Ending in Failure

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Enoch Powell was one of the most famous, or infamous, British politicians of the twentieth century. Today he is remembered almost exclusively for his 1968 Rivers of Blood speech – a prescient foreboding or a racist polemic according to his supporters and detractors respectively – after which Powell became inescapably linked to the issue of immigration. In the five decades since 1968, few politicians have equalled Powell’s public profile, fewer still have attracted the same levels of support and opposition. Yet in reality Powell’s character and his politics were far more complex than his popular caricature could possibly allow.

A classical scholar, an economic proto-Thatcherite, an advocate of parliamentary tradition, a romantic defender of institutions, a sceptic of both the EEC and NATO; Powell was often the political outsider, challenging the consensus of the post-war period. While some of his ideas – most prominently his monetarist economics – afterwards became mainstream, others such as his racial views conspicuously did not.

Powell’s ultimate historical break from the political mainstream was driven by a stubborn pursuit of unsullied principle, yet also by a strong personal distaste for Edward Heath and the Conservative Party leadership. Once spoken of as a future Conservative leader, Powell’s political career effectively ended with his defection to the Ulster Unionists in 1974. Although his approval rate among the general electorate remained high throughout the 1970s, Powell would never come close to the top job, that of Prime Minister.

But what if…?​
 
“Enoch Powell was unique in the absolutism of the intellectual and moral propositions on which he based his arguments. When he was Professor of Greek at Sydney his colleagues used to call him “the textual pervert”. He built glass towers of dazzling logical integrity, whose foundations in the real world became more and more precarious as they rose higher and higher. In politics as in life, a logical conclusion is usually a reduction ad absurdum.”
– Denis Healey (Labour politician)

“There was nothing languid or easygoing about Enoch Powell...he was probably the most intellectually formidable of the men who have passed through the Research Department. He took an interest in almost every subject, and on almost every subject he had a strong and pungently expressed views. Only some of these were eccentric.”
– Rab Butler (Conservative politician)

“He simply believes in Order and Authority and is always prepared to offer a half-brilliant, half-mad, intellectual defence of them.”
– Henry Fairlie (Spectator journalist)

“The Tory Kingdom would sooner or later have been his to command, for he had all the shining qualities which the others lacked. Heath would never have outmanoeuvred him; Thatcher would never have stepped into the vacant shoes. It was a tragedy for Enoch, and a tragedy for the rest of us too.”
– Michael Foot (Labour politician)

“A once-bisexual man, free-thinking and sensitive, seduced and finally trapped by the chearrs of the mob: a free spirit cast in the role of populist bigot.”
- Matthew Parris (Conservative politician)

“[on attempts to portray Powell as a future party leader] It is nonsense, of course. It would make as much sense for us to try to threaten the nation with Michael Foot as leader of the Labour Party
– Christopher Chataway (Conservative politician)

“The one I really can’t do at all is Enoch Powell. I put on a moustache and a Homburg but I can’t get the voice right.”
– Mike Yarwood (Impressionist)
 
Chapter One

“It so happens that I never talk about race. I do not know what race is.”


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From – The Encyclopaedia of British Politics (2010)


"CONSERVATIVE LEADERSHIP ELECTION, 1965: The 1965 Conservative Leadership election was held in July of 1965 to find a successor to Sir Alec Douglas-Home. This was the first such contest where the party leader was to be formally elected by the parliamentary Conservative Party.

The initial leading candidates were the Shadow Chancellor Edward Heath, and the Shadow Foreign Secretary Reginald Maudling. Both men were younger figures within the party and considered “modernisers”. Possible contenders who declined to stand were Quintin Hogg, Peter Thorneycroft, and Iain Macleod. Also standing was Shadow Transport Minister Enoch Powell. Powell was considered unlikely to win himself, and more likely to draw support away from Heath.

The result of the first and only ballot, held on 27th July 1965, was as follows:

Edward Heath – 150
Reginald Maudling – 133
Enoch Powell – 15

While Heath had won a narrow majority (50.4%) of the vote, this was considered an insufficient margin for victory under the then rules. However Maudling conceded defeat after this first ballot and Heath was declared elected as party leader[1].
At the time, Powell’s poor showing was considered a setback for his own leadership ambitions. His public profile would however grow considerably under Heath’s leadership. Both Maudling and Powell would be candidates in future leadership elections."


From – The Time of My Life, Denis Healey (1992).

“…Oftentimes the problem with setting defence spending levels was the institutional tendency towards throwing good money after bad. I found that whenever I selected any particular project to axe – and these were typically projects first commissioned by one of my predecessors – I would soon be told that we had already spend many millions of pounds, and that to abandon the project with nothing to show for that spending. Of course the alternative was to keep on spending, with no guarantee that the new jet fighters, or weapons system, or whatever the project may have been, would not be obsolete by the time it delivered. In many ways this was a genuine reflection of the long lead times typical of cutting edge defence development. By the late nineteen sixties state of the art jet fighters and other such military hardware took many years to develop before coming on line. And in turn, because we could never know for certain exactly what our defence priorities would be five, ten, fifteen years hence, multiple simultaneous projects would be run – each based of a different projected future threat. Putting our eggs in more than one basket came at a cost[2].

