Many would regard Enoch Powell as one of the most right wing politicians Britain ever spawned, a poster boy for the white supremacist movement and arguably somewhere just above amoebic dysentery on the evolutionary chain.
History records a man always in the company of other men, as a soldier, college boy, and member of the ultimate old-boy’s club, the British conservative party.
New evidence has revealed why.
Read BETWEEN the lines of this line from the Wikepedia article about Powell’s school days, “ During his time at Cambridge he fell under the influence of the poet A.E. Housman, then Professor of Latin at the university”.
Interesting but hardly conclusive.
He was obsessed with both Latin and Greek (both cultures practiced homosexuality openly and did so irrespective of marital status). OK, so an obsession with gay history and a “close” relationship with an older man.
OK well he’s not exactly Carson Cresley at this point, but let’s move on.
He goes to Australia and becomes a professor at Sydney (home of the Mardi Gras) university at the age of 26 (was it merit or….something else? I hear a baby faced Peter Andre got his first record contract through a similar arrangement with Molly Meldrum), then, he heads back to join the army (presumably sharing a fox hole and a tin of “bully beef” with some of his “close” comrades.
After sleeping working his way through the ranks (Hello Sargent Major) the emergence of his dislike for Americans becomes apparent.
Wikepedia cites “After talking with some senior American officials, he became convinced that one of America’s main war aims was to destroy the British Empire”.
Unofficially, his name was Connor McCormack, sandy blonde hair, eyes like plunge pools, arms like a blacksmith, tan and sinewy from so many summers spent competetive yacht racing while growing up in Cape Cod.
Little Enoch, so used to twisting men around his finger, and making them flutter with a bat of his eyelids had his first broken heart. At the hands of an American!! Possibly the motivation behind Powell’s later lament “I should like to have been killed in the war.”
Powell was a staunch monarchist, it’s rumoured when it was commonplace for his comrades to keep post-cards of Greta Garbo, Marleana Deitrich or Mae West handy in their cubicles, Powell kept a photograph of King George in the officer’s latrine when he was in Africa.
After a stint in the British conservative party during which Powell repeatedly voted in favour of legalising gay marriage. It was at this time he made his infamous (and misquoted) “rivers of blood” speech.
The official transcript reads
“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.”,
in fact the speech went like this
“as I look for head, I have filled my foreskin, for that guy Roman, but I seem to see that Rodger Tyler and I’m foaming to pack mud. That magic erectile phenomenon which we watch with horniness on the other side of the bedroom, but there is intercourse withthe minister and an ejaculation state itself. I am cumming by my own volition and in a neglige. Indeed I have cum. In naughty terms I am hung with American proportions, it’s long and past the end of my shorts. Only to root some virgin action and it will hurt even a sow”.
Clearly such a public admission of homosexuality and on the parliamentary record no-less could not go un-checked.
Powell had a public falling out with then conservative leader Michael Heseltine (apparently because Heseltine wouldn’t reciprocate through the “glory hole” in the men’s toilets in Parliament house).
Powel then left the conservative party and took up spending a good deal of time in the Middle East (not unlike Michael Jackson has in recent years).
Powell offered to return to the conservative party after Margaret Thatcher won the leadership but lost interest when he discovered she was a woman.
Incidentally Powell was commemorated in an instrumental song by Manfred Mann called “Konekuf” (the title is supposed to be read backwards).
Did he “Konekuf”? We’ll never know.
