{"id":102602,"date":"2026-05-21T04:00:31","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T08:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=102602"},"modified":"2026-05-20T15:21:35","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T19:21:35","slug":"enoch-powell-from-would-be-viceroy-to-little-englander","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2026\/05\/21\/enoch-powell-from-would-be-viceroy-to-little-englander\/","title":{"rendered":"Enoch Powell, from would-be Viceroy to “Little Englander”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Niccolo Soldo<\/a> discusses the early career of Enoch Powell and an earlier speech than the famous “Rivers of Blood” speech that took his own party to task for failings in the Imperial decline after World War 2:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

AI-generated image from Fisted by Foucault<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

I’ve been on a bit of an Enoch Powell kick lately, and I’m not exactly sure as to why. Best known for his “Rivers of Blood” speech, in which he warned the UK about the dangers of mass migration, Powell was both an iconoclast and an eccentric, something that the British used to produce in spades.<\/p>\n

Think about it; as a boy of the age of six, he would finish books and then collect his parents and give them a presentation on what he learned. His teen years were focused on the Classics, and translating(!) them into English. So adept was he at this that by the time he got to Trinity College at Cambridge, he entered into every Classics competition that existed at the time, and won each and every single one during his first year. When the University’s Dean and his wife invited him for a private supper, he had the temerity to politely refuse their offer, insisting that he had work to do (more translations). He became a Professor of Greek at the ripe old age of 25.<\/p>\n

A devoted Nietzschean, Powell dreamed of becoming Viceroy of India, and he took the first opportunity to volunteer to serve his country in the war. His rise through the ranks was nothing short of incredible: Lieutenant-Colonel by 1942, and Brigadier (One-Star General) by the end of WW2. The man was the living embodiment of a 19th century German Romantic, albeit an English one at that. So thoroughly English was he that he could barely conceal his anti-Americanism, a trait that would surface from time to time over the course of decades. And yes, English, not British. Although today feted by immigration-restrictionists across the UK, his nationalism was what is known as “Little Englander”. Adding to the eccentricity, the turn away from Empire by the UK shortly after WW2 saw Powell do much the same: from golden dreams of being appointed Viceroy of India, to transforming into a Little Englander, adamant that it protect and retain all of what he felt were its best traits and characteristics, rejecting that which did not conform to this modus operandi<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It’s this overnight transformation that most piques my interest in his character because it is somewhat unique for a person of a very conservative nature to immediately accept such a dramatic shift in conditions and insist that the best must be made of it. “Empire is over. Let’s put it to bed, and let’s get on with it”, are words that are far, far beneath Powell’s level of erudition, but they do accurately describe his course correction.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Niccolo Soldo discusses the early career of Enoch Powell and an earlier speech than the famous “Rivers of Blood” speech that took his own party to task for failings in the Imperial decline after World War 2: I’ve been on a bit of an Enoch Powell kick lately, and I’m not exactly sure as to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,84,7,53],"tags":[31,1391,108,1011,1621,458,764],"class_list":["post-102602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-government","category-history","category-politics","tag-army","tag-biography","tag-coldwar","tag-colonialism","tag-enochpowell","tag-parliament","tag-university"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-qGS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102602"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102604,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102602\/revisions\/102604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}