Brigadier John Enoch Powell, MBE (16 June 1912 – 8 February 1998) was a British politician, linguist, writer, academic, soldier and poet.
He was a Conservative Party Member of Parliament (MP) between 1950 and February 1974, and an Ulster Unionist MP between October 1974 and 1987. He was controversial through most of his career, and his tenure in senior office was brief. He held strong and distinctive views on matters such as immigration, national identity, monetary policy, and the United Kingdom's entry into the European Economic Community, which later became the European Union. He is remembered for his controversial 1968 "Rivers of Blood" speech in opposition to mass Commonwealth immigration to Britain; this resulted in him being sacked from the Shadow Cabinet.
Enoch Powell was born in Stechford, Birmingham, England. He lived there for the first six years of his life before moving, in 1918, to Kings Norton, where he lived until 1930. He was the only child of Albert Enoch Powell (1872–1956), primary school headmaster, and his wife, Ellen Mary (1886–1953). Ellen was the daughter of Henry Breese, a Liverpool policeman, and his wife Eliza), who had given up her own teaching career after marrying. The Powells were of Welsh descent, having moved to the developing Black Country in the early 19th century. His great-grandfather was a miner in the coalfields, and his grandfather had been employed in the iron trade.