Was Enoch Powell a racist

Q. Long answer

A. He was an extreme nationalist. He was also super-intelligent - but didn't have the common sense to explain to people that he wasn't a racist. And he didn't feel it necessary to tell people that they should shun racism as a moronic spin-off of patriotism.

Q. You'd better begin at the beginning.

A. In Birmingham in April, 1968, Powell started a furore by calling for immigration flow to be cut to 'negligible proportions' and for re-emigration to be 'urgently encouraged'. He said he was filled with foreboding: 'Like the Roman, I seem to see the river Tiber foaming with much blood.'

Q. Nasty. What happened after that speech

A. Powell, the MP for Wolverhampton, was immediately sacked from the Shadow Cabinet by Tory leader Edward Heath.

Q. What else did Enoch say

A. 'We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of 50,000 dependents, who are for the most part the material of the future growth of the immigrant-descended population. It is like watching a nation building its own funeral pyre.'

Q. Sounds like racism to me.

A. In the words of an opponent, Labour's ex-chancellor Lord Healey: 'He had a very powerful intellect, but his political judgment was very mistaken. He was a romantic. He was a working-class boy who when he went to Cambridge learned to ride so he could start hunting because he believed in what he thought were aristocratic values. This I think was the key to his nationalism. He was not a racist in any sense at all. But he was an extreme nationalist.'

Q. So what was he like

A. John Enoch Powell was born in Stechford, Birmingham, only child of two schoolteachers. He could write at the age of three and his mother, 14 years younger than his father, taught him ancient Greek at the age of five. Young Jack, as he was known, was nicknamed the Professor - which is precisely what he became at the age of 25. He grew up to be an aloof, austere figure, the opposite of 'the man in the street'. But he still became one of the great populist speakers of the 20th Century.

Q. Education

A. King Edward's, Birmingham, and Trinity College, Cambridge. His tutor was A E Housman, Powell's hero, professor of Latin, and the poet who wrote A Shropshire Lad. Powell, throughout his life, wrote poetry - including a love poem to his wife Pamela on every wedding anniversary - and even in his early 80s, Powell was unable to recite on the radio Housman's famous lines

Loveliest of trees the cherry now

Iies hung with bloom along the bough

without breaking down. At Trinity, he won many prizes and scholarships and was elected a fellow at the age of 22. He was offered the chair - professorship - at the University of Sydney at the age of 25.

Q. So a long career as a man of letters

A. No. This was the war. He was offered a professorship at Durham University, but joined the Army.

Q. Commissioned

A. No. As a private.

Q. Surely he didn't stay in the ranks

A. No. He rose to brigadier - the highest through-the-ranks promotion in history.

Q. Amazing. What then

A. He served with the intelligence corps and was appointed MBE in 1943. After the war, he was elected MP and served as minister of housing before his fateful speech. After being sacked, he joined the Ulster Unionists and stood as an MP until defeat in 1987. He died in February, 1998.

Q. And so ended an interesting but flawed genius. A man of firm views, I suspect

A. Yes ... an austere Englishman to the core, Powell wore three-piece serge suits even when out in India's midday sun. He was once refused to believe that it was possible to buy shirts without detachable collars.

Q. Last word

A. Margaret Thatcher called Powell 'the best parliamentarian I ever knew'. A few years after the rivers of blood speech, Powell was interviewed on radio after he read a poem about his experiences in the Battle of El Alamein. Powell was asked how he would like to be remembered by history: He answered: 'I should like to have been killed in the war.'

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By Steve Cunningham