Age, Biography, and Wiki
Enoch Powell was born on June 16, 1912, in Stechford, Birmingham. He was the only child of Albert Enoch Powell, a primary school headmaster, and his wife Ellen Mary Powell. Powell was a prodigious child, known for his early interest in reading and academics. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, and later became a professor of Ancient Greek at Sydney University before entering politics.
| Occupation | Politician |
|---|---|
| Date of Birth | 16 June 1912 |
| Age | 113 Years |
| Birth Place | Birmingham, England |
| Horoscope | Gemini |
| Country | England |
| Date of death | 8 February, 1998 |
| Died Place | London, England |
Height, Weight & Measurements
There is limited information available about Enoch Powell's height and weight. These details are not typically highlighted in biographical accounts of his life.
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Dating & Relationship Status
Enoch Powell married Pamela Powell in 1952, and they had two daughters together. There is no public record of other significant relationships or marriages throughout his life.
He was the only child of Albert Enoch Powell, a primary school headmaster, and his wife, Ellen Mary Ellen, who was the daughter of Henry Breese, a Liverpool policeman, and his wife Eliza, who had been a teacher. His mother did not like his name, and as a child he was known as "Jack". At the age of three, Powell was nicknamed "the Professor" because he used to stand on a chair and describe the stuffed birds that his grandfather had shot, which were displayed in his parents' home. In 1918 the family moved to Kings Norton, where Powell remained until he went up to the University of Cambridge in 1930.
Powell read avidly from a young age; as early as three, he could "read reasonably well". Though not wealthy, the Powells were financially comfortable, and their home included a library. By the age of six, Powell loved to read. Every Sunday he would give lectures to his parents on the books that he had read, and he would also conduct evensong and preach a sermon. Once he was old enough to go out on his own, Powell would walk around rural Worcestershire with the aid of Ordnance Survey maps, which instilled in him a love for landscape and cartography.
Powell's mother began teaching him Greek in the two weeks of Christmas break in 1925. By the time he started the next term, he had attained a level in Greek that most pupils would reach after two years. Within two terms, Powell was top of the classics form.
Precociously, Powell won all three of the school's classics prizes and would win more later in his school career. In the fifth form and began to translate Herodotus's Histories. He entered the sixth form two years before his classmates, and was remembered as a hard-working student. Powell also won a medal in gymnastics and gained a proficiency in the clarinet. He contemplated studying at the Royal Academy of Music, but his parents persuaded him to try for a scholarship at Cambridge.
After graduating from Cambridge, Powell stayed on at Trinity College as a fellow, spending much of his time studying ancient manuscripts in Latin and producing academic works in Greek and Welsh. He won the Craven travelling scholarship, which he used to fund travels to Italy, where he researched Greek manuscripts. He also learned Italian. Powell was still convinced of the inevitability of war with Germany after Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933: he told his father in 1934, "I want to be in the army from the first day that Britain goes to war". He suffered a spiritual crisis when he heard of the Night of the Long Knives in July 1934, which shattered his vision of German culture.
Powell returned to the government in July 1960, when he was appointed Minister of Health, although he did not become a member of the Cabinet until the 1962 reshuffle. During a meeting with parents of babies that had been born with deformities caused by the drug thalidomide, he refused to meet any babies affected by the drug. Powell also refused to launch a public inquiry, and resisted calls to issue a warning against any left-over thalidomide pills that might remain in people's medicine cabinets (as US President John F. Kennedy had done).
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| Husband | Pamela Wilson (m. 2 January 1952) |
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Net Worth and Salary
As Enoch Powell passed away in 1998, his net worth at the time of his death is not publicly disclosed. However, his income primarily came from his roles as a politician and academic. Had he been alive today, his net worth would likely reflect his continued influence and writings, potentially through book royalties and speaking engagements.
