What makes the House of Commons more than an antechamber to government and an endless dry run of the next general election is the presence on its benches of some individuals of great character, great intellect or great oddity. Few moments have more become the House of Commons since the war than the speech of Enoch Powell in the early hours of 28 July 1959 on the scandalous deaths of Kikuyu prisoners at Hola camp in Kenya. It was delivered with precision of language, in ordered sequence and with what the present author calls 'an incandescent emotion'. Few who were present on that occasion would ever forget it. Yet this combination of remorseless logic and volcanic emotion could at times, and at one time in particular, be directed at a target which seemed chillingly unsuited to it.

LRB 27 July 1989 | PDF Download