David Cameron told Angela Eagle to ‘calm down, dear’. Bill Clinton protested that he ‘did not have sexual relations with that woman’. George Bush pondered, ‘Rarely is the question asked, is our children learning?’ Many politicians have said something that they would rather forget. A misplaced quote always threatens the danger of reducing a politician’s public legacy into one sound bite, and for no politician has this been truer than Enoch Powell.
Enoch Powell was, quite simply, one of the most important orators of recent times, and it wasn’t just what he said; it was also how he said it. Charles Moore has noted his ‘odd combination of eccentric professor and mass orator, of almost archaic obscurity and devastating clarity’. His most famous speech, of course, concerned “rivers of blood”.
For these dangerous and divisive elements the legislation proposed in the Race Relations Bill is the very pabulum they need to flourish. Here is the means of showing that the immigrant communities can organise to consolidate their members, to agitate and campaign against their fellow citizens, and to overawe and dominate the rest with the legal weapons which the ignorant and the ill-informed have provided. As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see "the River Tiber foaming with much blood".
This may be his most remembered speech, but his oratorical legacy stretches far beyond that. Powell made speeches on subjects ranging from the economy, to the EU, to constitutional reform, to the environment, amongst others. And they’re now readily available to read here, archived by date and topic. Once you’ve worked your way through his speeches you can also read about Enoch the soldier, and Enoch the Greek scholar:
He was a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge from 1934 to 1938 and was then appointed professor of Greek at the University of Sydney, making him the youngest professor in the British Empire. He published A Lexicon to Herodotus in 1938 followed by The History of Herodotus in 1939. He returned to England on the outbreak of war in order to serve in the Army.
It’s well worth a read and, of course, you can also read all about Enoch’s legacy in Enoch at 100: A re-evaluation of the life, politics and philosophy of Enoch Powell, edited by Greville Howard, and containing contributions from Anne Robinson, Iain Duncan Smith, Simon Heffer and Andrew Alexander. If the reviews are anything to go by you should be getting your copy sharpish:
‘As his former private secretary Greville Howard's fascinating collection of essays shows, there was much more to Powell, who died in 1998, than his views on race’ – Dominic Sandbrook, Mail on Sunday
‘This book, friendly to Enoch, but critical too, provides excellent answers’ – Charles Moore, Daily Telegraph
‘a superb set of essays’ – Peter Oborne, Daily Telegraph
Get your copy here.