But on the other hand of course, there were other factors at play. There was inter-service rivalry and the multitude of petty fiefdoms that exist within the MOD are no fewer in number than in any other Whitehall department. Over the course of my six years at Defence, I came to learn of the pet projects of various members of the top brass. Ultimately I outlasted them all, and my political longevity aided considerably in getting the Government’s policy through – here as in many other matters[3].

Throughout our time in office, and most especially in the years 1966-1968, the Labour Government faced the pressures of budget spending cuts. These pressures fell very heavily on Defence – the Labour Party was (and still is) not sentimental about my department, and a million pounds cut for there was a million pounds that didn’t need to be cut from hospitals or pensions. In 1967 alone for instance, I was called upon to make cuts of some £100 million[4]. Already I had made considerable efficiencies in light of our new greatly reduced role ‘East of Suez’, and yet still there was near unrelenting pressure to find savings wherever they could be found.

So it was that more often than not I sharpened the axe and cancelled projects with sunk costs into the tens if not hundreds of millions of pounds. One such occasion came with the cancelling of an order for twenty “state of the art” jet planes from the United States. Here also was a common conflict between two sets of political priorities – between on the one hand supporting our native industry and workers by ordering from British firms, or on the other securing whichever contract could deliver the goods at the lowest cost to my department, and ultimately to Treasury budgets. Earlier in the decade economy had generally won over patriotism, and American firms had filled MOD contacts; now a still greater need for economy would require us to cancel entirely those contracts.

As ever there was grumbling from the hawkish elements in the press, and from my internal critics in the MOD. Our relationship with the Americans was also strained, and we had to resort to promising new orders for after the upcoming election. The Treasury however were satisfied, both for the savings and for the considerable improvement to our balance of payments. I therefore like to think that in some small part I aided the improvement in our economic position towards the end of the nineteen sixties[5].

The Chancellor would of course attribute credit rather differently.”


From – Enoch Powell: The unauthorised biography (1999)

“…Though Powell had served as a Member of Parliament since 1950, and in Cabinet for four years under Macmillan, by the late 1960s his political career appeared to have reached something of a dead end. His leadership ambitions had been shown in 1965 to be embarrassingly ill-supported. Likewise his great political cause up to this time – Empire – was fast becoming an anachronism. Wilson’s “White Heat” had followed Macmillan’s “Winds of Change”, and the pace of decolonisation had only accelerated. The British Empire was as dead as Powell’s beloved Latin; old Imperialists were already an endangered species. Suez too had converted Powell from imperialist to Little Englander, implanting in him a lifelong disdain for the United States.

After his defeat to Heath, Powell remained in the shadow cabinet as Shadow Secretary of State for Defence. This set him across the Commons from Labour’s avuncular Denis Healey. Nominally in Opposition, Powell made for an unlikely supporter of the Defence Secretary, as the Healey scaling back Britain’s commitments East of Suez[6]. For his part, Powell was articulating a foreign policy and defence doctrine quite distinct from that of his Atlanticist colleagues; one that favoured greater independence from American leadership, though he would never lean towards the opposite Europeanist viewpoint.

Had Powell remained in the Shadow Cabinet, and perhaps followed Heath into government in the 1970s, it is likely that his career would have peaked here; as a middle ranking minister, albeit a great Parliamentarian, respected and well-liked on both sides of the House. That simple, comfortable trajectory was permanently disrupted, on 20th April 1968, by a speech given to the General Meeting of the West Midlands Area Conservative Political Centre.”


From – Speech given by Enoch Powell in Birmingham, 1968, commonly referred to as the “Rivers of Blood” speech.

“…We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependants, who are for the most part the material of the future growth of the immigrant descended population. It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre. So insane are we that we actually permit unmarried persons to immigrate for the purpose of founding a family with spouses and fiancées whom they have never seen…”

“…As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see "the River Tiber foaming with much blood". That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect. Indeed, it has all but come. In numerical terms, it will be of American proportions long before the end of the century. Only resolute and urgent action will avert it even now. Whether there will be the public will to demand and obtain that action, I do not know. All I know is that to see, and not to speak, would be the great betrayal…”[7]


From – No Blacks, No Dogs: A History of Great British Racism (2014).

