In 1993, the Anti-Federalist League scored a bit of a coup. There was a by-election in Newbury, a rock solid Conservative seat. But since being re-elected the previous year, John Major's government was in stormy waters. The pound had crashed out of the ERM in late 1992, causing chaos on the exchange markets. The economy was suffering, and the passage of the Maastricht Treaty through Parliament had split the Tory party apart. The worst time to hold a by-election, really.
The Anti-Federalist League was an odd organisation. It had been founded in 1991, to protests the Maastricht Treaty of that year, which transformed the European Economic Community into a European Union, and committed the signatories towards a Single European Currency, although Major had secured an opt out for the UK.
The League was led by an ex Liberal Party official called Alan Sked. Sked was a lecturer at the LSE, and was opposed to the political aspects of the EEC. And in 1993, he secured a big speaker to join him on the campaign trail in Newbury. Enoch Powell.
Enoch Powell was one of the most fascinating characters of post-war British politics. His politics were hard to define. He believed passionately in the supremacy of the nation state and the primacy of Parliament. But as well as famously rejecting the EEC, he also rejected the 'Special Relationship' with America, and the ties to the Commonwealth; indeed, Powell made his name denouncing Britain's attempt to put down the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya. He believed the USSR to be a natural ally of the UK in keeping the European balance of power. Powellism also encompassed unilateral nuclear disarmament, support for what came to be known as the permissive society, integrating Northern Ireland fully into the UK, and the free-market economics later pioneered by Mrs Thatcher.
Much of this is forgotten today. Because Powell's political legacy was forged on 28th April 1968, when he got to his feet in Birmingham's Midland Hotel, and gave the single most infamous speech in modern British politics. It has since become known as the Rivers of Blood speech, and it contained an apocalyptic prediction; that, if left unchecked, immigration to the UK would eventually lead to the type of racial conflict then consuming the USA.
The speech ended Powell's political career. The next day, he was sacked from the Shadow Cabinet, although it was clear his support in the country was enormous. In 1974, he even left the Conservative party, advocating a Labour vote as they would allow a referendum on the Common Market. He transferred his allegiance to the Ulster Unionist Party, and spent the rest of his political life arguing for Ulster's integration into the UK.
But the speech also showed Powell had touched a nerve. There were marches in his support. For years, even as his hard political power faded, he remained the most popular politician in the country. His name was invoked by many on the hard-right, and the not so hard right, to justify anti-immigrant rhetoric and feeling.
For years, people complained that immigration was the issue they weren't allowed to talk about. Since Enoch Powell predicted racial violence in apocalyptic terms in 1968, there has been a united front presented by the mainstream political parties in the UK, to not use migration as a political weapon.
It hasn't always been adhered to. For the Conservatives, especially, it was always an attractive weapon. But they always pulled back from the brink.
But now we are over the Rubicon, and it seems that there were good reasons for keeping the cordon sanitaire in place. A fear of the Other was stirred in the EU referendum campaign, and this has been the result:
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/eu-referendum-racism_uk_576fe161e4b08d2c56396075?745i5vqfvfs35l8fr
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36643213
This referendum, with the fear of migrants and anti-Europeanism it has unleashed, is Powell's final legacy to British politics. When he arrived in Newbury in 1993, Powell was collected from the train station by a part time Anti-Federalist League activist. Powell advised the young man to quit stockbroking, and go into politics. Or so he claims.
That man was Nigel Farage. He has succeeded where Enoch Powell failed, at taking Britain out of the EU. I just hope he hasn't brought Powell's racialist scaremongering with him.
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