25 MAY 1974, Page 6

Political Commentary'

The Tories need Enoch and Enoch needs the Tories

Patrick Cosgrave

My old teacher, Sir Herbert Butterfield — almost certainly the greatest of modern British historians — once observed of Mr Enoch Powell — I having asked him whether he could ever see Mr Powell leading the Conservative Party — "No. He is too intelligent He sees things too clearly." Sir Herbert was, I hasten to add, in no way taking a Powellite position: he was merely making objective observations. When a giant like Sir Herbert Bill: terfield takes Mr Powell seriously it is more than ordinarily tiresome to hear intellectual minnows like Mr Timothy Raison — once a very junior minister—tell us that Mr Powell could not readily be received back into the ranks of the Tory Party because he had — and this is Mr Raison's word — behaved dishonourably in advocating a Labour vote at the last election. It does not lie in the mouths of such as Mr Raison to accuse Mr Powell of dishonour: they are not, for one thing, bright enough.

Thus my preface to a discussion of Mr Powell's reconciliatory speech last weekend. The not very bright Tory with a gift for the gab — like Mr Raison — will always be found making ritual obeisances to Enoch's eccentric cleverness, but lacking in any capacity for appreciating Mr Powell's constitutional contribution to the history of this country. The really intelligent younger Tory, like Mr Norman St John-Stevas, has to accept that Mr Powell is the foremost parliamentarian of our age; and that Parliament is the condition of ot.r democracy.

In his speech Mr Powell said that there had been certain major issues of political principle between himself and the leadership of his party in the recent past, which no longer subsisted as issues because — and I deliberately choose the commonest words I can find — opinion had moved in the direction of his views. He got much more publicity than a private individual could reasonably expect from that speech. Yet he got less than the connoisseurs of Westminster privately afford him. Like Sir Herbert Butterfield — though less publicly — the body of political correspondents and editors regard Mr Powell, and Mr Powell's pronouncements on the state of the constitution, as, at least, on the level of those of Burke. But the fact of the matter is that Mr Powell shines too hard a light: whatever they say in private, correspondents and politicans have editors and constituency chairmen to deal with; and a Burke — or, as I think him, a Pitt — is too difficult a concept to grasp and report. _ As I have said, few serious people would deny Mr Powell his honour. Yet, he once had this to say:

-Nor have I received in the recent past from men who will form a Conservative Cabinet even the ordinary loyalties and courtesies that prevail generally between colleagues in the same cause. Not for them to repudiate attacks on me which were unfounded, and which they knew to be unfounded. Not for them to place upon my words and arguments the most favourable, or the most obvious, construction, or even to accept my own assertion of my own meaning. Not for them to protest when in the House of Commons language has been used about me, and insults have been cast, the obscenity of which has lowered the dignity of Parliament itself.

Every word, every phrase of that — from one of the finest political speeches of modern times — was and remains both poignant and true. The Tories — too many of them — acquiesced in — bowed_ their heads to — a

scurrilous campaign — which reached its height more recently.when the Observer newspaper suggested that his views should be censored — against Mr Powell based on an almost deliberate misunderstanding of his views on race relations. From some Tories near to the centre of the leadership — men who specialise in the muzzling of dissident views — all that could be expected: from others it was puzzling. But it happened, in one of the most serious aberrations of understanding in the recent political history of this country. So, it is more generous in Mr Powell to offer an olive branch to his party than it would be in them to receive it with grace.

On all this the historian of future times — if there is one — will look back in amazement. He will read the speeches of Mr Powell and the advertisement copywriter's products of his rivals and wonder how it was that this man came to be rejected. Nearly everything that Mr Powell has said and written in recent years has been about, not just issues, but the central issue of the political identity of the nation, and he has been probably the only politician to address himself with eloquence and intelligence to this most central of all national questions. The historian will notice that, dulled by inane repetition, newspapers and commentators, political scientists and politicians, ignored where they did not try to stifle, the foremost national voice of their time.

