ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on archival material and aims to analyse the way in which Powellism framed Alfred Sherman’s own thinking on race, immigration and the British nation in the late 1960s and the 1970s. It highlights that Sherman’s intellectual journey on British membership in the European Economic Community after the 1975 referendum had not yet been completed – he had not really taken into account the issue of British sovereignty and his understanding of Powellism was actually parochial. The chapter shows that Sherman played a significant role behind the scenes in influencing Margaret Thatcher’s ideas on race and immigration and he should thus be viewed as the intellectual link between Powellism and what was to be known as Thatcherism from this perspective. In a populist vein, Enoch Powell used the fears and resentments of ordinary people to make immigration a dangerous issue since too many immigrants would be impossible to integrate, thereby jeopardizing the homogeneous nation.
