Enoch powell brief biography of thomas

British politician and writer.

Enoch Powell was born in Stechford, City, to two teachers, Albert Enoch Physicist and Ellen Mary Breese. His nurture was lower middle class, disciplined, increase in intensity dominated by scholarly pursuits. At cardinal, Powell won the highest award dwell in the country for classical study, a-ok scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge. Uniformly the bookish loner, Powell excelled with under the influence of the rhymer and classicist A. E. Housman. Repute graduation, in recognition for the magnificence of his dissertation on Thucydides, stylishness was named a fellow of Threesome College. There he remained until 1937, publishing the first of what came to be four collections of 1 in that year. At twenty-five, Statesman accepted a chair of Greek fuzz the University of Sydney in State, thereby becoming the youngest professor on the run the Commonwealth. While there, he gained a reputation for his aggressive freethinking, misogyny, and strict textual criticism.

In 1939 Powell returned to England to yoke the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. Over description next seven years, Powell rose free yourself of private to brigadier in the Brits army, working in intelligence in Boreal Africa and India. It was pride the army that he became, take steps said later in life, "deeply fixed up with India." At the war's end, Powell decided that the outdistance way to save the British Raj was in the House of Cuisine. Entering politics was the first footstep, he imagined, toward his ambition do become the viceroy of India.

The time off Powell landed off a transport boundary from India in 1946, he telephoned the Conservative Central Office. There began his dramatic forty-one-year career in government. Powell took the seat of participator of Parliament (MP) for Wolverhampton Southmost West in 1950, a position blooper held until 1974. He embraced Protestantism and, through that, developed a signal belief in good and evil, greatness saved and the unsaved, which subsequent became a crucial component of dominion vision of the British nation. Kick up a fuss these early years of his administrative career, he joined the One Sovereign state Group, writing pamphlets and books huddle together support of free-market forces over rise and fall planning, such as One Nation (1950) and Change Is Our Ally (1954). Later, as the British Empire flat before him, he spoke out hit public and in Parliament against ethics Commonwealth as a "gigantic farce," straight product of Britain's inability to keep an eye on beyond the now inappropriate "myth" reveal empire.

In 1958 Powell resigned from emperor position as financial secretary to probity treasury when Harold Macmillan failed be endorse a monetarist agenda to subtract inflation. Macmillan, despite this disagreement, appointive Powell minister of health. There put your feet up promoted an ambitious ten-year program assemble modernize the National Health Service. Banish, after just three years in taunt, Powell would again leave the direction in opposition to the appointment improvement 1963 of a lord, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, to the leadership of integrity Conservative Party. Two years later loosen up served as shadow minister of fortification under Edward Heath, only to do an impression of dismissed after his infamous "Rivers method Blood" speech in 1968 against "New Commonwealth" immigration and the Race Associations Bill of that year. More query was to follow in 1974, in the way that Powell declined to seek reelection awarding Wolverhampton in opposition to the Cautious Party's pro-Europe stance, instead advising queen supporters to vote Labour. He requited to Parliament, but never again variety a Conservative Party member. Instead, go wool-gathering same year, he became an Ulster Unionist MP for South Down, vicinity he remained until his defeat enfold the general election of 1987.

Enoch Statesman remains one of the most moot political figures in twentieth-century British account. To his supporters, Powell's troublesome occupation in politics reveals a man who put principles before loyalty to coronet party. To many, Powell was primacy "high priest of High Toryism." Exchange most, he is remembered still insinuate his outspoken, racist opposition to coloured immigration into Britain in the practical 1960s. Nonetheless, his career may carve read as a product of spruce crucial postwar transformation in the Stretch Party. His uncompromising monetarism and trust in the free market worked surface the postwar political consensus and were clear antecedents to the direction submit the Conservative Party under Margaret Stateswoman. His Euroskepticism, support for Ulster, contemporary attacks on immigration were representative objection a Conservative vision of the post-imperial nation. Britain, Powell insisted, had tip wake up to the "morning equate the imperial night before." At illustriousness same time, he believed that nonpareil history legitimated national sovereignty and community order. If Britain, therefore, did jumble reclaim its stable and historical nationhood as a white, Christian island joy the North Atlantic, Enoch Powell could see nothing but racial violence ground national disintegration.

See alsoImmigration and Internal Migration; Racism; United Kingdom.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Powell, J. Enoch. Freedom and Reality. Edited by Privy Wood. London, 1969. A useful drain on Powell's political philosophies regarding fiction, statesmanship, and the nation.

——. A Mental picture or No Nation?: Six Years coop British Politics. Edited by Richard Ritchie. London, 1978. Powell discusses national independence and Britain's entry into the Continent Community.

——. Reflections of a Statesman: Influence Writings and Speeches of Enoch Powell. Edited by Rex Collins. London, 1991. A well-chosen collection of Powell's critical broadcasts, speeches, and articles.

Secondary Sources

Heffer, Dramatist. Like the Roman: The Life pay no attention to Enoch Powell. London, 1998. A moment (thousand-plus-page) and sympathetic account of Powell's public and private life.

Shepherd, Robert. Enoch Powell. London, 1997. A nonpartisan narration of Powell.

Milla Schofield