On 21 December 1955 Powell was appointed parliamentary secretary to Duncan Sandys at the Ministry of Housing. In early 1956 he spoke for the Housing Subsidies Bill in the Commons and argued for the rejection of an amendment that would have hindered slum clearances. He also spoke in support of the Slum Clearances Bill, which provided entitlement for full compensation for those who purchased a house after August 1939 and still occupied it in December 1955 if this property would be compulsorily purchased by the government if it was deemed unfit for human habitation. In early 1956 Powell attended a subcommittee on immigration control as a housing minister and advocated immigration controls.
In January 1958 Powell resigned, along with the Chancellor of the Exchequer Peter Thorneycroft and his Treasury colleague Nigel Birch, in protest of government plans for increased expenditure; he was a staunch advocate of disinflation, or, in modern terms, a monetarist, and a believer in market forces. Powell was also a member of the Mont Pelerin Society. The by-product of this expenditure was the printing of extra money to pay for it all, which Powell believed to be the cause of inflation, and in effect a form of taxation, as the holders of money find their money is worth less. Retail price index inflation was between 3.7 and 3 per cent at the time of his resignation.
Political Career
- Member of Parliament: Powell was first elected to Parliament in 1950 as a Conservative MP. He served in several ministerial positions, including Minister of Health from 1960 to 1963.
- Health Minister Achievements: During his tenure as Health Minister, he launched the Hospital Plan, which aimed to modernize the NHS by building new hospitals and closing outdated facilities.
- Ulster Unionist Party: In 1974, Powell left the Conservative Party to join the Ulster Unionist Party, representing Northern Ireland until 1987.
Powell took a course in Urdu at the School of Oriental Studies (now SOAS, University of London), because he felt that his long-cherished ambition of becoming Viceroy of India would be unattainable without knowledge of an Indian language. Later, during his political career, he would speak to his Indian-born constituents in Urdu. Powell went on to learn other languages, such as Welsh, modern Greek, and Portuguese.
On 18 May 1940 Powell was commissioned as a second lieutenant onto the General List. He was transferred to the Intelligence Corps and later promoted to captain, posted as GSO3 (Intelligence) to the 1st (later 9th) Armoured Division. During this time, he taught himself Portuguese; as insufficient Russian-speaking officers were available at the War Office, his knowledge of Russian and his textual analysis skills were used to translate a Russian parachute training manual; he was convinced that the Soviet Union must eventually enter the war on the Allied side.
In mid-November 1953, Powell secured a place on the 1922 Committee's executive at the third attempt. Butler also invited him onto the committee that reviewed party policy for the general election, which he attended until 1955. Powell was a member of the Suez Group of MPs who were against the removal of British troops from the Suez Canal, because such a move would demonstrate, Powell argued, that Britain could no longer maintain a position there, and that any claim to the Suez Canal would therefore be illogical. However, after the troops had left in June 1956 and the Egyptians nationalised the Canal a month later, Powell opposed the attempt to retake the canal in the Suez Crisis because he thought the British no longer had the resources to be a world power.
When Macmillan succeeded Eden as prime minister, Powell was offered the office of Financial Secretary to the Treasury on 14 January 1957. This office was the Chancellor of the Exchequer's deputy and the most important job outside the Cabinet.
As health minister he developed the 1962 Hospital Plan. He began a debate on the neglect of psychiatric institutions, calling for them to be replaced by wards in general hospitals. The speech catalysed debate. It was one of several strands that led to the Care in the Community initiative of the 1980s. In 1993, however, Powell stated that the criminally insane should have never been released and that the problem was one of funding. He said the new way of caring for the mentally ill cost more, not less, than the old way because community care was decentralised and intimate as well as being "more human"; and his successors had not, Powell stated, provided the money for local authorities to spend on mental health care. Institutional care had therefore been neglected and there was not investment in community care.
Social Network
Given the era in which Enoch Powell lived and worked, he was not active on social media platforms. His influence was primarily through public speeches and writings.
