ABSTRACT
In 1989, at age 77, Enoch Powell was interviewed on the radio show “Desert Island Discs”. At least twice prior to the huge inflow of supporting mail Powell invoked war memories in his effort to rally Britons against coloured immigration. Implicit or explicit references to war, appeasement and invasion abound and in them Powell is turned into a new Churchill, the one man able to address Numerous constituents’ sense of displacement and disempowerment. The chapter explores the extent to which the war and the pre-1939 period were mobilized in order to nurture a welfare chauvinism common sense. It focuses on how among some of those constituents supportive of Powell, the immigrant presence was experienced as a symbolical re-enactment of the war, but in a manner which was different, if not contrary, to the war as “defining the nation’s finest hour”.
