Enoch Powell, Immigration and English Nationalism
Abstract
Focusing on the nature of the intra-national relations among ‘indigenous’ British peoples and their attitudes towards the ‘alien’ population that had started arriving in Britain in the late 1940s, I propose that Enoch Powell’s 1968 speeches reflected a ‘traditional’ stance towards the colonial ‘other’ as well as a concern about the demographic changes taking place in parts of Britain, especially in England, in the late 1960s. I then approach the British political elite’s treatment of Powell in the context of the prevailing institutionalised dislike for so-called populist politicians and populist politics in Britain, arguing that this was a ‘timely’ intervention to curb the rise of ‘ethnic’ English nationalism when Britain was moving from an Empire to a nation-state. The essay concludes with an assessment of the impact of Powell’s outright castigation by the officialdom on British politics and the immigration debate in Britain.