Enoch Powell: The ‘Racist’ Anti-Racist

When Lee Anderson, Deputy Chair of the Conservative Party, made some controversial and unfavourable remarks about asylum-seekers in August 2023, it was perhaps inevitable that he would be dismissed as a “pound shop Enoch Powell.” Twenty-five years after his death, and 55 years after he delivered the so-called ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, Enoch Powell still epitomises for many people the archetypal racist demagogue. Was Powell actually a racist, though? Although most people form their opinions about him based upon that famous speech in 1968, less than a decade earlier, Powell had delivered another speech that was regarded as one of the fiercest denunciations of racism ever heard in the House of Commons.

In the years following the end of the Second World War in 1945, Britain faced the loss of its empire—a process which was sometimes resisted. In countries like Malaya, Cyprus, and Kenya, the British army fought a fierce rearguard action to try and suppress nationalist revolts and to hang on to the last of their colonial possessions. Nowhere was this struggle more terrible and costly in terms of lives than in Kenya, where between 1952 and 1960, the British faced what was generally known as the ’Mau Mau’ uprising.

The Highlands of Kenya have some of the richest soils in East Africa, and the climate in that part of the country is temperate, making it a pleasant and profitable place for British settlers to live and cultivate coffee plantations. The displacement of members of the Kikuya tribe was not a major consideration. After the Second World War, some leaders of the Kikuya founded a guerilla organisation called the Kenya Land and Freedom Army, or KLFA for short. The white settlers, however, knew this group by one of its battle cries, which was Mau Mau. There is no doubt that the fighters of the KLFA carried out some dreadful murders, both against the settlers and those Africans suspected of collaborating with them. It was the stories of atrocities carried out against white people that spurred the British government to take extraordinarily savage actions against the rebels. The casualty toll on each side of the war tells its own story. A total of 10,500 black guerillas of the KLFA were killed in the course of eight years, as opposed to just twelve white soldiers. The RAF was deployed between 1953 and 1955, during which time Lincoln bombers dropped over 6 million bombs in Kenya.

In addition to military operations, the British authorities resorted to the use of concentration camps, although, of course, they did not use that particular term. The prison camps, as they were called, in which suspected members of the KLFA were held, were unbelievably brutal places. Men suspected of administering the oath that those joining the KLFA were obliged to take, were hanged publicly in front of the other prisoners. Sanitation was primitive, and the diet was impoverished. Outbreaks of typhoid and tuberculosis were common, as were deficiency diseases such as scurvy.  The worst of the camps was at Hola, and it was there that prisoners went on strike and refused to work. The response of the commandant was to order the guards to beat those who would not work until they agreed to do so. On the morning of Tuesday, March 3rd, 1959, some of the guards at Hola Camp acted on these orders and began beating a group of recalcitrant prisoners with pick handles. Eleven men were killed.

Inevitably, word began to reach Britain of the massacre, and the government was desperate to downplay what had happened. It was not all that long since films of German concentration camps, like Belsen, had been seen in cinema newsreels. It was felt that it would be very damaging to Britain’s image if it became known that this country was now operating similar camps in which people were dying of typhoid or being beaten to death by brutal guards. Great efforts were made to hush up the business and mislead the public about what had occurred.

Eventually, despite the best efforts of the government under Harold Macmillan, the awful truth about the camps in Kenya was revealed. One MP, in particular, fought hard to prevent the matter from being forgotten or suppressed. On July 27, 1959, Enoch Powell, the Member for Wolverhampton, delivered a rousing and passionate speech regarding the deaths at Hola Camp. His oration was all the more effective because it was being made by a former Minister of the government then in power—he had been appointed Junior Housing Minister in 1955 and later, in 1957, became Financial Secretary to the Treasury.  This rising star of the Conservative party was outraged at the thought that such a dreadful crime might be brushed under the carpet or made light of. He said in his speech:

We cannot say “We will have African standards in Africa, Asian standards in Asia and perhaps British standards here at home.” We have not that choice to make. We must be consistent with ourselves everywhere. All government, all influence of man upon man, rests on opinion. What we can do in Africa, where we can still govern and where we no longer govern, depends upon the opinion which is entertained of the way in which this country acts and the way in which Englishmen act. We cannot, we dare not, in Africa of all places, fall below our own highest standards in the acceptance of responsibility.

This speech was widely thought to have been a masterpiece of parliamentary rhetoric. It also made him very unpopular within his party; he was seen to be letting the side down. It is ironic in the extreme that the man who came to be seen as synonymous with racist views in post-war Britain was at one time renowned for his principled condemnation of racism, a stance for which he was prepared to gamble his whole career.