Enoch Powell: Prophet of our times.

The Maoist inspired riots in London and other cities will lead not just to pulling statues down and renaming ancient institutions such as Guy’s Hospital, the Tait, Westminster and Trafalgar Square but to censorship and the ransacking of our libraries for ‘white man’s literature” by self appointed literary gangs. This happened in China with the loss of centuries of priceless artifacts and the burning of her great literature. Before this happens here, with a Conservative Government grovelling in the wings, the Salisbury Review wishes to recall for its readers the work of one of the great prophets of present events, Enoch Powell . The Editor

The extracts below are from a Daily Mail article written by Simon Heffer you can read the full version via the link.

Extracts.

‘When most people hear the words ‘Enoch Powell’ they think of the phrase ‘rivers of blood’. It was Powell’s misfortune — partly self-inflicted — that his monumental contribution to political ideas should still be eclipsed by a phrase that he never uttered, misquoted from the speech that still defines him.

Powell was born 100 years ago this Saturday, in a terrace house by a railway line in a suburb of Birmingham, the only child of two teachers.

In time, he would become the most brilliant classical scholar of his generation at Cambridge, the youngest professor in the British Empire, the youngest Brigadier in the Army, an MP, a Cabinet Minister and, in his re-invention as a tribune of the people, one of the most loved and hated men in Britain.

“It was Powell who, in 1957, predicted that excessive State borrowing would bring economic decline. Long before Milton Friedman, the free-market champion who won the Nobel Prize for Economics for demonstrating the link between an expansion in the supply of money and higher inflation, Powell explicitly outlined that argument.”

“He also understood that if Scotland had a separate parliament, it would inevitably soon become a separate country.”

“Almost 45 years ago, before Britain made its successful application to join what was then called the Common Market, Powell warned Britons they would lose the power to govern themselves. Equally presciently, from the moment a single currency was mooted, he pointed out that countries joining it would be stripped of their economic sovereignty — and, if it were to function properly, would lose the right to have their governments determine the exact nature of their public spending.”

“And, in an age when it was more or less compulsory for Conservative politicians to worship America, and America’s influence in the world, Powell repeatedly made clear his distrust of U.S. foreign policy, believing it would cause more conflicts than it prevented.”

“He had warned that if the Labour government’s anti-discrimination Race Relations Bill became law, it would allow the immigrant community to ‘agitate and campaign against their fellow citizens’. The apocalypse was in sight.”

“Powell had no objection to immigration. He had a profound one, however, to immigration on so large a scale, because it meant immigrants found it impossible to integrate.”

“He had witnessed the disaster of multiculturalism on the sub-continent (such as problems between different religions in India) and had no wish to see communal strife here, but he feared mass immigration would cause it.”

He spoke, too, of communities following customs ‘inappropriate in Britain’; of the strain placed on housing, health, social services and education provision by the influx.

Powell, in league with his friend and admirer, the Labour Left-winger Michael Foot, derailed the joint attempt by the Wilson government and Heath’s opposition, to reform the House of Lords in 1969, which would have made it entirely the creature of the House of Commons.

“That same year he began his high-profile crusade against British membership of the Common Market: his arguments were widely ignored then, but are now accepted as having been right by millions who used to discount them.”

He refused to fight the February 1974 election for the Tories, on the legitimate grounds that Heath had broken virtually every promise of his 1970 manifesto. He went on to advise electors to vote for a party that promised a referendum on our continued membership of the Common Market — which meant voting Labour.

Having quit the Conservatives over Europe, Powell was invited to stand as Official Ulster Unionist candidate in South Down. He did, and won. He spent the rest of his parliamentary career (until 1987) as an Ulster MP.

Powell was a man of conspicuous moral greatness, something that, alone, made him unsuited for politics, because it meant he could not keep what he perceived to be the truth to himself.

He had a gift denied to most politicians, which was of making prophecies that were right.

He was right about Europe; right about the single currency; right about economic management; right about Lords reform; right about devolution; right about American imperialism; and, with even Trevor Phillips, the figurehead of the Equalities Commission, now arguing that multiculturalism has failed, right about that, too.