Like the Roman: The Life of Enoch Powell by Simon Heffer Weidenfeld & Nicolson 961pp, £25 in UK
Enoch Powell's widow has not unreasonably complained of the photograph of her husband that appears on the cover of this enormous tome. And not without reason. "Enoch" does not look a bit like a Roman, rather more a Levantine, which he most certainly was not. He was a clever Brummy of Welsh descent. He was also an intellectual, and thus a foreign body in the heaven of British politics, and a pain in the neck of the party he ostensibly supported, the Conservatives.
Yet he attracted a band of disciples (not all of whom fished for a living), who succumbed to his charm, and were seduced by his views. Simon Heffer, who is a well-known journalist, badly treated by the Daily Telegraph, is a right-wing Conservative of considerable talent. To have written nearly a thousand pages about his hero reveals a Pauline tendency to flesh out the Messiah with an abundance of unnecessary detail. Surely his publishers provided him with an editor, whose task it should have been to cut, cut and cut? It would have made for a better book.
Enoch Powell was both an intellectual and a romantic, which can be a dangerous combination. He greatly admired the exquisite minor poet, Alfred Housman, author of A Shropshire Lad, upon whose Cambridge staircase he had his rooms. What he was not was a successful politician, although were his long career to be weighed in press cuttings, few would have used up as much glue. His stockin-trade was provocation, and his talent for rhetoric could best be observed during debates in the House of Commons. He actually spoke in paragraphs, and whereas most MPs would carefully doctor Hansard prior to its publication, Enoch had no need to dot the i's and cross the t's.
Promotion was slow in coming. He served for a short period in Macmillan's cabinet as Minister of Health, where, somewhat ironically, he encouraged the immigration of West Indian nurses to staff National Health Service hospitals in Britain. Harold Macmillan would gleefully tell the story of how he deliberately moved Enoch Powell around the cabinet table "so that I would not be faced by that terrible, unblinking stare". Iain Macleod, who was Powell's intellectual equal, and a political opponent within the coalition that made up the Tory party, would often say that "I will go a long way with Enoch, but will take care to leap from the train before it crashes into the buffers".
In debate Enoch lived by assertion. Accept his premise, and one could then admire the carefully constructed argument that he built in order to buttress his case. Challenge his premise, and the structure could, all too easily, crumble to the ground, rather like an industrial smoke-stack blown up by some artisan skilled in the use of explosive.
As he aged, so his stare grew steadily more unblinking. As a young man (he was the youngest brigadier in the British Army) he worked for a time at Conservative Central Office. He asked to see Churchill who was, at that time, Leader of the Opposition. He explained to the Great Man that he had worked out a plan for the reconquest of India, which the Attlee Government had recently given independence. "Get out," was Churchill's response. "You must be mad." This was a view shared by others.
Intensely clever, blessed with a powerful mind, Powell had abandoned teaching at Sydney University (the youngest ever Professor of Classics) for politics, a rough trade for which he was entirely unsuited. Visionaries are often unclubbable, and rationalists misunderstand the arts of politics in which the search for compromise is the be-all and end-all.
Throughout his political life he was never in tune with his party. He despised Harold Macmillan as an "inflationist" (his most vigorous term of abuse.) Macmillan was also an internationalist while Powell was a British Nationalist. He refused to serve under Alec Douglas Home, and quarrelled bitterly with Edward Heath. He had some time for Margaret Thatcher after the Falklands War but distrusted her intentions towards Northern Ireland. John Major he considered second-rate.
Powell will be remembered for two things in particular: his "rivers of blood" speech on immigration policy, which lost him his place in the Shadow Cabinet, and his belated revenge on Edward Heath when, during the February 1974 general election, he suddenly abandoned his base at Wolverhampton and called upon the electorate to vote Labour. Although Heath polled more votes in the subsequent election, he failed to win a majority of seats, the blame for which must rest with Enoch.
Simon Heffer could not write badly were he to try to do so. One either accepts his adoration for his subject, or one does not. But his book weighs a ton and cannot comfortably be read in bed. Readers of The Irish Times will find the chapters on Powell in Northern Ireland of particular interest. He was overtaken by illness before the start of the "peace process", but I am certain he would have been against it. As a nationalist himself he recognised the force of Irish nationalism. He once told me he believed there was no hope for Ireland "until history changes the agenda". Perhaps it will be our mutual membership of a United States of Europe that will bring it about. I very much hope so.
Sir Julian Critchley was a Con- servative MP for 31 years