Powell, an unwitting exemplar of true power

Enoch Powell served in cabinet for only 15 months and yet was probably the most powerful British politician of his generation, with the possible exception of Margaret Thatcher. He was the unwitting exemplar of the reality that power and office are quite distinct. Power in a democracy is derived essentially from influence on public opinion.

Powell changed the spirit of British politics in three crucial ways. It was he who pioneered the philosophy which became Thatcherism: the belief that governments can shape the economies of states most effectively through exclusive focus on the money supply. And it was that policy which shaped British society for a decade and a half and may yet be doing so.

It was he who pioneered what became Euro-scepticism. He was convinced that Britain would never surrender its sovereignty to a federal Europe. Others joined in that conviction, and now his former party has formally succumbed to its appeal.

It was he who first powerfully expressed alarm at the prospect of a British multiracial and multicultural society. He did so in language that was racist and in terms of prophecies that proved groundless. But that alarm reverberated through Britain and hugely influenced Tory and Labour immigration policy.

Although he was a Unionist Party MP from 1974 to 1987, Powell was less influential on Northern Ireland. His central belief, however, was correct. It was that, in circumstances of constitutional and political certainty, terrorism could not and would not persist. For this reason he advocated the complete integration of Northern Ireland into the United Kingdom, to be treated no differently in constitutional and administrative terms from Devon.

His influence on the Unionist Party was such as to distract many unionists from focus on an "internal settlement" for over a decade. But, to his consternation, the government led by his ideological protegee, Margaret Thatcher, far from ending uncertainty about the constitutional future of Northern Ireland boosted that uncertainty, as he saw it, through the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985.

The reality was that it was impossible to integrate Northern Ireland fully into the UK, simply because the rest of the UK didn't (and doesn't) want that: it takes two to integrate. Instead of integration, Northern Ireland was offered a specific opt-out option: if a majority of its people wanted to leave the UK, the rest of the UK would not object (such an option for Essex, for instance, would be unthinkable).

It was Enoch Powell who, in reference to Joseph Chamberlain, said that all political careers end in failure. In evaluations of his own career in the days since his death several obituarists have evaluated his career as a failure because he did not attain high office.

But was it failure to have influenced profoundly his generation on the great issues facing his nation? Would it have been a success had he become prime minister and left as little mark as did Alec Douglas Home, James Callaghan and John Major?

There is nobody now in Irish politics - perhaps with the exception of John Hume and Gerry Adams - who is likely to influence the generations as Powell influenced his in his country. And yet there are great issues that cannot be confronted without politicians and others seeking to influence public opinion as Powell did. The attainment of public office alone will not resolve them.

I mention just four issues: the corruption of the political system through the influence of private wealth; the enhancement of civil liberties in a climate alarmed by crime hysteria; the deployment of the taxation system as a radical mechanism in the attainment of social fairness; and the attainment of reconciliation in Northern Ireland.

Nobody in public life is now campaigning for the financing of the political system solely through public monies. Politicians perceive, correctly, that the public is at present vigorously opposed to this idea, and some (Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats) have responded by going in the opposite direction, seeking to remove all public finance from that arena.

For many of these, notably including former Progressive Democrats TD Michael McDowell, the fact that the public was opposed to financing political parties from the Exchequer ended the matter. He and they did (and do) not see their function fundamentally as attempting to change public opinion. Of course, policies should not be introduced without public support but, surely, the task of political leaders is to generate public support for whatever they believe to be right?

Similarly with civil liberties and crime. A combination of opportunist politicians and opportunist (and deranged) media have whipped up a hysteria about crime which has silenced concerns about the damage done to civil liberties by the "war" on crime and the "war" on drugs.

Somewhere in the responsibility of political leaders must be the obligation to go against the tide of public opinion and sentiment at times, in defence of values they think important (there are political leaders who think civil liberties are important, aren't there?) and in the assertion of cold fact over hype.

Taxation is now almost universally regarded as a form of theft by the State of the earned income of individuals. That "earned" income is perceived as the rightful "property" of the individual. The peculiar and invariably arbitrary circumstances that give rise to the amount of income "earned" is not at all adverted to.

Also that these peculiar and invariably arbitrary circumstances might be legitimately changed by the will of society, for instance through the tax mechanism. Social justice cannot be achieved while the current attitudes towards taxation prevail. No political leader is seeking to take on the prevailing bias.

And on Northern Ireland, what has been done through political leadership to persuade people to a possible resolution of the divisions in society there? The unionist leadership is hopeless. Not once in the last 30 years (since the time of Capt Terence O'Neill) has a unionist leader of any hue sought to change opinion within the unionist community on any matter.

On the nationalist side John Hume has tried and, in republican terms, so too has Gerry Adams. But even their combined efforts have been nowhere near enough.

Only when public opinion in both communities there has been won over to the necessity for compromise, to an appreciation of the pain endured by the other community and fears lived, can there be reconciliation. Only then can there be the political basis for a settlement. Reconciliation cannot be imposed on communities that remained unreconciled.

Enoch Powell would have preferred high office and influence. But given a choice, certainly by the end of his career, he surely would have opted for real power.