Seeing 'Enoch' trending on X (Twitter) one's first reaction was, if that's Aynuk where's Ayli? Imagine the disappointment to find that it wasn't one part of a mythical comic partnership from within the Black Country that was being referenced, but John
Enoch Powell, known as Enoch Powell. He was a politician for thirty seven
years, Firstly as a Conservative then latterly as an Ulster Unionist.
He is famous, more
likely
infamous, for an anti-immigration
speech made in 1968 known
as the Rivers of Blood speech. Here is an Obit from the Socialist
Standard March
1998.
‘No
sooner had the nation recovered from its hysteria over Princess Diana
than it was rocked by the death of a man reputed to have one of the
most powerful and rational brains ever to invade the House of
Commons, but who was politically a pathetic failure. We refer, of
course, to Enoch Powell and we know about that famous brain because
of all those politicians who told us about it. “ . . . magnetic,”
crooned Margaret Thatcher, “listening to his speeches was an
unforgettable privilege.” “ . . . one of the greatest orators and
foremost parliamentarians of his generation,” clucked William
Hague. “One of the greatest figures of 20th century British
politics, with a brilliant mind,” gushed Tony Blair, during a short
break from gushing about the Spice Girls and Bill Clinton.
Well
Powell was not a crooner nor a clucker nor a gusher but he obviously
had a pretty high opinion of himself, which he liked to express in a
number of eccentricities. In the late 1940s for example, when he was
working at Tory Headquarters, he would travel to work on the Tube at
an hour early enough for him to buy a cheap “workman’s” ticket,
dressed in hunting clothes. However hot the weather he always wore a
heavy three-piece, no nonsense, suit. He left exact instructions
about his funeral, including that he should be buried in his old
brigadier’s uniform. Finally, his very name was eccentric; what are
we to expect of someone in the public eye who insists on being known
as Enoch when his first name was John?
Intellect
This
leads us to the all-important question of what is the basis of
Enoch’s reputation for having one of the world’s most rational
and incisive intellects? Well it was not consistency. This was a man
who pioneered the Tories’ opposition to state planning—an idea
which flourished under Thatcher, but who as a minister had supported
state intervention in education, health and social services and who,
according to his friend and colleague Iain McLeod, produced “ . . .
the two longest-term social plans in this country, the ten-year plan
for hospitals, and for local welfare services”. This was the man
who resigned from the government in 1958 because he thought
government spending was too high at £6,524 million but who accepted
office as a minister in 1960 although it had continued to rise—by
1961 to £8,134 million. Having got the taste for resignation he did
it again—or something like it—a couple of years later when he
refused to be a minister in Douglas Home’s government. But whatever
objection he had to Douglas Home as a boss had been assuaged by 1964,
when he felt able to join the Shadow Cabinet under that same dozy,
amiable Scottish aristocrat.
In
spite of this Powell could still gain public attention when, in April
1968, he produced the most notorious example of his vigorous
intellect with his “foreboding” about the effects of non-white
immigration. Among the “evidence” he produced to justify his
pessimism was a bit which might kindly be described as anecdotal. A
woman in Northumberland, he said, had told him about an elderly woman
in Wolverhampton—about 200 miles away—who was “ . . . afraid to
go out. Windows are broken. She finds excreta pushed through the
letterbox”. The implication was clear—immigrants were terrorising
this poor woman, white British people never behave in this way. The
problem for Powell was that he was not able to identify this woman
and all efforts to find her were unsuccessful.
Scared
But
the problem for other people was rather different because Powell’s
speech had an instant, unexpectedly disturbing effect. Suddenly he
was transformed from an aloof and fastidious man into someone who
represented popular opinion:
"Powell
had become a rallying point for most of the hostility and rage we
encountered, a shorthand for hatred and contempt 'I’m with
Enoch/they said, or ‘they should let Enoch sort you lot out’ and
that was enough’’ (Mike Phillips, Guardian, 9
February).
A
woman, now a mother of three, remembers “I was 18 at the time and I
was really scared because so many people suddenly became openly
hostile. They all thought we ate Kit-E-Kat so I stopped buying tinned
food for the cat.”
It
really was like that and the dominant mood was represented by those
London dockers who marched in support of Powell. At that time the
unions in the docks were extremely powerful, always ready to exert
their power through strikes and other forms of disruption. How much
did the marching dockers know about Powell’s views on the
usefulness of their unions—” . . . [the remuneration of labour]
is rarely affected appreciably, upwards or downwards, by combination;
and then the effect is more or less temporary and purchased at the
cost of the general public, including other workers”? How many of
them knew about his callous views on people—they are always
workers—who have to wait for treatment in hospital:
".
. . if people are on a waiting list long enough, they will
die—usually from some cause other than that for which they joined
the queue. Short of dying, however, they frequently get bored or
better, and vanish.”
And
how many of them knew that this man who ranted about the alleged
devastation the immigrants were bringing to beauty spots like
Wolverhampton had done his utmost to encourage immigration to this
country when, as Minister of Health, he had organised a drive to
recruit workers for the National Health Service from the West Indies?
Callous
Most
of the obituaries for Powell went out of their way to be kind to him.
On TV Simon Heffer, his biographer, denied that he was a
racist—because he was fond of India, he said. So what, we might ask
if Powell was not a racist, why did he do nothing when he saw the
effect of his “foaming with blood” speech? Was this another
example of the bottomless confusion of this supposedly brilliant
mind? Or was it a calculated attempt, after all those years of being
denied even a hope of leading his party, to leapfrog his rivals, whom
Powell held mostly in contempt, with one dangerous, resounding
speech?
Whatever
the truth of this, one thing needs to be said about this man. He
stood for a society of class division, of riches and poverty, of
racism, of fear and disunity. The only thing unusual in him was the
recklessly callous way he did this. And as for his supposedly
brilliant intellect—is this really the best capitalism can offer
us?’
Ivan
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2022/05/greasy-pole-death-of-dangerous-man-1998.html
