Enoch Powell Documentary

Rivers of Blood Enoch Powell the only private soldier throughout WWII to reach the rank of Brigadier Professor Powell, Intelligence Officer, British Eighth Army North Africa  General Erwin Rommel 'Desert Fox' Afrika Korps Third Rich Germany WWII Enoch Powell's quarry Signals sent by Rommel's Afrika Korps all intercepted by the British SUMMARY [re quotations:  confirm audio] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc26aTCwyYM Enoch Powell Documentary John Enoch Powell The issue of race was to bring Powell in confrontation with Edward Heath. Powell won the plaudits of many traditional Labour voters, like the London dockers. Birmingham Born Born in a thunderstorm in Birmingham in 1912. His parents were both schoolteachers. The young John Enoch Powell was so precocious that he was nicknamed "the Professor". Scholar   He won a scholarship to King Edward's Grammar School, Birmingham, where he was known as "scowly Powelly". He established himself as brilliant at Greek and Latin. A contemporary at school was Christopher Evans. "He was fiendishly clever and we were all rather frightened of him, as I think were some of his masters, actually.  He was so good and rather knew it, I think, you know.  And my memory of him is of a rather pale, slightly stooping boy with head thrust forward, rather intense look and serious look in his face.  He was a loner.  A complete loner." Christopher Evans "I wasn't different from other children.  I was just as naughty.  I was just as wicked and malevolent." "I hesitate to remember the depredations which I helped to commit upon the rolling stock of the Midland Railway Company, as we travelled to and from King Edward's, Birmingham." "Well, I have been known to unscrew the luggage rack ...". Enoch Powell Trinity College, Cambridge Powell went as a classics scholar to Trinity College, Cambridge, the finishing school for future Soviet spies and Tory cabinet ministers, but he was too busy for extramural activities. "As an undergraduate, I got up at five.  I knew nothing else to do but to work.  I didn't keep a fire in my room.  I worked in an overcoat with my feet in a blanket, because I thought that more conducive to mental effort.  Whether it is so or not, I don't know.  But I did.  I had no social life as an undergraduate." Enoch Powell What about as far as women are concerned? "They didn't exist." Enoch Powell   But you must have seen women at Cambridge. "Yes, I noticed them." Enoch Powell What did you think of them? "I wondered what they were doing there, because I didn't think they would approach advanced learning in the same mood or manner as a man would." Enoch Powell Why did you think that? "Because the analytical faculties are underdeveloped in women." Enoch Powell   Although he claims he knew no women there, at Cambridge Powell wrote his first book of poems -- some of them highly erotic -- which revealed the intensity of feelings beneath the aesthetic façade.  XLI I did not speak, but when I saw you turn And cross your right leg on your left and fold, Your hands across your knee, I felt a flow Of white-hot lava seething up the old Volcano-shaft.  That self same attitude, Though not of yours, it was which long ago Fired me, an innocent, unknowing boy. And led me on to sin and on to learn And onwards onto the very fount of woe; From which returning, evermore pursued ... Enoch Powell "It wasn't written to anybody.  It was written as an exercise.  A work of the imagination." Enoch Powell WAR DRUMS Australia WWII Recruitment Drive Henry Buck's, Swanston Street, Melbourne [CLICK TO ENLARGE]  [source] Australia | War Drums When he was 25, Powell flew to Australia. He'd become professor of Greek at Sydney University. There his feelings of British nationalism grew as he became convinced that war was inevitable.   His poems show he welcomed the prospect of dying fighting for his country, although he believed the [Germans] would win the war.   I felt I could hear the German divisions marching across Europe and I could hear this drumming coming through the earth, and coming up again in Australia where no-one else could hear. British Army Powell volunteered when the war began and says he spent the happiest time of his life as a private soldier in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, but he had high military ambitions and was soon rise with record speed through the ranks. The army had quickly spotted Powell's linguistic and intellectual talents, and he was sent for training as an intelligence officer. A fellow cadet at Aldershot  ... "We were a motley crew and Enoch Powell was there.  