Enoch Powell: Life and Views

Rt. Hon. John Enoch Powell, MBE (1912–1998) Classical scholar, poet, brigadier and politician. Conservative (1950–1974) and Ulster Unionist (1974–1987) MP. Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Housing and Local Government (1955–1957), Financial Secretary to the Treasury (1957–1958), Minister of Health (1960–1963). Upholder of free market economics and the first British politician to advocate monetarism. Renowned parlamentarian, leading anti-immigration campaigner and pre-eminent Eurosceptic.



‘I was born a Tory. Define: a Tory is a person who regards authority as immanent in institutions. I had always been, as far back as I could remember in my existence, a respecter of institutions, a respecter of monarchy, a respecter of the deposit of history, a respecter of everything in which authority was capable of being embodied, and that must surely be what the Conservative Party was about, the Conservative Party as the party of the maintenance of acknowledged prescriptive authority.’

(Enoch Powell, Cambridge, 1990)