Enoch Powell: the lonesome leader

Abstract

By all accounts Enoch Powell was not someone you would warm to, but his personal awkwardness was offset by his enduring popular appeal - a charisma that enabled support for his political causes to cross class boundaries and party affiliations. Despite his education and erudition - or perhaps because of it - he appealed to the working classes and Labour voters, and appeared as a man speaking truth unto power, unafraid to break the political taboos of the day and thereby appealing to individuals who similarly felt silenced by political developments. Therefore his mass appeal lay in his projection of himself as an outsider: the middle-class parvenu surrounded by Tory grandees; the spokesman for the oppressed white majority; the lone voice against Europe in the Conservative Party; the defender of Protestant Ulster's freedom. Support for such causes may have been the death knell for his leadership ambitions, as he was unable to make the enduring connections necessary for such a role; however, his leadership existed in a less formal sense than through a political party or government. Powell's political appeal lay in the fact that he was a self-consciously lonesome leader.