IMMIGRANTS TO BRITAIN ENOCH POWELL’S VIEWS ON THE UGANDAN ASIANS ISSUE

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33003, 24 August 1972, Page 12

IMMIGRANTS TO BRITAIN ENOCH POWELL’S VIEWS ON THE UGANDAN ASIANS ISSUE

[By

DAVID McKIE

in the "Guardian." Manchester (August 17). J

[Reprinted by arrangement] If there was ever any doubt that the crisis over the Ugandan Asians would prove a serious political embarrassment for the Government, Mr Enoch Powell’s speech to the Merridale Ladies’ Luncheon Club yesterday must finally have removed it. The speech could hardly have been more cunningly contrived to make a difficult predicament even worse.

There are two particularly, damaging lines of attack in it. There is the suggestion that Uganda’s displaced Asians are the thin end of a million-plus wedge, and that if Amin succeeds others may follow. And there are the repeated charges that Mr Heath and his senior colleagues are guilty of a series of very grave offences, including refusal to face facts, suppression of the truth, and an oblivious disregard of the nation’s true interests with the additional allegation that “when Ministers assert the existence of such a special obligation or responsibility, they are asserting what they know, or ought to know to be without foundation." Aimed at Rippon This shaft seems directly aimed at the kind of remarks made by Mr Rippon at Entebbe Airport, when he said: “We will accept our responsibilities and we have a responsibility which we have always accepted for people who hold United Kingdom passports.” Mr Rippon, Mr Powell seems to have been suggesting, was presiding over a national disaster —and a disaster which was entirely needless. There are a good many Conservative M.P.s who are depressed and apprehensive about the prospective arrival of the Uganda Asians and who have been waiting with hope but no great confidence to see whether Mr Rippon’s mission might avert it. All the reports so far have suggested that the Asians will be coming—at least 30,000 of them and possibly more. But as one of these M.P.s said the other day, they are not ready to accept the worst simply on the basis of what they read in the papers. (They may have been a little reassured by Mr

Rippon’s press conference yesterday.) But there is a substantial difference of mood between some of the Midland M.P.s who have been making their fears known to the Home and Foreign Offices and that of Mr Powell. The others are desperately anxious to believe the best: Mr Powell is ready — and with something like relish, to judge from the tang of his speech yesterday — to proclaim the worst. It is one indication of the way in which many Conservative M.P.s may share Mr Powell’s atttitude on a given question, but would still not wish to be regarded in any way as his allies. It is sometimes assumed that Mr Powell is the leader of the Conservative antiMarketeers. On any test of sheer eloquence or intellectual force, that might be trues- But it is not the political reality. Several of the most dedicated antiMarketeers would shudder at the very suggestion. The real core of the opposition has always been men like Sir Derek Walker-Smith, Sir Robin Turton, and Mr Neil Marten. Mr Powell may be the outstanding antiMarketeer, but he is not the leader.

There are plenty of Conservative M.P.s who share his misgivings about the Government’s change of emphasis on aid to industry. But significantly there were only four or five who were ready to sit up late battling it out over the epitome of the Government’s new interventionism, the Industry Bill. And even if Mr Powell’s willingness to attack the Government and desert it in the lobbies may be shared on each of these issues, there are other paths down which he goes alone. His attacks on the Government’s industrial relations legislation, for instance: there are plenty who say

(behind their hands) that there will have to be changes, but no-one who sails in against it with the same joyous fervour as Mr Powell. There are times, most Conservative M.P.s believe, when you need to rally round the Government. That is a belief Mr Powell seems to have abandoned some time ago.

Worst of all, many who would otherwise be sympathetic have been offended by the kind of denunciation which time and time again he has unleashed on Mr Heath and his senior colleagues. To most Conservative M.P.s. these long ago overstepped any reasonable mark. Where appeal lies But of course the power of Mr Powell has never really been his appeal in the Parliamentary party. It is the impact in the country which counts, and here the welcome for w’hat he said yesterday is likely to be far warmer and more immediate. Conservative M.P.s from towns with high immigration, like Birmingham, have been saying to Ministers: whatever happens, the delicate racial balance we have achieved thus far must not be disturbed. Mr Powell’s speech to the ladies of Merridale yesterday was a classic of the genre. There were the usual allegations of conspiracy to hide the facts and deceive the people. He began with a comparison of Government inertia now with Government inertia in the face of the Nazi threat. Then came the charge that Government and press had "sedulously denied the British people the knowledge of what is being brought to pass in their own country.” After that there was the allegation that news of racial outbreaks in Lancashire had been withheld from the public by press and police. There are two ingredients here which are likely to make for popular appeal. First, it serves to confirm what people feel in their bones about politicians ignoring them and serving interests other than their own. Second, it is ail extremely simple: all set out in black and white, not the language of compromise which people are used to hearing. On Tuesday, the •’Sun,'* which is celebrating the holidays with a series of opinion columns by guest writers, gave its space to Jack Charlton, the Leeds and England centre half, a known Labour supporter who was once turned out of a local Conservative club for writing a Labour Party pamphlet. Although he always voted Labour, he wrote, he enjoyed meeting clear-thinking people, regardless of their party — such as Harold Wilson, Lord Robens, and “everybody’s friend in the Midlands, Enoch Powell.” In general, politicians annoyed him — especially Conservative ones — but Enoch was an exception. “We’ve got a responsibility to the people who made up the British Empire. We’ve got a responsibility to the Commonwealth. But we’ve also got a responsibility to the working public in England. And it’s only through people like Powell that these issues are ever made clear to us.

“. . . I’d like to know what they (the politicians) honestly think about the 40,000 immigrants who are probably going to be landed on us from Uganda. I don’t think they will have much effect on Ted Heath, sailing around Cowes on Little White Dove, or whatever his boat’s called. But they’ll certainly have a great bearing on the people of Bradford or Birmingham or Leeds.” Isolated position It is one of the compensations of Powell’s exposed and isolated position in the party at Westminster that he now enjoys what might be called the innocence of opposition: the ability to make cut and dried statements without the fear of having to work one’s way out of them later. He was, of course, a member of the Government which introduced the 1962 act which enables the Ugandan Asians to claim a haven here, and he was at pains yesterday to show that in his view that act had conferred no such right. (Others, including presumably Mr Heath, and certainly including old associate, lain Macleod, nave of course taken a diametrically opposite view of what was agreed then.) But in general, there is a freedom which can be exercised in talking to the ladies of the Merridale Ladies Luncheon Club which is not given to those who are trying to negotiate with General Amin. Mr Rippon of course, was chosen for this crisis as a reassuring figure — a Monday Club man. well on the Right of his party, a four- , square emblem of British interests. He has returned looking rather less foursquare than they did. There , will be many, and not only Conservatives, who will have closed their papers, or turned . off the television last night. ■ with a fervent sigh of relief : that "at last, someone’s said , it;” coupled, perhaps, with: the thought that if only) : Enoch were in charge, things 1 might be different.