Powell says Heath fears him

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32450, 10 November 1970, Page 19

Powell says Heath fears him

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) LONDON, November 9. The Right-wing Conservative M.P., Mr Enoch Powell, who has been the centre of a series of political storms over race relations and immigration, alleges that the Prime Minister (Mr Heath) is afraid of him.

In a one-hour pre-recorded television documentary, to be screened tonight, Mr Powell says: “Fear seems to be the only thing that rationalises the Prime Minister’s behaviour where I am concerned.** Mr Powell, for the first time, airs his views openly on Mr Heath and the former Labour Prime Minister, Mr Harold Wlson.

fa April, 1968, Mr Powell was dismissed from the then Shadow Cabinet because of a speech in Birmingham considered by Mr Heath to have been “racialist in tone, and liable to exacerbate racial tensions.”

Mr Powell says in the television interview: “We all have things which we fear, arid Wk all fear things which

we don’t fully understand, and forces which we apprehend may perhaps be bigger than ourselves.” Of immigration problems within his own Midlands Constituency of Wolverhampton, Mr Powell says: “The Asian population is a piece of Asia encamped in Wolverhampton. Asians are a caravan, and one cannot be of service in the same way to the members of the caravan as one can to one’s own fellow-countrymen.” Mr Powell says that one of the objects of his going into politics was to try to preserve the British Empire, which he considered was best centred on India. He describes Mr Wilson as ' 9 ne of the most astute ■politicians of the day.