For, and this is perhaps the most surprising thing, Mr Powell has managed to remain one of the three leading politicians of this country even when bereft of organisational or financial support of any organised kind, because of the esteem with which his ordinary fellowcountrymen hold him. While in their will to silence him too many of his party colleagues have descended to the level of the National Union. of Students in their recent childish attempt to stifle free speech, the political nation, as judged and measured by every means today known to us, has expressed a will to hear. What folly is demonstrated by poli-. ticians who bleat about political participation, and by journalists who comment on a failure

of communication between leaders and led,0' their various attempts to traduce where 00 do not try to silence the one politician Y/11 can reach people of all classes. Those — I there are many — who believe that the onE major national objective is the return t° power of a Conservative government which i!■ recognisably Conservative, and not merelr. shinier variety of collectivist than its Lab0tll4

rival, will now assert, clearly, that the Toll ,

Party simply cannot do without Mr Powell. But it is also true — and this is perhaps th;!ll greatest tribute that can be made to 11" honour and sense of principle — that NI( 1 Powell cannot do without the Conservative tl Party. In his election speech at Birmingham the first in which any politician sinceF Churchill clearly put country before party, 0;a whatever cost to himself — Mr Powell defineoiE the engine of British democracy as beings; party. -For good or ill democracy, and onr1; hope of survival in this country, is bound 0P with the evolution of our parliamentary sYs.! tem and its parties. That Mr Powell has see,n s and, populist though his appeal is, he declined any other way to power. Were country to collapse in ruins, were a dictator tot,z advance to its helm, one can clearly see tha Mr Powell would be the first political figure, marked down for disposal, for he is the onlY one who can clearly see the values of tl1! system we have, and its relevance to th'' continuity of our civilisation. . This would, I believe, be accepted bY the majority of thinking people in this count1' and by political rivals of Mr Powell as we!' If the occasional element of self-regard of self-pity enters into Mr Powell's speaking thinking it is far smaller than thesimilai strain in the speaking of others. Mr Heath, Or example, recently spent a whining hour of the time of London Weekend Television explain; ing bow the electorate got the last genera; election result wrong. It is simply the casi that, in the writing of his critics as well as his admirers, Mr Powell is judged by a highel and harsher standard than the others. Fe' however, write down and publish the reasol' for their regard of Mr Powell, or ever try t° explain to themselves why it is that the' preoccupy themselves with his affairs. Yet; every political conversation in London soone: or later turns to him, to his principles, 11Pf tactics and his motivation. It is a fora, ,_19 picking at sores. The sooner it is ended tn,,` better. And the only way it can be ended is restoring Mr Powell to a central role in h'' party. All this seems so blatantly obvious to me 35t I write it that I wonder why it should seem a all necessary to write it. Men do sometiM, feel personal antipathy; Mr Powell and Po' Heath certainly do; but the matter of the individual feelings seems small when measured against the challenge of the tirne Parties do behave pettily; but their justifice; tion is that they should be able to rise to occasion. The fissures and divisions of 0'1i Tory Party in recent years now look so compared to what the party and the count l' are up against; the newspaper speculation,es the weekend — with the exception of article by Mr Ronald Butt and Mr Derek Marks about Mr Powell's motivation and the cove ness with which the Tory leadership Werd, greeting his overture seemed so trivial; 9115 the immense quality of what Mr Powell 05, done alone seems so evident, that one beg' to wonder if the party — if not the country e is indulging itself in a fit of insanity. of colir5„ Mr Powell must come back: if he does not is not his fault. And my historian of the f.u. ture, loving — all historians do — torical comparisons will in that case lean baco from his desk, sigh at the follies of past anto fallen civilisations and observe — perhaPs `ei his wife or his dog or his books — that, as thi, British allowed Enoch Powell to be destroYeue so did the Athenians poison Socrates;.and tI dullard James I execute Walter Ralegh.