Enoch Powell: Britain’s Populist Short-Circuit

Enoch Powell: Britain’s Populist Short-Circuit

No public figure has transitioned from the status of ‘respectable company’ to ‘pariah’ faster than the British statesman Enoch Powell. On 20 April 1968, he addressed a gathering of conservatives in Birmingham on immigration:  A week or two ago, I fell into conversation with a constituent, a middle-aged, quite ordinary working man. After a sentence or two about the weather, he suddenly said: “If I had the money to go, I wouldn’t stay in this cou…