A profound Tory

The new imprint of this important biography provides an opportunity to reread one of the most skilful works on British political history published over the last half century. As with Heffer’s other books, it is also very well written — although might I offer a plea for leaving aside sentences such as “He still saw no reason to lay off Heath”?

Before turning to the substance, it is worth considering the Foreword. Written this January, it underlines Powell’s significance to many issues, notably: “His deep scepticism about the confluence of America’s interest with those of Britain.” I am, however, dubious about the proposition that “Powell was, quite simply, one of the foremost Conservative thinkers in living memory, possibly the greatest since Burke”. Leaving aside the question of whether Burke can be described as Conservative or even, prior to the 1790s, as conservative, and, separately, the implicit dig at claims for Disraeli whom Heffer is on the record as describing as a Charlatan, I myself would make the case for Salisbury, while agreeing that Macmillan, Hailsham and MacLeod did not measure up to Powell. He returned the damage done him by Macmillan with “bilious” reviews of his Memoirs.

While I am sceptical of the claim that Powell was a great Conservative thinker in the cosmic sense, he was an impressive critic of many of the shibboleths of establishment Conservatism from the 1960s to the 1980s, including on immigration, the nuclear deterrent, the Common Market, the American alliance, Northern Ireland, and economic policy.

A significant aspect of the intellectual character of Powell was the return of this one-time atheist to the Church in the late 1940s, the subject of the “Interlude” “Powell and God” in the book. There is, as Salisbury and Cowling among others underlined, a significant link between Conservatism and the Church of England, and Powell, like Thatcher, can be profitably discussed in these terms, with Thatcher far less convincing.

The discussion of Powell’s elision from public debate is also interesting. Published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in 1998, the biography was kept on print-on-demand until cancelled in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter movement. Heffer compares the treatment of Powell to that of Orwell in facing difficulties in publishing Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. For several years, Heffer found it impossible to persuade a publisher to republish the book and suggests that this was due to a craven fear of public opinion “real or perceived”, one about which Orwell had warned not least when referring to “intellectual cowardice”. The publisher he has found, it has to be said, is another instance of the very valuable work being done by non-metropolitan concerns.

The decline in non-fiction sales clearly affects publishing financial parameters, as do the financial demands from Amazon and Waterstones. There appears to be a particular problem for works on the Right. It is instructive for example that the maladroit recent list in the Times of selected reviewers’ assessments of the best non-fiction books on the early twenty-first century includes a number of lacklustre works, the authors of at least two of which have not troubled the archives, but not Charles Moore’s Thatcher.

At any rate, Heffer on Powell is an excellent work. There is a degree to which Heffer tends to hero-worship in what is clearly a labour of love, but also a very deft handling of politics and people, and with an ability to consider long-term trends as well as the pressures of the moment. The consequences of the Birmingham speech receive due attention, not least the inaccurate responses to it, but there is much else of interest, as well as wonderful put-downs. Guess who is described thus: “one of the most unpopular men in the Commons. He was now fulfilling that function in the Lords, where his self-righteous pomposity would continue until pricked by his arrest for kerb-crawling.”

Much of the political class emerges as unimpressive. Hailsham, for example, “only proved his own limited understanding of economics”. From the Preface: “Cameron never seemed to give any indication that he understood what Powell actually stood for, and this did not seem to matter to him”.

Heffer’s biography makes clear why Powell was to fail, in office and policy, not least by assessing the changes in the Conservative party under Macmillan, Home and Heath. This helps to get to the crux of the matter: why so profound a Tory was so unsuccessful a politician. The consideration of the Macmillan succession is typically adroit and interesting, not least in the discussion of Macmillan weakening the royal prerogative. Powell was one of the rebels against Macmillan’s manipulation of the leadership succession. The crisis led to the end of Powell’s career in office, which was an aspect of a wider failure of the party to work with its talent. Heath was to make that situation even worse.

Powell’s relations with Heath interacted with the degree to which Powell was an anti-metropolitan figure, finding solace in his West Midlands support. But, in addition, habitual dissent tends to mark any politician out as a loner, which Powell was by nature. Despite the great popular support for his 1968 speech (an instance of the general failing when thinking in terms of a 1960s’ zeitgeist), Powell never really cultivated support in the parliamentary party, a weakness for anyone aspiring to the leadership. In that respect, he was unlike Joe Chamberlain, a figure he much admired.

Heffer combines necessary detail and narrative drive, and ably works up all the topics necessary from personality to finances, economics to Ulster, family life to historical activity not least in writing on the House of Lords. The ascetic nature of his personality is captured in his early accommodation, but also his clarity of thought, his skill in expression,  and his cadences. There was possibly too much “vituperation” from him, but mistreatment helped ensure that the iron had entered his soul, and his targets deserved his broadsides.

I can add a couple of anecdotes. Powell’s younger daughter, Jennifer, overlapped with me in doing History at Cambridge. She went out with a pompous historian who had been at my school, Mark Damazer, and, knowing she was a rebel and wishing to break up the relationship, Powell, I was told by one of her friends, told Jennie that he and his wife thought Damazer would make a very good husband for her. If so, it worked.

Jeremy Mayhew informed me that he interviewed Powell for a television programme and, at the end, the cameraman told Powell “The country would have been a much better place if you had been Prime Minister,” earning the shrewd response “It would have had to have been a very different country for me to be Prime Minister.”