“…Before Powell in 1968 no frontline British politician had spoken of immigration in anything approaching such apocalyptic terms. Not since the rabble-rousing of inter-war Oswald Mosley had fears of immigration been stoked up so explicitly. Post-war Tories, exhibiting something of a condescending paternalism towards the citizens of the old Empire – those same citizens who now took advantage of Britain’s relatively liberal immigration and citizenship laws to, in an ironic echo of earlier settler colonialism, move to the “mother country” – treated immigrants with a form of condescending tolerance. The mostly middle class leadership of the post-war Labour Party were also liberal on matters of immigration, though the union movement remained overwhelmingly white and quite deaf to the concerns of Black and Asian workers. The Wilson government had already passed one Race Relations Act (in 1965), while a second Bill was before Parliament in 1968. Though tepid in their language and weak in their protections when compared to subsequent legislation, these Acts afforded the first statutory rights against racial discrimination. Generally then the post war decades were a time of gradual, if frustratingly slow, improvement for immigrant Britons.

Not that there hadn’t been localised incidents of political racism – the 1964 election campaign of one Peter Griffiths in Smethwick[8] is a particularly noxious example – but Powell was the first politician in the post-war era to consciously raise the issue on a national stage, at once pandering to and stoking up the fears of thousands of little Englanders.

Powell had spoken on the record about immigration before – in 1964 to a young Times journalist Norman Fowler[9], he supposedly identified immigration as the most pressing issue affecting Britain. Given the economic issues of the day – with a substantial balance of payments deficit and with devaluation looming – such a priority was undoubtedly myopic. But Fowler’s Editor had not published the remarks, and Powell was denied the oxygen of publicity[10]. Four years later, with his star rapidly falling, Powell would make another bid for notoriety.”


From – Enoch Powel: The unauthorised biography (1999)

“…Of course one of the greatest of ironies is that Powell never quoted the infamous line about “Rivers of Blood” in his Birmingham speech. True to form that line, along with the entire rest of the passage, he quoted from the Aenid in its original Latin[11]. As such it may well have passed over the heads of many of those assembled – though there was otherwise imagery enough in the speech, of hassled war widows and importune coloured children, to convey a sufficiently anti-immigrationist message. Coming just three weeks after the assassination of Martin Luther King Junior, with cities in the United States enduring race riots the like of which were unseen in Britain, it was not difficult for Powell’s words to be interpreted as prophesy.

That the phrase “Rivers of Blood” has nonetheless entered political history is thanks entirely to a translated press release, helpfully circulated by Powell ahead of the event. Thus, rather than being entirely naïve as to the potential impact of his words (as Powell himself and many Powellite supporters have since claimed) it would appear that Powell was not only fully aware of the likely reaction his speech, but was also knowingly appealing to an audience beyond that in Birmingham. True enough, the journalists attended, with cameras ready to capture Powell’s words for posterity[12].

Before 1968 Powell’s public views on immigration – and by extension on race – were rather more ambiguous (or perhaps, as Paul Foot has argued, quite opportunistic). In the 1950s as a Junior Housing Minister, he had spoken against immigration controls, stating that a time had not yet come where such controls were so essential as to justify a change in the law. In 1959 Powell gave what was probably his most famous speech prior to “Rivers of Blood”; a reaction to the Hola Massacre – the clubbing to death by British guards of detainees at a colonial detention camp in Kenya. Powell’s fiercely moral opposition to the notion that different standards should apply towards African people than those applied towards white Europeans deserves to be quoted in his own words:


“…Because he was such-and-such, therefore the consequences which would otherwise flow from his death shall not flow…”

“…Nor can we ourselves pick and choose where and in what parts of the world we shall use this or that kind of standard. 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 upon opinion. What we can do in Africa, where we 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…”
[13]


The Hola Massacre speech for a time earned Powell a liberal reputation on race – something perhaps unthinkable to modern minds, but nevertheless true. Powell’s denunciation of British shame was made with undoubtable sincerity, earning praise from across the political spectrum[14]. But just as Powell was lauded then, so a decade hence would he be condemned.”

From – A History of the Conservative Party, from Churchill to Grant (2015)

“…Heath’s sacking of Powell – urged on by his front bench colleagues Iain Macleod, Edward Boyle, Quintin Hogg, and Robert Carr – came swiftly the following evening. While MPs on the right of the party including Duncan Sandys and Teddy Taylor spoke against Powell’s sacking, Heath was resolute. The day after he would tell the BBCs Robin Day that he “dismissed Mr Powell because [he] believed his speech was inflammatory and liable to damage race relations”, and “racialist in tone”. Another member of the Shadow Cabinet, the future Cabinet minister and Powellite Margaret Thatcher was more ambivalent, declaring that she thought it “better to let things cool down for the present rather than heighten the crisis.”[15]

An unconventional source of support for a Conservative MP came from the trades unions. On the 23rd April a thousand London dockworkers had gone on strike to protest Powell’s sacking. The next day more dockworkers followed, along with factory workers and meat porters. Powell himself advised against strike action, characteristically urging his supporters to follow the parliamentary method of writing to their MP. Nonetheless the strong support Powell thereafter engendered among members working class was a premonition of a major political realignment.

Powell himself received some 30,000 letters of support within a week of his speech. A Gallop poll for the Daily Telegraph a fortnight later showed 74% support for his views.”


