As we were going through hostile territory, I disguised myself as a travelling rug salesman and dyed my skin brown, but Powell disdained all such pretence, and travelled in a suit, carrying much luggage. We were duly stopped by a warlike party in one of the passes. Before turning to me, they demanded to see in Enoch's luggage. To my amazement, it was full of cricket equipment: gloves, bails, balls, cricket boxes, and so on The tribesmen greeted this with wild cries of delight. It turned out that Powell had been up in the hills the year before and had taught them how to play the noble game, promising one day to return with ample supplies."And this man here?" they said, pointing to me. "Is he a friend of yours, oh Enoch?" "I know him not," he said, gazing at me with those hooded eyes. He then added softly, in Latin, for my ears only, as they took me off for two years' imprisonment, "Sorry about this but a chap must do his duty Molte me lacessit."Splendid man.
We shall miss his sort.yours etcFrom Sir Norbert StandingSir, I agree with all the foregoing. I was a political colleague of Enoch's in the 1950s when we were both very junior cogs in the Tory government, and spent a lot of our time forming inter-departmental cricket teams. I used to field next to him in the slips, and I remember him saying one day that we would never beat the West Indies until we had a good supply of fast bowlers Where will we get them from? I asked Government training scheme? No, he smiled. He then outlined a plan for tempting immigrant labour from the West Indies, ostensibly to drive our buses and man our tube trains, but in fact to broaden the gene pool from which the next generation of fast bowlers would come.At least, I think that is what he was saying. Most of these whispered conversations were in Latin, never my number one language, so I may have missed a few nuances.A great man. And a fine placer of the field.From Vice-Admiral Sir Hugh BottingleighSir, All these letters are spot-on. I was present at what must have been the last cricket game Enoch Powell ever attended, in his County Down constituency, during the annual Republican v Unionist friendly fixture which he had instituted.
He did not play himself, but insisted on umpiring, and caused a certain amount of controversy by giving many batsmen out when there had not even been an appeal. I later asked him about this and he said, fixing me with that glittering gaze which the ancient mariner would have envied, that he disliked both sides equally, and that he had never courted popularity.Perhaps, I said, he had courted the opposite Perhaps he had actively courted dislike Or perhaps he just liked the sound of his own voice. At which he smiled and said:"Nacuntur poetae, fiunt oratores."yours etc. A cartoon in a Belfast newspaper depicts a relieved David Trimble reaching gratefully for a lifebelt, symbolising IRA violence, which is rescuing him from the dire prospect of having to engage with Sinn Fein. It is the case that Ulster Unionists view the latest crisis in the peace process not as a moment of grave danger but as a golden opportunity to re-shape the political talks in the way they want it They want Sinn Fein banished. This is partly because of the IRA's apparent return to killing, but more fundamentally because few if any Unionist politicians can conceive of a new settlement which might include republicans. Born and brought up in a state that regarded republicanism as the implacable enemy within, they found it impossible to envisage any other way. The peace process, emerging as it did from Irish nationalism and gaining the endorsement of the Labour government, is based in large part on an abandonment of the traditional politics of exclusion.
