How Enoch Powell was a pioneer of Welsh devolution

Martin Shipton

One of the most controversial figures in 20th Century British politics played a crucial role in kick-starting moves towards Welsh devolution, according to a new book.

Conservative MP Enoch Powell became notorious after making a 1968 speech in which  he predicted that immigration would lead to “rivers of blood” in the UK.

Born in Birmingham of Welsh descent, he was a classical scholar who learnt Welsh and wrote academic papers in the language. He served in the army in World War Two, enlisting as a private and rising to become a brigadier.

After his “rivers of blood” speech, he was sacked from the Shadow Cabinet by future Prime Minister Ted Heath and became seen as a maverick outsider. Later he became an Ulster Unionist MP and died in 1998 at the age of 85.

After the war, before entering Parliament in 1950 as the MP for Wolverhampton South West, Powell was a researcher working for the Tory party.

Professor

In his book The Conservative Party in Wales 1945-1997, Sam Blaxland writes: “A key moment happened in 1947, when the party’s Research Department sent their Wales policy specialist, a highly intelligent young brigadier, on a journey around the nation to report back on what was happening there. He was Enoch Powell, who had risen to be one of the youngest ever professors of Greek, at the age of 25 at the University of Sydney.

“His Wales tour took in almost every part of the country and he wrote up two reports on the ‘industrial’ and the ‘rural’ scenes there. Powell’s work demonstrated his trademark sharpness of mind. He noted that many Welsh seats, especially the rural ones, would be “solidly Conservative” were they in England. He argued that there existed in Wales a distinct political dynamic. Opponents of the Conservatives played upon the fact that social, religious and cultural factors meant the Tories were often perceived as strangers there. He also noted that patterns of living, and a sense of community, were especially strong in Wales, with people in industrial areas ‘clinging to their pithead settlements, or house rows, however unsatisfactory, with a more than aboriginal attachment’.

Special

“He continued that ‘a policy which disregards these prejudices, inconvenient and hampering though they may be, will evoke little response in south Wales’. He understood, however, how and why parts of Wales were different. Powell concluded that Wales had both special ‘needs’ and a special ‘outlook’, which had to be addressed more specifically by the Conservatives. Although he warned against over-promising anything for fear of looking like the party was ‘vote catching’, he stressed that many people in rural Wales ‘use habitually and for preference a language that is not English’. Therefore agriculture and rural roads needed support, and better facilities for the use of Welsh were called for. In the ‘terra incognita’ [unknown land] of ‘industrial Wales’, Powell called for a new kind of economic policy that was both ‘radical and fresh’, which should pivot on better housing, education – because ‘industrial problems cannot be solved or even understood except in the context of social conditions’ – and industrial diversification.”

For Blaxland, though, the most important thrust of Powell’s argument rested on the idea of representation. He writes: “While many of the significant things that his report mentioned about industry and the economy sounded quite a lot like what the Labour government was proposing, this element was different.

“Powell thought that a dedicated government Minister for Welsh Affairs was necessary. It became official policy in the late 1940s, announced by RA Butler – later Chancellor of the Exchequer – in the House of Commons and at the party’s 1948 conference in Llandudno. Powell’s report was formally written up in the fully bilingual pamphlet called The Charter for Wales, which was released on St David’s Day 1949. It was part of a series of other documents, the most prominent being the Industrial Charter, which formed the basis of the Conservatives’ policy positions in the late 1940s. It is significant that one was devoted specifically to Wales, sitting alongside other documents on big topics like agriculture and imperial policy. The pledge of a minister, alongside warm words of Welsh industry, hill farmers, culture and the language, featured in the party’s 1950 and 1951 general election manifestos. When the Tories won in 1951, they duly introduced the Minister for Welsh Affairs, with senior party figures presenting the post as the ‘watchdog for Wales’.

Blaxland goes on to write how many more Tories mentioned Welsh-specific policies in their election addresses at the beginning of the 1950s – 18 in 1950, compared to only five Labour candidates. The change was welcomed by Welsh newspapers. Blaxland states: “No doubt buoyed by such coverage, party officials thought that Powell had ‘more than justified the expense of his journey.

“Powell was certainly the key intellectual driving force behind convincing the party that Wales needed specific governmental representation. In arguing that a minister was essential, he is no doubt a significant architect of administrative devolution in Wales, if only because he helped create the conditions that spurred on further processes over the next several decades.

“A post like a Minister for Welsh Affairs would probably have been created eventually, but Powell was able to articulate the case for it, deploying his ability to understand both Wales and the Welsh language – although as an Ulster Unionist MP much later in his career, he would become increasingly hostile to the idea of devolution.”

In 1964, when Labour returned to power, the post of Secretary of State for Wales was created, a further step on the road to devolution.

Drawing on Conservative Party archives, with many details that have not previously been published, Blaxland’s book provides an insightful and nuanced view of the party in Wales during a period of great social change.

The Conservative Party in Wales 1945-1997 by Sam Blaxland is published by University of Wales Press at £24.99.