Enoch Powell; British Official Opposed Mass Immigration

Enoch Powell, a former government minister who spoke out against large-scale immigration to Britain in his “Rivers of Blood” speech, died Sunday. He was 85.

Powell, who also was a scholar and historian, died in a hospital after suffering from Parkinson’s disease, his wife, Pamela, said.

Although Powell provoked an outcry with his 1968 speech, predicting “rivers of blood” in Britain if nonwhite immigrants were not repatriated, he kept battling immigration and remained a controversial figure for the rest of his life.

In many political quarters, Powell was reviled for the speech--and speeches that followed. But others admired him as one of the few prominent people who dared to express the feelings of many Britons.

The British establishment saluted him Sunday.

“However controversial his views, he was one of the great figures of 20th century British politics, gifted with a brilliant mind,” said Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose Labor Party took office in May.

“There will never be anybody else so compelling as Enoch Powell,” said former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. “He had a rare combination of qualities all founded on an unfaltering belief in God, an unshakable loyalty to family and friends and an unswerving devotion to our country.”

John Enoch Powell was born in Birmingham on June 6, 1912, and was educated at Cambridge University. Joining the army as a private, he rose through the ranks to become a brigadier by 1944.

After the war, he went into politics and was elected a Conservative legislator in 1950.

After the Conservatives’ 1964 election defeat, Powell took on Edward Heath in the battle for the party leadership, but lost badly.

Heath appointed him defense spokesman, but his controversial views on immigration increasingly led him into conflict with the party leadership.

His speech in 1968 in which he described Britain as “heaping up its own funeral pyre” over immigration finally led Heath to remove him.

Powell left the Conservative Party in 1974, supported the Labor Party in the national election that year, then joined the Ulster Unionists, the main Protestant party in Northern Ireland.

His parliamentary career ended in defeat in the 1987 election.