Review of a New Biography of Enoch Powell

By An Old Friend

Wed, Sep 16, 2020 7:47 p.m.

Review of a New Biography of Powell

https://unherd.com/2020/09/would-enoch-powell-have-supported-brexit/

I've read -- and appreciated -- Raheem Kassam's book about Powell, which sticks to immigration and its effects.  The book reviewed at that link above covers Powell's wider thoughts.  I hadn't known, for instance, that he despised the U.S. (which might be considered good taste!).

I was struck by this:

"Poor, poor Enoch," the Conservative politician Iain Macleod observed of Powell in a cruel assessment which contains a great deal of truth, "driven mad by the remorselessness of his own logic."

AOF: I wonder if that isn't true of all us national-question folks, depressed out of our minds by the metastasizing stupidity of 2020.  (I'm glad to be 72.)

N.S.: I believe that some of John Tanton's closest friends and even family came to the same conclusion and, while they never stopped loving him as a man, deserted his conservationism and the immigration patriotism that inexorably flowed from it.