POLITICAL COMMENTARY
Elucidating Enoch
AUBERON WAUGH
Anyone concerned with politics nowadays is invariably asked from time to time what chance he gives Mr Enoch Powell of coming to power. It is a boring question because there are too many imponderables involved for anyone's opinion to be of greater or less value than that of anyone else. However, among all the uncertainties of political life there is one certainty which shines out like a beacon—that if the Conservatives lose the next election, they will subject Mr Heath to a treatment which will be far swifter than anything thought up by Dr Guillotine.
In a three-cornered fight between Mr Powell, Mr Maudling and the Big Bread- winner Hogg, it is hard to imagine the circumstances in which Mr Powell would emerge victorious, even allowing for a reasonable influx of dedicated lingerie manufacturers and frenetic hosiers at the next election. Neither Mr Macleod nor Sir Alec Douglas-Home is in the running at present, and neither (for different reasons) seems likely to make any running. Mr Powell's chances would depend on the amount of constituency pressure he could command in his support and also—far less easy to measure—on the extent to which Mrs would be prepared to succumb to con- stituency pressure in a secret ballot. My own money is on the proposition that Mr Powell would be nowhere, and if he is staking everything on the bet that the Heath-Home axis will finally succeed in losing the next election—many quite eminent Tories appear to be of this opinion—then he must be pre- pared for an ugly shock when he goes to collect his winnings.
A more likely course of events, it seems to me, is that the Tories will win the next election (they are odds on) and that the Heath-Home leadership will then create, or allow to be created, such a political mess as will make Mr Wilson, in retrospect, appear to have been the original Wizard of Oz. This might result merely in the return (in due course) of a Labour administration; it might result in a coalition government; finally, as your political correspondent, who is given to an apocalyptical turn of mind, rather be- lieves, it might result in the collapse of our parliamentary system, with all its unique and endearing attributes. In either of the second two eventualities, Mr Powell's chances would be very good indeed. He would be the main opposition to any Heath- Home-Callaghan coalition, since the left has nobody of his political calibre or of his popular appeal, and when the coalition government merely repeated and com- pounded the earlier errors of its constituent parts, he would be the natural inheritor. If, on the other hand, the parliamentary system were to break down, he is the only politician of any stature (with Mr Healey, perhaps, as a fancied outsider) who would be uncon- taminated by its failure.
All this may seem to be in the realm of political science-fiction. I do not think it is, but in any case if one is not prepared to indulge in a little political science-fiction the study of Mr Powell loses most of its interest, since his influence on British politics to date has been extremely small. He has persuaded both major parties to tighten up on their immigration policies, it is true, but of the country. He has not succeeded in persuading the Conservative party to abandon a prices and incomes policy, as Mr Paul Foot claims in a book published this week (The Rise of Enoch Powell, Corn- market Press 30s; Penguin Special 4s). In fact, the Tories are still committed to the half-baked and discredited schemewithwhich they left office, the so-called 'voluntary prices and incomes policy'. He has not per- suaded Tories to abandon East of Suez, where they still cling to Mr Heath's fantasies of revived Imperial glory. He has made few converts to the floating pound. Where his scepticism on the Common Market, or on Rhodesian sanctions, is concerned, he is tagging along behind a popular movement rather than leading one, and there is no sign that he has had much influence yet.
Understandably, perhaps, Mr Foot con- centrates almost entirely on his subject's attitude to immigration and race. The book's sub-heading, in fact, calls it 'An Examina- tion of Enoch Powell's Attitude to Immi- gration and Race'—on the supposition, presumably, that his rise is very largely due to his stand on these questions. In fact, Mr Foot makes an extremely plausible case for believing that Mr Powell's popular support derives from the immigration question alone, and that the other doctrines—including those attributed to him, but never yet expressed, like a desire to abolish free hospitals and schooling—would be anathema to the masses, if ever they were understood. No doubt Mr Foot is right in his second point, but I think he overstates the first. There are vast areas of England—by far the greater part—where immigration is no problem at all, where words like 'assisted repatriation' and 'stringent control' are no more than worthy sentiments to be applauded, perhaps, but having no practical relevance.
