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John Enoch Powell, MBE (; 16 June 1912 – 8 February 1998) was a British politician, classical scholar, linguist, and poet. He served as a Conservative Member of Parliament (MP, 1950–74), Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) MP (1974–87), and Minister of Health (1960–63). He attained most prominence in 1968, when he made a controversial speech on immigration, now widely referred to as the Rivers of Blood speech. In response, he was dismissed from his position as Shadow Defence Secretary (1965–68) in the Shadow Cabinet of Edward Heath. A poll at the time suggested that 74% of the UK population agreed with Powell's opinions and his supporters claim that this large public following which Powell attracted helped the Conservatives to win the 1970 general election, and perhaps cost them the February 1974 general election,〔 when Powell turned his back on the Conservatives by endorsing a vote for Labour, who returned as a minority government in early March following a hung parliament. He returned to the House of Commons in October 1974 as the Ulster Unionist Party MP for the Northern Irish constituency of South Down until he was defeated in the 1987 general election. Before entering politics, he had been a classical scholar, becoming a full professor of ancient Greek at the age of 25. During the Second World War, he served in both staff and intelligence positions, reaching the rank of brigadier in his early thirties. He also wrote poetry, his first works being published in 1937, as well as many books on classical and political subjects. == Early years == Powell was born in Stechford, Birmingham on 16 June 1912. He lived there for the first six years of his life before his parents moved to King's Norton in 1918, where he lived until 1930. He was the only child of Albert Enoch Powell (1872–1956), a 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 during the early 19th century. His great-grandfather was a coal miner, and his grandfather had been employed in the iron trade.〔Roth〕 Powell was a pupil at King's Norton Grammar School for Boys before moving to King Edward's School, Birmingham, where he studied classics (which would later influence his 'Rivers of Blood' speech), and was one of the few pupils in the school's history to attain 100% in an end-of-year English examination. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1930 to 1933, during which time he fell under the influence both of the poet A. E. Housman, then Professor of Latin at the university, and of the writings of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. He took no part in politics at university. It was while at Cambridge that Powell is recorded as having enjoyed one of his first close relationships. Indeed, according to John Evans, Chaplain of Trinity and Extra Preacher to the Queen,〔 The Times, 10 February 1998: 1, 19〕 instructions were left with him to reveal after Powell's death that at least one of the romantic affairs of his life had been homosexual. Powell had particularly drawn the Chaplain's attention to lines in his ''First Poems'' (published 1937). Biographers such as Simon Heffer dispute this and have argued that this did not mean that he was homosexual; merely that he had not yet met any girls.〔 While at university, in one Greek prose examination lasting three hours, he was asked to translate a passage into Greek. Powell walked out after one and a half hours, having produced translations in the styles of Plato and Thucydides. For his efforts, he was awarded a double starred first in Latin and Greek, this grade being the best possible and extremely rare. As well as his education at Cambridge, Powell took a course in Urdu at the School of Oriental Studies, now the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, because he felt that his long-cherished ambition of becoming Viceroy of India would be unattainable without knowledge of an Indian language.〔 Powell went on to learn other languages, including Welsh (in which he jointly edited a medieval legal text), modern Greek, and Portuguese. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Enoch Powell」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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