POLITICS
The really surprising thing about Enoch Powell and Ted Heath
BRUCE ANDERSON
Enoch Powell was the greatest parlia- mentarian of the post-war era. Of all mod- ern politicians, he was also much the most misunderstood. He once wrote that all political careers end in failure, and that was certainly true of his own. Nor was it a mag- nificent failure. A myth has grown up, sedu- lously fostered by Mr Powell himself, that he was simply too great a figure for the con- temporary political scene; how could such a megalopsychos be expected to tolerate little men and squalid compromises? That is the diametrical opposite of the truth. Mr Powell failed, not because of his great-mindedness, but because of his small-mindedness. He had exceptional qualities, but they were always vitiated by vanity. That is why, with only one exception, he undermined every cause which he espoused.
The exception was free market economics; Mr Powell was one of its earliest, most pow- erful and most persuasive advocates. But his main contribution was as a pamphleteer and debater, not in practical politics, which is why he was so effective. He did, of course, help to inspire the Treasury team's resigna- tion in January 1958 because Mr Macmillan refused to agree to an additional £50 million of spending cuts. That is a key element in the Powell legend: there are those who argue that it was one of the turning-points in modern British history, in which Enoch the proto-Thatcherite was defeated by Macmil- lan the irresponsible Keynesian.
But that is myth, not history; there was no monetarist or free market imperative for those additional spending cuts. In the Thir- ties, Macmillan had been an ultra- Keynesian, but as prime minister he was a cautious, old-fashioned economist. He wor- ried about inflation and budget deficits, and in those respects no later PM can rival his record; judged by inflation and the PSBR, he was a more effective Thatcherite than Mrs Thatcher. At the time, Mr Powell's res- ignation was attributed to lack of judgment; there is no reason to overturn that verdict.
But there was worse to come, on race, on Europe and above all on Ulster. There are two reasons for condemning Mr Powell's `rivers of blood' speech. The first, lesser one is that he was being disingenuous when he claimed not to see what the fuss was about. Not only had he alerted the late Colin Welch that he was about to make a speech which would make everyone sit up; such a master of language must have known that his text was verbal high explo- sive: crude arguments in brilliant prose.
Those arguments helped to deliver the race debate into the hands of Mr Powell's — and Britain's — enemies. There was only one conclusion to be drawn from Mr Powell's text: that most coloured immi- grants should be deported as soon as possi- ble. Leaving aside moral considerations, that was never practical politics. But because it hearkened to Mr Powell, the Tory Right diverted energies which should have been directed to the problem of the black underclass into fantasies about repa- triation. Moral considerations did of course intrude; as a result of Mr Powell's speech, the Tory Right lost the moral high ground to the race relations industry. Its various publicly funded organs have spent much of the past 30 years denouncing Mr Powell; in reality, he was one of its most useful allies.
On Europe, Mr Powell favoured with- drawal, and in 1975 there was an opportuni- ty to turn that into practical politics, during the referendum campaign. At that time, Mr Powell still had enormous prestige, unlike Messrs Wilson or Heath, and many of those who voted to stay in did so only because they saw no alternative. Mr Powell could have rectified that. If he had unleashed his oratory, stormed the country, held mass ral- lies every evening, there might just have been a different result; it would certainly have been a lot closer. Mr Powell was the one politician who could have created an anti-European momentum, but instead he allied himself with the Labour Left. So instead of being Enoch's bandwagon, the `No' campaign gave equal prominence to Messrs Benn and Foot and had 'loser' writ- ten all over it from the start. Perhaps that was just as well, but it is a further illustration of Mr Powell's political incompetence.
Then there was Ulster. When Mr Powell joined his fortunes with theirs, the belea- guered loyalists of the North rejoiced. They thought that they had acquired an irre- sistible weapon, the political equivalent of the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. But Mr Powell was to be guilty of betrayal through negligence.
By October 1974, the old Unionist elite had been swept away in a grass-roots revolt. Unionism had hardly any one who could make its case to Tory MPs, let alone to public opinion. But when Enoch arrived, the Unionists franchised their mainland public relations to him. It was an error. From 1975 onwards, Mrs Thatcher's door was open to him. It would have been so easy to drop in for an encouraging chat whenever she was in low spirits, thus build- ing up a debt of gratitude which would have been further increased by a tour of West Midlands marginals during the 1979 elec- tion. At that stage, devolved government in Ulster was a discredited concept and many Tories were prepared to consider integra- tion; it would have been possible to per- suade Mrs Thatcher herself; 1979 could have been the integrationists' moment, if only Mr Powell had done his duty.
Instead, as Robert Shepherd describes in his recent, lucid biography, Enoch Powell, Mr Powell spent much of 1975-79 carping about Margaret Thatcher. Though he was generous after the Falklands, in the earlier phase he was not a noble Roman; he was envious Casca — and in 1979, he found some preposterous European reason for advising the electorate to vote Labour. He might have secured integration; instead, after 11 years of wasted opportunities, we had the Anglo-Irish Agreement.
Anyone who reads Mr Shepherd's account will be struck by a comparison as obvious as it is unexpected: Enoch Powell and Ted Heath. Mr Heath could not forgive Mrs Thatcher for supplanting him; Mr Pow- ell could not forgive her for occupying the post which could have been his had he not broken with the Tory party. There are other similarities; Mr Powell was an only child and Mr Heath was virtually brought up as one. Both men were encouraged to see themselves as the centre of a universe designed for their gratification; both became life-long solipsists.
A politician who does not believe in win- ning is as much use as a soldier who does not believe in fighting. But Mr Powell would rather have been a prophet lamenting the fate of a ravaged city while its inhabitants were herded off into slavery than a man of government seeking the best possible out- come. His career vindicates the traditional Tory suspicion of intellectuals, as opposed to intellect. Intellectuals often employ their intellects for foolish purposes, forcing facts onto a Procrustean bed of theory and using history only for hagiography, or demonolo- gy. Many intellectuals are far more con- cerned to feel good than to do good. That could be Enoch Powell's political epitaph.
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