While it is true that Mr Powell's rise can be attributed largely to the publicity which his views on race have received in our neuro- tically race-conscious press, as Mr Foot points out at considerable length, I do not think it is the race issue which quite explains his popularity in areas like Wiltshire and Somerset where your political corre- spondent resides. In such regions, as I have said, dislike and suspicion of foreigners and darkies may be thought a worthy sentiment, but it is not one of any immediate relevance. Mr Powell's popularity in the country as a whole can only be explained by the way in which the publicity accruing to his stand on the race issue has identified him as the main spokesman against the consensus—the con- sensus being comprised of discredited Wilson, unconvincing Ted Heath, 'match- sticks' Douglas-Home, 'civilised' Mr Jenkins, 'babies' Stewart and the whole melancholy shooting-match.
Of course it is true that very few indeed of those who blithely nominate Mr Powell as their pin-up of the year have any under- standing of the package deal he offers. Nor is there any reason why people should have any greater understanding of the blood- curdling panaceas of the left, if there were a spokesman on the left who possessed Mr Powell's political acumen. But the fact is that there is no such figure on the left at present, and unless Mr Foot fancies himself Perhaps this is why Mr Foot is at his h convincing when he analyses Mr Pout chances of coming to power. After a paragraphs on the Weimar Republic. concludes of Britain: 'The "great simpl ties" of the right may be politically attrach but not materially so. Politics may humbug, but profits are rising, as are sh and property values. . . . Unemp toy meni negligible, the gross national product a tinues to rise, and, even if politicians a politics are widely debased, there is as no material case for reverting to the "gr, simplicities".'
The trouble here is that Mr Foot pitel his guilt-by-association too high. Perk coloured immigrants are a scapegoat, I Mr Powell has not yet attempted to bla any economic or political ills which aft the country on them. If our affairs are rosy as Mr Foot claims (in this paragrai at least) he should take a look at California of Mr Ronald Reagan, wh some eighteen million voters have ci sciously and deliberately chosen to try right wing solution to such minor in veniences as they suffer. And if our aff are not so rosy—if the arrival of a Conse tive government were to bring the genuine decline in the living standards the working class—then many of the Wei Republic arguments would hold good somewhat diluted form, always remembe that the scapegoats will probably not immigrants so much as politicians. Im grants merely serve to keep Mr Powell the public eye at the present time.
My own criticism of Mr Powell, w Mr Foot mentions only to draw the opp' conclusion, is that he does not extend belief in the operation of free market fo either to the international labour math to the social services.
The full extent of Mr Foot's misun standing is only apparent in the last cha Quite suddenly, the Footish Alterna emerges—open door to immigration open-ended commitment to social wel spending. Of course, this programme about as much popular potential as my programme for using the international labour market as a means of rational' the welfare state and several other thin, well. But Mr Foot has an almost sub lack of any awareness that his solu would never be acceptable, if understo anything like a majority of the B electorate.
He contends that it was the Conseil government's comparative laisser-faire led to housing shortages and the problems connected with immigration becomes speechless with fury that Mr P is now cashing in on the resentments Y, this laisser-faire created. All that one reasonably deduce from this is that Powell is a much cleverer politician Mr Foot. Here is the Foolish solo '[Powellism] can only be decisively permanently defeated when its oPP seek to mobilise the masses as Powell done. Such a mobilisation is quite Po For the real reason for the widespr security and distrust of politics, for shortages which cramp the lives of all tiny minority, can be found—not in immigration of black and brown work but in the mean, ugly, elitist capital" which Enoch Powell as much as any a champion.'
Well, off you trot, my lad. The with their insecurity, distrust of poll and general shortages_ are waiting.
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