From – White Heat: Britain under Wilson (2003)

“…By 1967 the pressures for devaluation could be resisted no longer. For three years Wilson had resisted devaluing the pound, haunted by memories of the Attlee government but constrained by the economic realities of the day. Wilson had inherited an unusually large balance of trade deficit in 1964, the result of the previous Conservative government’s expansionary fiscal policy, and a budget deficit of £800 million. Many British economists then advocated devaluation as a positive economic measure, but Wilson for mainly political reasons continued to resist it even as market pressures grew. Wilson’s tiny parliamentary majority from his first election victory in 1964 until his second in 1966 also limited his political room for manoeuvre. Furthermore the Chancellor James Callaghan consistently opposed any proposal for devaluation.

By 1967 devaluation could not be delayed any longer. The Bank of England had spent £200 million from its gold and dollar reserves in one day, in a futile attempt to shore up the value of the pound. The Labour Government had already gone to great lengths to reduce the budget deficit with spending cuts and tax increases, hoping still to avoid the need for devaluation.

But ultimately Wilson would decide to devalue, lowering exchange rates so that the pound fell in value from $2.80 to $2.40, a fall of 14%. The immediate political effect was to provoke the resignation of the Chancellor, whose own reputation was badly damaged. Wilson too would lose credibility, having repeatedly denied over the previous three years any such plans for devaluation. In their parliamentary engagements Edward Heath would quote these past denials back to the Prime Minister, humiliating him further.

Devaluation, combined with further austerity measures, was eventually successful in restoring the balance of payments to surplus by 1969 – a surplus which lasted through the election of the following year and into the 1970s. General economic performance also showed some signs of improvement after devaluation, helping at last to rescue the government from its electoral nadir. Insofar as any personal credit was assigned, it would ultimately be Callaghan’s successor at the Treasury – the erstwhile Home Secretary Roy Jenkins – whose political stock appreciated the most[16].”


From – Waiting On The Shores Of Nowhere: Britain in the 1970s (2007)

“…By 1970 the economy appeared to have turned the corner. The Chancellor Roy Jenkins had delivered the first government surplus since 1937. Painful tax increases – of nearly an extra £1 billion in 1968 alone – had been adjusted to, and had brought some stability to the economy as consumer demand fell, reducing imports and calming inflation. While Labour had lost a total of 16 seats – some of them nominally “safe” seats - in by-elections since the previous general election of 1966, opinion polls had at last begun to show a Labour lead over Heath’s Conservatives.

Wilson, never a man to make a decision without thorough consideration, began to plan an early election. The Parliament elected in 1966 had a year left to run, and the Government still possessed a considerable majority. But Wilson had been successful once before in a snap poll, and with the Conservatives now experiencing their own internal problems, 1970 offered the Prime Minister the opportunity to upstage Heath and to become the first Labour Prime Minister re-elected to three successive terms of office.

In setting the date of the 1970 election, Wilson widened his circle of consultation out from beyond his closest advisers to include his Cabinet colleagues[17]. Every part of the calendar, from Wakes Weeks to Yom Kippur, was taken into account, as Wilson intensively studied the latest marginal constituency polls and cryptically quizzed his Cabinet Ministers as to their holiday plans. The Conservatives were expecting an October election. From inside the Cabinet, ministers including Barbara Castle also pushed for an October election, on the basis that the electorate would by then be feeling the benefit of the latest budget provisions. Transport House too anticipated an autumn election. Wilson ultimately opted for a polling date of 18th June. With Parliament dissolved on 29th May, the first polls of the campaign showed average party support at Labour 47.7%, Conservatives 45.4%, and Liberals 5.1%[18]. It was Labour’s election to lose.”

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[1] This is all as IOTL (In Our Timeline).
[2] This was a problem faced by Healey as Defence Secretary IOTL.
[3] As IOTL. Six years (1964-1970) was an atypically long tenure for a Cabinet Minister to remain in one position. By contrast the Conservative Prime Ministers between 1951 and 1964 had appointed nine different defence ministers. Military leaders on the other hand were typically rotated, with defence chiefs only serving for a couple of years each.
[4] As IOTL.
[5] The balance of payments – the difference between the values of all exports against all imports – was key economic indicator for post-war British Governments. The OTL Wilson government (1964-1970) struggled for several years with trade deficits. Bad balance of payments figures released on the eve of the 1970 General Election are often attributed as part of the reason why the Labour Government lost that election. ITTL (In This Timeline) Healey’s extra cuts eliminate some particularly expensive imports from the 1970 figures. This is our POD (Point of Divergence).
[6] Powell was more pragmatic about defence spending than might have been expected for so romantic an imperialist. In OTL he came to reject a continued role for Britain East of Suez.
[7] These quotes come from Powell’s OTL speech.
[8] Smethwick 1964 is the archetype racist election campaign, from an era before even ‘dogwhistle’ politics. It was in Smethwick that the slogan “If you want a N****r for a neighbour, vote Labour” was coined. The constituency had become home to a number of Sikh Indian immigrants over the previous decade. Griffiths won the seat, defeating Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary Patrick Gordon Walker. For his efforts Griffiths was described by Harold Wilson as a Parliamentary leper.
[9] IOTL Fowler was subsequently a Cabinet minister in the Thatcher Government.
[10] This happened IOTL, and likewise went unreported.
[11] This is as IOTL.
[12] As is this. Rivers of Blood may have gotten a larger and more polarised reaction than Powell expected or hoped, but it was always intended to get a reaction. This in part is why I have avoided a “no Rivers of Blood speech” POD – it would not be in Powell’s nature to avoid something so conspicuously planned.
[13] These are quotes from Powell’s OTL Hola Massacre speech.
[14] Denis Healey described it as “I think the greatest parliamentary speech I ever heard… It had all the moral passion and rhetorical force of Demosthenes,”
[15] “Cautious Margaret” in action.
[16] This is effectivity the same as OTL.
[17] As Healey put it in OTL “Harold wanted to be sure that the blame would be widely shared if he took the wrong decision”.
[18] These polls were, as IOTL: NOP 29/05/1970, ORC 31/05/1970, and Gallup 31/05/1970. Credit to http://www.markpack.org.uk/opinion-polls/
 