Didn't pay a great part in sort of boisterous evenings boozing a bit and so on, which obviously young cadets did. He was conspicuous by lying on his bunk -- by lying on his bed most of the time reading, and it turned out when you asked him, you know, what you're reading, he said:  "Oh, well, I'm reading the bible."  And he said, "If it sounds funny that it's even funnier, because it's in Greek." He was popular, but we sort of took him as a bit of a nutcase, I suppose." Sir Hardy Amies Intelligence Corps 1939-1944 Powell was sent to work with intelligence officer with the Eighth Army in North Africa. His task was to get inside the mind of the German army commander General Rommel, by deploying his professional skills as a textual critic. The secret signals sent by Rommel's Afrika Korps were all being intercepted by the British. There Rommel was known as "the Desert Fox", Professor Powell came to understand more about the general's plans than anyone else in the British Army. After the British victory at El Alamein, Powell was to become the only private soldier throughout the war to reach the rank of Brigadier. He was posted to India ... -------/\/\/ Powell now took up fox hunting and it was in pursuit of the uneatable ... "Well, I fell in love with someone while I was hunting." "That failed.  I was not satisfactory." Enoch Powell You mean, you wanted to marry her and she turned you down? "That's right." Enoch Powell His love was Barbara Manor Kennedy, a Colonel's daughter from the Shropshire County set. She was 23; he was 37 and she was the first women he'd ever courted. Powell dedicated a book of poems to his love, identifying her only as "B". One of them told of how they parted. XVII I dreamt that on a mountain-crest As in the sheep-cropped grass we lay, The worlds that ever at my breast ... You ceased.  The wind that through the sward With steady-breathing passion swept, From flower and grass and heather blent 'Amen' to that strange sacrament; And silent, as it seemed, we wept.  Enoch Powell -------/\/\/ "Well, then I took up with the lady who did marry me and lived happily ever after, I believe one adds." Enoch Powell "... his eyes were very blue and he was great fun." Pamela Powell Pamela Powell, herself a Colonel's daughter, vividly recalls how the 40-year old Powell proposed. "We had dinner at a Chinese restaurant and I knew he was going to ask me and, three days later, he did ask me. And what he actually said, when he was on his bended-knee no less, he actually said to me:  I can't promise you anything except a life of poverty, grinding poverty, and a life totally on the back benches." Pamela Powell Her mother had told Pamela Wilson that being married to Enoch would be like going to university every day for the rest of her life. She relished the prospect but was unprepared for the absent-mindedness of her professor on their return from honeymoon. Pamela Powell recounts anecdote. -------/\/\/ NATIONALISM Powell's political star was soon rising. The father of two daughters presented an ideal family man image.  Powell was appointed Treasury Minister and began to be talked of as a future Tory leader, but he resigned from MacMillan's government in protest against increased public spending. He was a prototype monetarist before Mrs Thatcher was even an MP. In 1965, with the Tories in opposition, Powell stood for the party leadership against Ted Heath. Heath won ... Unlike the bachelor leader, Powell had duties as a father. By 1968, Enoch Powell had become a recognisable political figure. Powell was now developing an ideology markedly to the right of Ted Health's, above all on the taboo subject of race. Powell was alarmed by what he saw as the dangers of coloured immigration to the British nation. His views seemed to contrast sharply with his professed love for India. "India is India and England is England.  And an Englishman can have a love for India without wishing to see India on the streets of Birmingham." Enoch Powell -------/\/\/ RIVERS OF BLOOD Rivers of Blood Speech - transcript. The issue of Race was to bring Powell in confrontation with Heath. Powell decided to quote directly from the experiences of immigrants from his white constituents. Only parts of that polemical speech were filmed, but Powell has kept his original text. He began by attacking the Labour government's bill that outlawed racial discrimination. [ ie.  Labour government Race Relations Bill ] "The discrimination and the deprivation, the sense of alarm and of resentment lie not with the immigrant population but among those among whom they have come and are still coming.   This is why to enact legislation of a kind before parliament of this moment is to risk throwing a match onto gunpowder." Birmingham, April 1968 Enoch Powell Powell quoted a letter he said he'd received about an elderly widow living in Wolverhampton, the only white resident left in her street. He quoted from the letter:  "She is becoming afraid to go out.  