1,473 words

Raheem Kassam
Enoch Was Right: ‘Rivers of Blood’ 50 Years On
Independently published, 2018

“Up like a rocket” is how Enoch Powell predicted his Birmingham speech would go on April 20th, 1968. And so it did. This, of course, was his “Rivers of Blood” speech, (more…)

1,703 words

Paul Corthorn
Enoch Powell: Politics and Ideas in Modern Britain
London: Oxford University Press, 2019

Before reading this new biography of Enoch Powell (1912-1998), I’d expected it would be a rollicking Roy Jenkins kind of Parliamentary biography, full of witty asides in the smoking room and dark mutterings through the Octagon. Actually, it’s a detailed, often dry, but generally surprising survey of a political career. (more…)

2,295 words

“Stern and unbending Toryism has never paid dividends to the Conservative Party, nor in practice when in office has the party ever taken that line.”

 — Robert Norman William Blake, The Conservative Party from Peel to Major (2011) (more…)