Discuss @David Flin 's latest article here
Enoch Powell is one of the figures that can't be kept out of TLs set in the UK in the 1970s/1980s. I don't particularly object to that. He was, after all, a figure of some influence, and eminently quotable. His speeches also have a rhythm about them that makes his style very easy to emulate.
What annoys me are those TLs where the author clearly has just picked him because of the Rivers of Blood speech, and extrapolated from that without doing any research into other areas, and without having a clue about the man (once described as: High Intelligence, Low Wisdom). His ability to compromise was second to none. Correction, it was none.
I have him 'cast' as Viceroy of India - this was apparently, and in OTL, one of his youthful ambitions and led him to learning Urdu in the late 1930's.Not willing to compromise would be a good starting point. If he felt logic to him to a certain position, he'd hold on to that position, come Hell or high water. When you look at his speeches, they are full of the logic of x follows y follows z, without regard for the shades of grey that normal human beings come with.
He could turn a phrase (his speech regarding Thatcher both before and after the Falklands was genuinely brilliant), and he knew his Classics, but compromising to win a consensus? Not a hope.
Unfortunately, getting to the top spot in anything pretty much requires the ability to be able to take account of alternate points of view. His getting to a top position would effectively require a bizarre set of circumstances eliminating all possible competition. By contrast, Thatcher was a veritable weather vane of shifting positions and sympathy with differences of opinion.
How much did he improve on the already existing body count?I have him 'cast' as Viceroy of India - this was apparently, and in OTL, one of his youthful ambitions and led him to learning Urdu in the late 1930's.
It was his ambition, but then, when I was in my youth, it was my ambition to be a Hollywood star.
He might have wanted the job, but no-one was ever going to give it to him.