Enoch Powell, Ulster Unionism, and the British Nation

Abstract

terms: “It simply is not within the range of political reality that a democratic nation state could sever off a part of itself where the majority of the inhabitants manifest repeatedly, under all manner of testing and despite all manner of pressure, their determination to remain part of the state.” In the years that followed, Powell developed his position. He held that allegiance to the Crownin-Parliament was demonstrated through the act of election by which “the people gave in advance the pledge of their acceptance” of its sovereignty, constituting 133 Green, Ideologies of Conservatism, 281–85. For Powell, see Stapleton, Political Intellectuals, 179. 134 See Heffer, Like the Roman, 212, for Powell’s engagement with Oakeshott’s work in the late 1940s and 1950s. 135 Heffer, Like the Roman, 758. There is no copy of the speech among the Powell speeches held at PRONI. 136 “Row over Powell,” Belfast Newsletter, 7 July 1975; “Powell Talking Nonsense: Paisley,” Belfast Telegraph, 7 July 1975; “Loyalist Attack on Powell,” Irish Times, 7 July 1975. 137 Belfast Telegraph, 10 July 1975. 138 Powell, speech at Ballynahinch, 8 October 1974, PRONI, D3107/1/3. ENOCH POWELL, ULSTER UNIONISM, AND THE BRITISH NATION 991 the “consent of the nation.” In 1981 he explicitly contended that electing MPs to Westminster guaranteed Northern Ireland’s status as part of the United Kingdom because this made it “impossible” for the House of Commons to “reject a part of itself.” This, of course, swiftly became a provocative argument as the PIRA hunger striker, Bobby Sands, won a Westminster seat in April 1981 as part of a wider campaign for Republican inmates to be treated as political prisoners that, in turn, paved the way for the emergence of Sinn Féin as a political force, contesting, but not taking up, seats in the House of Commons. Powell’s position also provoked a backlash from the devolutionist wing of the OUP. Edgar Graham, a rising figure in the party and a law lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast, articulated a long-standing distrust of Westminster parties and politicians, arguing that if “the union had to depend on the House of Commons for its defence, it would be a very fragile union indeed.” Powell’s argument also contained some latent contradictions. It was seemingly underpinned by his belief in the overriding sovereignty of the Crown-in-Parliament to make or break any laws whatsoever. Accordingly, he distinguished it from the contention that Northern Ireland’s constitutional position was secured as a result of any particular piece of legislation, including the 1973 Northern Ireland Act, which stated that it would remain part of the United Kingdom so long as this was the wish of a majority of its population. Yet, at the same time, Powell attributed significant power to the people going—in undefined ways—beyond that of election. Indeed, he stated on one occasion that “it is the people of Northern Ireland themselves, and they alone, who have it in their power to destroy the Union with Great Britain.” This mirrored arguments Powell had made about EEC membership when—even before reluctantly endorsing a referendum on the issue—he had obliquely contended that the “power is still the people’s if they have the will to use it.” Powell’s position was in line with the later twentieth-century trend toward various forms of popular sovereignty, including (but not limited to) referenda. Even so, there were particular tensions within Powell’s thinking about the relationship between parliamentary and popular sovereignty which, in the Northern Irish context, centred on the question of who was able to sever the union—with knock-on implications for allegiance. Powell’s acceptance of some degree of popular sovereignty had slowly become apparent in his discussion of the types of behavior that put the union in jeopardy. In a widely circulated speech in 1976, which showed very clearly his civil association reasoning, Powell identified a particular danger from Loyalist paramilitary activity: “the nationalist, the rebel, the seceder—these are the people who can, and frequently do, obtain their aims by lawlessness and force. You can get out of an association or a society or a nation by breaking its laws and by turning your back 139 Powell, speech at Holywood, 5 May 1978, PRONI, D3107/1/83. 140 Powell, speech at Brookeborough Hall, Belfast, 8 January 1981, PRONI, D3107/1/160. 141 Edgar Graham, Devolution: Maintaining the Union (Belfast, 1982), 5–7. 142 Powell, speech at Brookeborough Hall, Belfast, 8 January 1981, PRONI, D3107/1/160. 143 Powell, speech at Helen’s Bay, 6 January 1982, PRONI, D3107/1/181. 144 Powell, speech at Chester-le-Street, 29 January 1972, in Ritchie, Nation or No Nation?, 36–40, quotation at 40. 145 Brigid Hadfield, “The United Kingdom as a Territorial State,” in The British Constitution in the Twentieth Century, ed. Vernon Bogdanor (Oxford, 2003), 585–630, esp. 621–22.