Before entering politics Powell was a classical scholar and a brigadier, having served in the British Army during the Second World War. He wrote both poetry and books on classical and political subjects. He is remembered particularly for his views on immigration and demographic change. In 1968 Powell attracted attention nationwide for his "Rivers of Blood" speech, in which he criticised immigration to Britain, and especially the rapid influx from the Commonwealth of Nations (former colonies of the British Empire) in the post-war era. He opposed the Race Relations Bill, a major anti-discrimination bill which ultimately became law. His speech was criticised by some of his own party members and The Times as racialist. Heath, who was then the leader of the Conservative Party and the leader of the Opposition, dismissed Powell from the Shadow Cabinet the day after the speech. In the aftermath several polls suggested that between 67 and 82 per cent of the British population agreed with Powell.
In October 1941 Powell was posted to Cairo in the Kingdom of Egypt and then transferred back to the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. He was promoted to major in May 1942 and then to lieutenant colonel in August 1942. In that role he helped to plan the Second Battle of El Alamein, having previously helped to plan the attack on Erwin Rommel's supply lines. The following year, he was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for his military service. During his time in Algiers, Powell began to distrust the United States' position. Powell's suspicion of the anti-British Empire nature of the US federal government's foreign policy continued for the remainder of the war and into his subsequent post-war political career.
During the late 1950s Powell promoted control of the money supply to prevent inflation and, during the 1960s, was an advocate of free market policies, which at the time were seen as extreme, unworkable and unpopular. Powell advocated the privatisation of the Post Office and the telephone network as early as 1964. He both scorned the idea of "consensus politics" and wanted the Conservative Party to become a modern business-like party, freed from its old aristocratic and "old boy network" associations. In his 1958 resignation over public spending and what he saw as an inflationary economic policy, he anticipated almost exactly the views that during the 1980s came to be described as "monetarism".
Education
- University of Cambridge: Powell attended Trinity College, Cambridge, where he developed his academic skills and interests.
- School of Oriental and African Studies: He also studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies, furthering his knowledge in languages and cultures.
In summary, Enoch Powell's life was marked by his academic prowess and influential political career. His legacy continues to be discussed in British political circles, reflecting his enduring impact on the country's social and political landscape.
Powell attended a dame school until he was eleven. He was then a pupil for three years at King's Norton Grammar School for Boys before he won a scholarship to King Edward's School in Birmingham in 1925, aged 13. The legacy of the First World War loomed large for Powell; Almost all his teachers had fought in the war. He formed the view that Britain and Germany would fight again.
Aged 17 Powell sat the classics scholarship paper at Trinity College, Cambridge, and won the top award. Powell studied at Trinity from 1930 to 1933. He became almost a recluse and devoted his time to studying. The British literary magazine Granta called him "The Hermit of Trinity". At the age of 18 his first paper to a classical journal was published (in German) in the Philologische Wochenschrift, on a line of Herodotus. While studying at Cambridge, Powell became aware that there was another classicist who signed his name as "John U. Powell". Powell decided to use his middle name and began referring to himself as "Enoch Powell". Powell won the Craven scholarship at the beginning of his second term in 1931. It was at Cambridge that Powell fell under the influence of the poet A. E. Housman, then Professor of Latin at the university.
In 1937 he was appointed Professor of Greek at the University of Sydney, aged 25, (failing in his aim of beating Nietzsche's record of becoming a professor at 24). He was the youngest professor in the British Empire. He revised Henry Stuart Jones's edition of Thucydides' Historiae for the Oxford University Press in 1938. His most lasting contribution to classical scholarship was his Lexicon to Herodotus, published by Cambridge University Press the same year, which was well received by critics.
Soon after his arrival in Australia, he was appointed Curator of the Nicholson Museum at the University of Sydney. He informed the vice-chancellor that war would soon begin in Europe and that when it did, he would be heading home to enlist in the army. In his inaugural lecture as professor of Greek in May 1938, he condemned Britain's policy of appeasement. At the outbreak of war, Powell immediately returned to England.