Windows are broken, she finds excreta pushed through her letterbox.  When she goes to the shops, she is followed by children, charming, wide-grinning piccaninnies.  They cannot speak English, but one world they know.  "Racialist", they chant." "Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.   We must be mad.   Literally mad as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependants, who are for the most part the material of the future growth of the immigrant descended population.   It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre." Birmingham, April 1968 Enoch Powell Powell ended the speech with a quote from Virgil, translated from Latin: "As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding, like the Romans, I seem to see "the river Tiber foaming with much blood."" A storm broke out in the press. Press condemnation, [political performance & baying agitators]. [Comment:  stock standard demands to sack politician.  How many times have we seen this intimidation, bullying & hijacking replayed since Powell was sacked by Heath?] DISMISSED Enoch Powell Dismissed by Edward Heath, MP Opposition Leader (1965-1970) Edward Heath said:  "I dismissed Mr Powell from the Shadow Cabinet because I believe that his speech was inflammatory and liable to damage race relations in this country.  I am determined to do everything I can to prevent racial problems developing into civil strife, and this means that these questions must be treated with moderation and with toleration." [ Enoch Powell concludes that Heath was alarmed by the outcry and, sensing danger, ran for cover. ] In fact, Powell had never made a speech so explicit before, and there was a groundswell of support for him from seemingly unlikely quarters.  The London dockers had demanded his reinstatement and the Smithfield meat porters marched on parliament with a petition.  "It touched a spring.  A spring which vibrated in the hearts of millions of people in this country. " Enoch Powell [Powell subsequently received over 45,000 letters mostly in support.] The persistent theme of the letters was that Britain was being changed in ways that the writers disliked and feared, without any consultation. RACISM "What's wrong with racism.    Racism is the basis of a nationality. Nations are, upon the whole, united by identity with one another; the self-identification of their citizens, and that's normally due to similarities which we regard as racial similarities." Enoch Powell Powell's visits to universities across the countries were now regularly disrupted.  He aroused stronger feelings, both pro and anti, than any other politician of his time. "Too often today, people are ready to tell us "this is not possible, that is not possible".   I say:  whatever the true interest of our country calls for is always possible." Enoch Powell Conservative Party Conference 1968 Powellism Powellism reached parts of the Tory party which Ted Heath could never reach. Conservatives under Heath winning in 1970, sealed Enoch Powell's exile. COMMON MARKET It was Europe that was to cause the final break between Heath and Powell. Ted Heath's application for Britain to join the common market aroused Powell's nationalistic feelings, even though, ironically, Powell had himself once been a pro marketeer like Heath. As the anti-marketeers marched on Number 10, Powell prophesied that our entry into Europe would never happen and the bill to take us in would be defeated. "I would have done anything to prevent the Conservative party from passing that bill.  I did all I could.  I voted in the lobby against it 106 (one hundred and six) times." Enoch Powell Did you not feel any loyalty to the Conservative government? "My first loyalty is to the people of this country, and I thought they were being deprived behind their backs of something which I believed they valued and still believe they do:  their self-government through parliament." Enoch Powell SOVEREIGNTY  Conservatives had destroyed the self-government of the United Kingdom. -------/\/\/ Funeral Planned The marketplace romantic has carefully planned the arrangements for his own funeral. After a service in the chapel of his regiment, he will be buried in full-dress Brigadier's uniform. BURIED:  alongside Warwickshire Regiment veterans Warwick Cemetery, Warwickshire, England - here.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc26aTCwyYM Enoch Powell was (and is) exceptional.  What a lovely man. I found this documentary highly emotive. History has bearing on WWII; WWII has bearing on 1968; and 1968 has bearing on today. *No time to properly check for typos.  Must cook.  ;)