A Prime Minister Powell TL? I'm interested. Hope it doesn't turn into a dystopia, like the Gordon Banks TL...

(I'm not going to even mention another TL with a Prime Minister Enoch Powell; those who have read the Worst AH thread will know what I mean...)
 
A Prime Minister Powell TL? Hope his fascistic views on immigration are kept from being turned to government policy.
 
Chapter Two

“What do you think this is? A contest between a man with a pipe and a man with a boat?”

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From - Waiting On The Shores Of Nowhere: Britain in the 1970s (2007)


“…The 1970 General Election has been granted an unfavourable epitaph, that of having ‘the dullest campaign of the 20th Century’. The ultimate result was seen as a foregone conclusion, both before and after the fact. As a result, a sense of complacency and resignation settled upon the Labour and Conservative Parties respectively. Both parties attempted to run “Presidential” campaigns, emphasising the qualities of their leaders, in the hope that personalities not policy would win the election. But neither Wilson or Heath were unknown qualities by 1970 – Wilson had been Labour leader since 1963 and Prime Minister since 1964, Heath had been Conservative leader since 1965; both men were familiar figures to the electorate. Indeed they had already faced each once before in the 1966 General Election.

The public had never quite warmed to Edward Heath, whose manner was considered to be both cold and aloof, and who lacked the calculated charm of Harold Wilson. Wilson for his part was not untarnished – six years in office came at a political cost. Labour had lost sixteen seats in by-elections since 1966. Devaluation, the failure to enter the Common Market, and the disaster of In Place of Strife had all taken their toll on the Prime Minister’s prestige.

Nevertheless, Labour entered the election campaign as the close favourites. This was to be the first true “television election” – a medium which played to Wilson’s strengths – as press conferences and evening news bulletins superseded the old style public meetings. As was traditional, Wilson toured the country with his wife Mary, striking a clear visual contrast to the bachelor Heath. Wilson’s campaign was presidential in all senses except literal. An MP for twenty five years, Prime Minister for six, a leader who had never lost a general election; he carried himself with a supreme confidence. Heath’s campaign was rather less smooth. Though a capable speaker in private, in public his campaigning style became uneasy and defensive. As a communicator he more often spoke at people, rather than to them.

For the Liberals under their charismatic new leader Jeremy Thorpe, the election was to prove a disappointing affair. Having been starved of by-election success in the previous Parliament, they now struggled to attract any publicity whatsoever. All of the oxygen of the campaign was absorbed by Wilson vs. Heath, round two – with the notable exception of one other politician.”


From - White Heat: Britain under Wilson (2003)

“…Almost as soon as he had returned from the Palace after securing the dissolution, Wilson began to look ahead beyond the election itself. Confident already of victory, he quietly began to sketch out his priorities for his ‘third term’. As late as the eve of polling, he was still tweaking the makeup of his next Cabinet. At the same time, Wilson was also looking still further ahead. To the shock of those closest to him – namely Joe Haines and Marcia Williams – he confided his decision to not serve through the entirety of the next Parliamentary term. He would, he supposed, hand over in 1973 or 1974 to a specially groomed successor. In the spring of 1970 he had already told Roy Jenkins that he planned to go in three years’ time. Few Prime Ministers get to leave office at a time of their own choosing. Wilson, insofar as he could control the events of political life, would be an exception to that. He would leave office as not only the longest serving Labour Prime Minister, but also as the longest serving Prime Minister of the 20th Century (after overtaking Asquith’s record of eight years). As Haines later put it, Wilson wanted to arrange his affairs ‘so that he wasn’t just another defeated Prime Minister.[19]’

Of course, there was first the small matter of actually winning the election to contend with…”


From - A History of the Conservative Party, from Churchill to Grant (2015)


“…Edward Heath had not had a particularly enjoyable time as Leader of the Opposition – a job often described as the ‘worst in British Politics’. In five years he had stamped an uneasy authority on his party – though his attempted image as a moderniser would always fail when set beside Wilson’s more media savvy operation. Heath had already lost one election to Wilson, and it was looking like he was about to lose another. The party leadership, those who had assented to side-lining the old grouse moor types in favour of meritocracy, might have begun to regret their decision. Was their faith in this grammar school boy misplaced?

