Powellism
British right-wing ideology
Powellism is the name given to the political views of Conservative and Ulster Unionist politician Enoch Powell. They derive from his High Tory and libertarian outlook.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word Powellism was coined by The Economist on 17 July 1965. However, the day before, Iain Macleod had reviewed a book of Powell's speeches entitled A Nation Not Afraid in The Spectator in which he mentioned the word:
Enoch Powell has the finest mind in the House of Commons. The best trained and the most exciting. There is an attitude of mind which can be called "Powellism" and it is excellent that now we have the evidence collected in a book.
The word was originally used to describe Powell's views on economics. Powell offered his own definition: "[Powellism is] an almost unlimited faith in the ability of the people to get what they want through peace, capital, profit and a competitive market".
Nationalism
Powell was a romantic British nationalist and viewed the nation state as "the ultimate political reality". He believed the British Parliament to be the expression of the British nation and his opposition to British membership of the European Economic Community stemmed from his belief that it would abolish the sovereignty of the British nation state.
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This entry incorporates text from “Powellism” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.