Excellent piece. A small quibble if I may. You say that both your father and Powell 'disliked Europe’. I doubt that two such intelligent and educated men did any such thing. What they disliked was the EEC, correctly forecasting, as so few did, that it would prove inimical to British interests.
One of the tricks that was pulled on the overeducated but underintelligent 'chattering classes' in the UK was to make a deep bond in their minds between 'Europe' “ah the coffee”, “oh the architecture”, “um the drains” and the EEC and later the EU, a quasi-fascistic political structure designed, among other repellent things, to suppress democracy and create a supranational policy elite.
Powell in particular, as a brilliant Classicist, adored the founding civilizations of Rome and Greece, while deploring the political implications of the 'Project'. I suspect your father was the same.
Yes you are quite correct. They disliked the statist concept of Europe, not the physical continent or most of its inhabitants. They also I think very clearly felt that Britain was NOT the continent and should stake an identity separate from it despite acknowledging the historic cultural etc. links between Britain and the continent.
Aside from the difficulties his colleagues had from working with him (only in politics - not the army or academia), which you correctly note, I have long suspected that ‘rivers of blood’ speech was merely an excuse for Heath, the arch Europhile, to sack Powell as a minister. What Heath really objected to was Powell's stance on the Project which he was so so dedicated to advancing.
:-) My wife - the daughter of an Oxford classics scholar has the unusual claim that Lloyd George really did know her father, and father knew Lloyd George (I gather this was not entirely a good thing).
I was asked yesterday why I am not selecting a political career, and had a bit of an answer.
Addressing 'why no powells' more broadly...
I have some of the same obnoxious partisan instincts that you describe in Powell, but I may be too agreeable and get along.
I doubt that I have the intelligence. I certainly am not that erudite.
Which is a single point, and says nothing about the real shape.
My feeling is that politics has become too much of a wishing thing of group consensus, and also maybe that the universities might have gone a little down hill.
I really can't speak to anything about the universities of the United Kingdom.
I do know some things about US universities, and trends, and academic fields here. I am often reminded that I may be far too prejudiced about certain fields that I have not practiced, and have not really gotten to know active scholars in.
A lot of our professors originally came from overseas, and those professors often strongly value sending their children to schools where they can be with a wide range of other American children. This makes good sense for reasons of cultural fluency, which is a bit important here. The problem is that that can be as ill served by the instructors and the curriculum as the other American students are.
We do still have some open pipes for letting people with a lot of potential self select into extremely good training or self-training. But a lot of people here have been redirected into some very self-destructive paths.
The school malfunctions might not have done much to a potential Powell, but all the attractive poisons directed at my cohort and younger could have.
Excellent piece. A small quibble if I may. You say that both your father and Powell 'disliked Europe’. I doubt that two such intelligent and educated men did any such thing. What they disliked was the EEC, correctly forecasting, as so few did, that it would prove inimical to British interests.
One of the tricks that was pulled on the overeducated but underintelligent 'chattering classes' in the UK was to make a deep bond in their minds between 'Europe' “ah the coffee”, “oh the architecture”, “um the drains” and the EEC and later the EU, a quasi-fascistic political structure designed, among other repellent things, to suppress democracy and create a supranational policy elite.
Powell in particular, as a brilliant Classicist, adored the founding civilizations of Rome and Greece, while deploring the political implications of the 'Project'. I suspect your father was the same.
Yes you are quite correct. They disliked the statist concept of Europe, not the physical continent or most of its inhabitants. They also I think very clearly felt that Britain was NOT the continent and should stake an identity separate from it despite acknowledging the historic cultural etc. links between Britain and the continent.
Aside from the difficulties his colleagues had from working with him (only in politics - not the army or academia), which you correctly note, I have long suspected that ‘rivers of blood’ speech was merely an excuse for Heath, the arch Europhile, to sack Powell as a minister. What Heath really objected to was Powell's stance on the Project which he was so so dedicated to advancing.
What a thoroughly enjoyable and enlightening post. Thank you.
:-) My wife - the daughter of an Oxford classics scholar has the unusual claim that Lloyd George really did know her father, and father knew Lloyd George (I gather this was not entirely a good thing).
I was asked yesterday why I am not selecting a political career, and had a bit of an answer.
Addressing 'why no powells' more broadly...
I have some of the same obnoxious partisan instincts that you describe in Powell, but I may be too agreeable and get along.
I doubt that I have the intelligence. I certainly am not that erudite.
Which is a single point, and says nothing about the real shape.
My feeling is that politics has become too much of a wishing thing of group consensus, and also maybe that the universities might have gone a little down hill.
I really can't speak to anything about the universities of the United Kingdom.
I do know some things about US universities, and trends, and academic fields here. I am often reminded that I may be far too prejudiced about certain fields that I have not practiced, and have not really gotten to know active scholars in.
A lot of our professors originally came from overseas, and those professors often strongly value sending their children to schools where they can be with a wide range of other American children. This makes good sense for reasons of cultural fluency, which is a bit important here. The problem is that that can be as ill served by the instructors and the curriculum as the other American students are.
We do still have some open pipes for letting people with a lot of potential self select into extremely good training or self-training. But a lot of people here have been redirected into some very self-destructive paths.
The school malfunctions might not have done much to a potential Powell, but all the attractive poisons directed at my cohort and younger could have.