The press had initially begun their coverage of the campaign by playing down the Conservative Party’s chances of victory; by the end they were predicting its defeat. Heath’s aide Douglas Hurd even records how two of the journalists who accompanied the Conservative leader ‘were already writing a book during the campaign to explain how we had lost’[20]. From a 19 point lead in the opinion polls in July 1969, the Conservative position had collapses. By mid-May Labour held a narrow 3 point lead. Heath’s own personal ratings lagged behind Wilson by 21 points[21]. Most of the shadow cabinet had come to expect defeat. That gloom only spread as polling day approached.

Throughout the campaign there were rumours that Heath might be ousted in a last minute leadership challenge. Though that challenge never materialised, it was clear that Heath’s time was limited. At lunchtime on election day Heath was visited by Peter Carrington, his shadow defence secretary. He was told in no uncertain terms that he was expected to stand down immediately after the election was lost[22].

There was one final figure who could be counted upon to oppose Heath: Enoch Powell. Powell had spent the two years since his “Rivers of Blood” speech on the backbenches. Heath had already ruled out offering Powell a Cabinet role should the Conservatives return to power – and since even that latter eventuality was now unlikely in 1970, Powell had little left to lose from disloyalty.


From – Enoch Powell: The unauthorised biography (1999)


“…Some measure of Powell’s significance to the 1970 campaign can be taken from a Press Association decision. Whereas the PA had assigned one journalist each to cover both Heath and Wilson, to Powell they made the remarkable decision to assign two. Powell at this time was not a party leader, nor a cabinet minister, nor the holder of any office higher than that of MP.

Since 1968 Powell had been a figure both at the fringe and the centre of British politics. On the one hand he was about as far from political power as it was possible to be whilst still in Parliament. Yet on the other he held a public profile which was second only to that of the Prime Minister, indeed he easily upstaged Edward Heath. And again since 1968 Powell had become known predominantly for one single issue – immigration. It was an issue he turned to again and again, invoking the spectre of civil strife, advocating both a drastic reduction in the number of new arrivals and for the voluntary repatriation of those already settled. In his election address to his Wolverhampton constituents in 1970 he warned that immigration ‘carries a threat of division, violence and bloodshed of American dimensions, and adds a powerful weapon to the armoury of anarchy.’[23]

The timing of the 1970 election was a minor irritation to Powell, who was forced to cancel a lecture tour of the United States, arranged with the help of the Institute of Economic Affairs. From the moment the campaign began, the Conservative front bench distanced themselves from Powell. Powell and Heath thereafter entered a farcical period of mutual support. While it was an open secret that a mutual loathing by now existed between the two men, for the sake of appearing united as a party neither made any direct attacks upon the other. For Heath’s part, he was called upon by voices in the media to withdraw the Conservative Party’s official endorsement of Powell. Heath declined to do so, while at the same time stressing that his views were different to those of Powell. Powell continued his campaign of making speeches against the official party line, like a latter-day Joe Chamberlain promoting his alternate manifesto and building his political heartland in the West Midlands.

In this region Powell was the de facto leader of his party. Heath was effectively absent. Despite having opened his election address on the subject of immigration, his speeches thereafter were mostly on economics. Powell stressed what he saw as the other great dangers to Britain – socialism and the Common Market.

Powell became a dominant figure in the election campaign, rivalling Heath and Wilson. In every paper save the Guardian he had more coverage than the entire Liberal campaign, usually twice as much[24]. Powell’s extensive press coverage only exacerbated the divide between himself and the Conservative leadership, as commentators began to conclude that not only would Heath lose the election, but that there would soon thereafter be a leadership challenge. Powell it was to be supposed, was positioning himself for just such a challenge. Denis Healey was among those who made that accusation in public, though it would hard to see how at this time Powell could hope to advance upon the fifteen votes of support he had won in 1965. In fact most MPs remained loyal to Heath, as did most Conservative Party members and Associations.

The Conservative leadership for their part came to fear that Powell would do something to undermine their own campaign. Conservatives in Surbiton had already put forward their own “independent Powellite” in opposition to their incumbent Conservative MP, though they soon fell into infighting. Powell never fully relieved the leadership of their fears. Indeed as Powell’s speeches became more hysterical and caustic towards the end of the campaign, the leadership only became more incensed. Powell would talk of ‘enemies within’ – enemies who included the BBC, the Times, and the protestors who increasingly disrupted his rallies with unoriginal chants of ‘Sieg heil!’. Heath in turn was heckled by Powell supporters, and his press conferences became hijacked by questions about Powell. Even then, Heath could not quite bring himself to repudiate Powell. Shadow Chancellor Iain Macleod was reportedly furious with Powell’s disloyalty to his party and to his leader, but even he refrained from public comment, for fear of splitting the Conservative Party.

