Powellism

Powellism is the name given to the political views of Conservative and Ulster Unionist politician Enoch Powell. They derive from his High Tory and libertarian outlook.

The word "Powellism" was, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, coined by The Economist on 17 July 1965. However the day before Iain Macleod had reviewed a book of Powell's speeches entitled A Nation Not Afraid in The Spectator in which he mentioned the word:

Enoch Powell has the finest mind in the House of Commons. The best trained and the most exciting. There is an attitude of mind which can be called "Powellism" and it is excellent that now we have the evidence collected in a book.

The word was originally used to describe Powell's views on economics, and Powell offered his own definition: "[Powellism is] an almost unlimited faith in the ability of the people to get what they want through peace, capital, profit and a competitive market".

Powell was a romantic British nationalist and viewed the nation state as "the ultimate political reality. There is no political reality beyond it". He believed the British Parliament to be the expression of the British nation and his opposition to British membership of the European Economic Community stemmed from his belief that it would abolish the sovereignty of the British state and nation.

His views on Britain's relations with the rest of the world derived ultimately from the belief in the independent nation-state. The United Nations, to Powell, was an "absurdity and a monstrosity" by its very nature because it sought to preserve the international status quo without the use of force but that the "rise and growth and disappearance of nations is mediated by force...Without war the sovereign nation is not conceivable".

Powell's opposition to mass immigration derived from his nationalist outlook. Powell claimed that the children of Commonwealth immigrants to Britain did "not, by being born in England, become an Englishman. In law he becomes a United Kingdom citizen by birth; in fact he is a West Indian or an Asian still...he will by the very nature of things have lost one country without gaining another". Powell claimed that Commonwealth immigration to Britain post-1945 was "in point of numbers out of all comparison greater than anything these islands have ever experienced before in a thousand years of history". Powell asserted that as this immigration was concentrated in urban areas, the result would be violence: "I do not believe it is in human nature that a country...should passively watch the transformation of whole areas which lie at the heart of it into alien territory". Powell claimed his warnings were political:

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