turned the country to a dictatorship; a patriot who fled the country for a life in exile; an atheist and a high Anglican; a man who prided himself upon his cold, hard logic, but who shed tears in the House of Commons; the minister who invited immigrants to Britain who became the man who threw them back.

Powell was a man driven mad by his own logic. His intelligence was undeniable, he became the youngest professor in the British Empire at the age of only 25, but its force was unstoppable — in government Powell became a man following what he knew must be the logical course of action far beyond the time when men of lesser intellects had realised the impending disaster.

He was the child of two teachers in Birmingham and was a diligent and committed child. He shone as a student and met with rapid success in academia. Upon the outbreak of war he immediately returned to Britain intending to enlist. After being rejected — the army in 1939 had little need for Professors of Ancient Greek — he resorted to subterfuge, claiming to be Australian to ensure automatic acceptance. Powell met with similarly rapid success in the armed forces, rising to the rank of Brigadier by the end of the war — the youngest in the British army. To Powell's eternal regret he never saw combat duty, spending the entire war in intelligence. The fact that he survived the war while others had fallen would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Powell's time stationed in India during the war gave him a deep love for the sub-continent and he returned to Britain eager to enter politics and oppose Indian independence. He rapidly found a position in the Conservative Research department and, in time, became a Conservative MP.

His career in politics was marked by rebellion. His first taste was following Peter Thorneycroft into resignation over government spending in 1958, along with Nigel Birch and Willie Whitelaw. In time Powell would bring all of this class of 1958 into his own top team. During the period on the backbenches Powell made his name as an orator, speaking powerfully against the mistreatment of Mau-Mau prisoners in Kenya. It is ironic that the man who made his name defending the rights of terrorist prisoners would later be found guilty of the same crime.

Like Thorneycroft Powell soon rejoined the government and served as Minister of Health, his only senior ministerial experience before becoming Prime Minister. He was a humane and caring Minister of Health, in contrast to the later policies of his own Government, and it was Powell who ended the cruelties of the old lunatic asylums. His ministerial experience came to an end in 1963 when he resigned rather than serve under Alec Douglas-Home. Edward Heath appointed Powell to his frontbench, but sacked him 1968 after Powell's famous “rivers of blood” speech. The speech was actually in line with current party policy, but Powell's descriptions of elderly ladies being pursued by “wide-grinning piccaninnies” and the “the black man having the whip-hand over the white man” caused outrage. Despite the political outcry the speech made Powell's reputation amongst the general public. He received a huge groundswell of support from working-class Tories and the dockers marched in support of him. When Edward Heath lost a second consecutive election, the allure of this forbidden support proved irresistible to the Conservative Party and Powell was elected leader.

Powell had a difficult time as leader of the opposition, under constant attack from the grandees on the left of the party. However, the eventual emergence of the National Conservatives, while briefly prolonging Wilson's dying government, removed Powell's most dangerous enemies from the Conservative Party. Powell election victory shortly afterwards left him the undisputed master of the Tory party, and more importantly, the new Prime Minister. Powell's government faced unrest almost immediately. The early years of his premiership were dominated by union unrest in the face of Powell's determination to legislate to end the trade union dominance in the United Kingdom. The fight with the trade unions would be put aside after the Westminster bombing, but the antipathy and hatred caused by Powell's earlier treatment of striking workers would later return to plague, and eventually destroy, his Government.

The 1977 Westminster bombing was the worst terrorist atrocity ever committed on British soil and, indisputably, the defining moment of Powell's premiership. Powell immediately cracked down on security and, in a snap election won a landslide victory that split the opposition and left the Conservative Party totally dominating an ineffective and sidelined House of Commons. Ever harsher anti-terrorism measures only served to further provoke the Catholic minority, and Powell was forced to take harsher and harsher measures to maintain order, eventually climaxing in the mass internment has been introduced for dissenters. The situation in Northern Ireland was chaotic and the Republic of Ireland refused to offer any anti-terrorist assistance in protest at Powell's anti-Catholic repression. After a brief border skirmish between British and Irish troops Powell ordered the occupation of the Republic of Ireland, a move that would make Britain a pariah state around the world.

By 1980 support for Powell's government had evaporated, and eventually a general strike forced Powell from office. Powell himself fled the country rather than face trial for war crimes. He was welcomed in Ian Smith's Rhodesia, whose independence he had recognised upon coming to office in 1974. He was found guilty in his absence in the 1985 trial of the main figures in the Powell government, but by the time of the fall of white-minority rule in Rhodesia/ Zimbabwe there was little interest in re-opening old wounds by extraditing Powell, who was by then seriously ill with Parkinson’s disease. Powell remained interested in British politics until the end of his life, he read the British press daily and was a regular letter writer to the broadsheets, staunchly opposing British entry into NAFTA.

John Enoch Powell, former Prime Minister, died at his home in Avondale, Zimbabwe yesterday, 4th April 1998. He is survived by his wife, Pamela, whom he married in 1952, and two daughters.