Against all of this, the greatest irony was to be that it was in the West Midlands where the swing from Labour to Conservative was to be greatest. Enoch Powell might just have won the election for Edward Heath.”


From – The Journal of British Psephology (2005)


“…Many studies of differential swing in the election of 1970, in comparing the result to that of both 1966 and subsequent elections, have attempted to define what has become termed the ‘Powell factor’ – chiefly what effect, if any, did the multiple and well-publicised interventions of Enoch Powell in that election campaign have upon the ultimate result. Even three decades on, there has yet to be a conclusive answer to this question.

Schoen and Johnson have argued that Powell brought the Conservatives some 2.5 million votes – though the net Conservative vote in 1970 only increased by some 1.5 million votes. At the time of the election any special “Powell factor” was dismissed, most prominently by Conservative MP Reginald Maudling in an election night interview with Robin Day. Other studies have concluded that Powell in fact may have lost the Conservatives the election – his stance on immigration unpopular enough with liberal voters in marginal seats to offset any votes gained elsewhere. Certainly Labour’s surprisingly resilient defence of several key marginal seats seems to support this hypothesis, as does the Liberal Party’s hold on seats such as Orpington in what was generally a poor election for them[25].

Conversely polling before and up to the election generally indicates a wide, even majority level of public support for Powell and his political positions – support that is difficult to reconcile with a net loss in votes. In Powell’s own seat of Wolverhampton South West, where it might be supposed any personal vote should be strongest, the Conservative vote share reached its highest since 1959 (64%); with the swing against the Government being double that of the national figure. But this seat, like many others where Powell had the strongest appeal, was not considered a marginal seat at the time.

What appears most likely then, is that far from proving a potentially decisive influence in the election outcome, the ‘Powell factor’ instead resulted in an increased Conservative vote share, but in places where its utility was limited. That is to say that Powell increased the enthusiasm of voters who would likely have voted Conservative in any case, and in constituencies that would always have remained blue…[26]”


From - Waiting On The Shores Of Nowhere: Britain in the 1970s (2007)

“…By the final days of the campaign, the mood was turning decisively in the government’s favour. Journalists were playing up Labour’s chances, and the Prime Minister himself took full advantage, using the last of his series of press conferences to deploy both his wit and charm. Wilson was reassuring, calm, and confident. The Conservative camp by contrast had fallen somewhere between denial and acceptance, certain that they had failed to overcome the Prime Minister’s personal popularity. Only Edward Heath persisted in the self-assured belief that he could still win over the electorate. On the Labour side there remained doubts: ‘I have a haunting feeling’ wrote employment secretary Barbara Castle in her diary the weekend before polling day, ‘that there is a silent majority sitting behind its lace curtains, waiting to come out and vote Tory.’[27]

The Prime Minister was joined in his last election press conferences by his Chancellor – a figure growing in stature and prominence, and like Wilson a man more popular than his party. In its final issue before the election the Economist had put a photograph of both men on its cover, indirectly predicting both the election result and its two key architects[28]. Roy Jenkins had spent the campaign fighting back Conservative attacks on the economy – by far the Opposition’s most promising line of attack. Against charges of an increase in the cost of living (retail prices had increased by a record 2.1% in May) and criticism over the handling of the economy throughout the government’s tenure, Jenkins held his own. He accused the Conservatives of planning to increase both VAT and income tax. He also justifiably invoked the balance of payments deficit which had greeted Labour on entering office in 1964.

Jenkins’ position was undoubtedly aided by the release three days before polling day of new trade figures[29]. Once again the government had achieved a surplus, albeit one wafer-thin. The Chancellor had the evidence to back up his claims that Labour could best manage the economy. The Conservative attacks were from then on dead in the water. Not even poor unemployment figures – a forebear perhaps of what was to come – could turn the tide.”


From - The Encyclopaedia of British Politics (2010)

GENERAL ELECTION, 1970:

“…The result of the 1970 General Election (with changes from 1966):

Labour – 13,148,193 votes, 45.1% (down 2.9), 337 seats (down 27)
Conservative - 12,944,199 votes, 44.4% (up 2.5), 279 seats (up 26)
Liberal – 2,186,506 votes, 7.5% (down 1.0), 8 seats (down 4) [30]

The turnout of this election was 74%, from an expanded electorate of 39.4 million, this being the first election at which persons aged 18-20 were allowed to vote.

The swing from Labour to Conservative was 2 points[31], relative to 1966. Labour held sufficient seats to retain a Parliamentary majority of 44[32] and secure a third successive term in office.

