Man Of Crises

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31661, 23 April 1968, Page 15

Man Of Crises

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright)

LONDON, April 22.

Stem faced and scholarly, Mr Enoch Powell, aged 56, is a deeply religious Rightwinger whose political career is marked by crises.

He looks a forbidding man, and his uncompromising opinions are uttered in the calm tones of a classics professor, which he once was—at Sydney University, Australia.

Mr Powell, Conservative M.P. for Wolverhampton, a Midlands city containing many coloured migrants, has remained outwardly calm about Saturday’s speech which brought a storm on his head.

A deeply-convinced high church Anglican, he strolled from a Communion service at Saint Peter’s Collegiate Church, Wolverhampton, yesterday, and remarked: “There are some things that have to be said. . . Mr Powell, who does not watch television or read the Sunday newspapers, was apparently unaware of the nation-wide criticism denouncing his speech as “evil,” “rabble-rousing” and “reminiscent of Britain’s prewar Fascist leader, Sir Oswald Mosley.” He asked reporters: “Have I really caused such a furore?” His dismissal from the Shadow Cabinet is the latest in his string of political upheavals.

He upset his Conservative colleagues by demanding a British military withdrawal East-of-Suez long before this was a Labour Government policy. And earlier, in 1958, when the Conservatives were in power, he resigned as Financial Secretary to the Treasury in protest over Government spending. He declined to serve under the Prime Ministership of Sir Alec Douglas-Home, but returned later to a Shadow portfolio under Mr Edward Heath’s leadership of the party in Opposition.