_____________________________________________

[19] This is all based on OTL. Wilson’s resignation was perhaps the most planned and premeditated of any recent British Prime Minister. Only defeat in 1970 OTL seemed to delay him a further parliamentary term.
[20] This is OTL. Douglas Hurd would later become Foreign Secretary under Thatcher and Major in OTL.
[21] All polls are as OTL.
[22] This happened in OTL, when within twenty four hours Heath would be Prime Minister. Carrington also congratulated Heath on a well fought campaign, so there’s that too.
[23] This is from Powell’s OTL election address.
[24] As in OTL.
[25] Orpington was first won by the Liberals in the famous 1962 by-election on a 22-point swing from the Conservatives. IOTL it was lost to the Conservatives in 1970.
[26] This, more or less, is the same as OTL. All that really changes is the historiography after the fact. Whether or not Powell “helped” or not is seen through the lens of who won 1970. In reality there are more factors at play.
[27] This is an OTL quote, and in OTL it was quite prescient.
[28] This happened in OTL, the headline: “In Harold Wilson’s Britain”.
[29] Healey’s Jet-cancelling contracts come home to roost.
[30] The OTL 1970 election results were Con 46.4%, 330 seats; Lab 43.1%, 288 seats; Lib 7.5%.
[31] This is around half that of OTL 1970, the result being that the Conservatives gain ground, but not enough to threaten the Government’s majority. The best analogue is probably OTL 2005.
[32] In OTL Heath won a majority of 31. Notable seats which remain Labour held ITTL include Ipswich (Dingle Foot), King’s Lynn (won by sole Conservative-SDP defector Christopher Brockelbank-Fowler in OTL), Aberdeen South (Donald Dewer), Cannock (Jennie Lee), Exeter (Gwyneth Dunwoody), and Belper (George Brown). This latter might not be considered so fortuitous.
 
Thanks all for comments so far.

In answer to specifics:

A Prime Minister Powell TL? I'm interested. Hope it doesn't turn into a dystopia, like the Gordon Banks TL...

(I'm not going to even mention another TL with a Prime Minister Enoch Powell; those who have read the Worst AH thread will know what I mean...)

"What if Gordon Banks Had Played" is obviously one of the 'Greats' of AH. I hope that I can do something different and original. This probably won't be dystopian or utopian in the narrow sense, as I'm not steering for any particular outcome beyond exploring how things develop from a set point.
From what I've read of "Gordon Banks" (i.e. those parts that can still be found online) I can promise that this timeline will be different.

I understand that with Chapter Two I'm skirting a broadly similar path to "Gordon Banks", with a Labour win in 1970 (albeit from a different POD), but the diverges will begin quite significantly from here.

As for the other timeline to which you refer - I've been on AH.com long enough to know of it and to have read it. I definitely will not be going down that road.

("Enoch's National Front" for those who want to know)


A Prime Minister Powell TL? Hope his fascistic views on immigration are kept from being turned to government policy.

As above, I won't be doing dystopia for dystopia's sake. Given the historical record of British governments in this period I'm also cynical enough to recognise the difference between principle and rhetoric in opposition, and policy in office. British Prime Ministers are not absolute, and I hope to portray a "realistic" take on the challenges Powell is likely to face.
 
Two TLs at once? Why, agent - you're spoiling us!

As this is far more in my area of knowledge than 'Lancaster Ascendant', I'll say that you've captured Wilson and Heath very believably. I'm also a sucker for the alternate historiography stuff, so this is right up my alley.

I admit that 'Gordon Banks' is one of my favourite works of AH, to the extent that I've attempted some slightly dodgy means of 'preserving' it - I am, however, intrigued to see where you go with this, and will be reading with interest.
 
Two TLs at once? Why, agent - you're spoiling us!

As this is far more in my area of knowledge than 'Lancaster Ascendant', I'll say that you've captured Wilson and Heath very believably. I'm also a sucker for the alternate historiography stuff, so this is right up my alley.

I admit that 'Gordon Banks' is one of my favourite works of AH, to the extent that I've attempted some slightly dodgy means of 'preserving' it - I am, however, intrigued to see where you go with this, and will be reading with interest.

After spending 3 months over winter reading almost exclusively about the 1970s, I found that by the time I'd acquired enough knowledge of the period, I'd also lost a lot of enthusiasm for the original project I had in mind. Hence Powell is a sideways move from that project, and something I hope i can tackle with originality. Lancaster on the other hand is me jumping in at the deep end on something completely different. The hope is that I can then always work on either one or the other, as mood and motivation take me.

Much of TTL so far has run broadly parallel to OTL, so depictions of Heath and Wilson are primarily drawn from history. Heath perhaps gets depicted less favourably here, as an ultimate loser. Wilson I've been rather ambiguous on, but I'll probably steer away from the Sandbrook portrayal; Seasons in the Sun taught me a lot about Wilson, mostly that Sandbrook didn't like him very much.

I too enjoy the alternate historiography stuff, and its one thing the history textbook scrapbook style of timeline is especially suited for. There will be plenty of unreliable narrators in both this and Lancaster.
 
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