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Enoch Powell
283 quotes
“Because it has come to be so" is the only, but to him sufficient, answer which the Englishman gives for his institutions and the authority which is immanent in them.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Leicester Junior Chamber (16 May 1980), quoted in Roger Scruton, 'The Language of Enoch Powell', in Lord Howard of Rising (ed.), Enoch at 100: A Re-evaluation of the Life, Politics and Philosophy of Enoch …
“The Englishman instinctively treats loyalty as by its nature unconditional, because he has – so to speak – nowhere else to go: the Crown and the institutions described collectively as those "set in authority under it" are his peculiar possession, they are his own history, his own nationhood, and he can only defy them and divest himself of them at the cost of denying himself.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Carlyle Club, Peterhouse, Cambridge (24 May 1980), quoted in Roger Scruton, 'The Language of Enoch Powell', in Lord Howard of Rising (ed.), Enoch at 100: A Re-evaluation of the Life, Politics and Philosoph…
“Will the right hon. Lady take the opportunity today and every day to make clear to the country, as only she can, that the courses that are being commended to her by the official Opposition and by many other voices mean nothing but a deliberate return to hyper-inflation?”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Question to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the House of Commons (22 July 1980)
“[A]llegiance is the very essence of nationhood, there is no meaning in nationhood without allegiance. Nationhood means that a man stands to one nation, to one loyalty, against all others—that is what it is about.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons on the British Nationality Bill (28 January 1981)
“[I see no reason to depart from my view] that at some point along the line of growth, absolute and proportionate, of the Commonwealth population in London and the other English cities affected, there lies the certainty of violence on a scale which can only be adequately described as civil war.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Young Conservatives in Ashton-under-Lyne (28 March 1981), quoted in The Times (30 March 1981), p. 2
“[T]hose of us who have seen—the insight is not restricted to any single party or to politicians alone—the future population content of inner London and other great cities have been unable to imagine that that could come about without at some stage—I will use phrases which I have used myself—inner London becoming ungovernable or violence which could only effectually be described as civil war.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons after the 1981 riots (16 July 1981)
“We were dragged into folly by the Americans over Iran. We were dragged into folly by the Americans over Afghanistan. Neither national interest nor moral obligation requires us to be dragged by them into folly over Poland.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Times (8 January 1982), quoted in Simon Heffer, Like the Roman: The Life of Enoch Powell (1998), pp. 852-3
“Yet we slink about like whipped curs ... our self-abasement principally takes the form of subservience to the United States ... we are under no necessity to participate in the American nightmare of a Soviet monster barely held at bay in all quarters of the globe by an inconceivable nuclear armament and by political intervention everywhere from Poland to Cambodia. It is the Americans who need us in order to act out their crazy scenario... We simply do not need to go chasing up and down after the vagaries of the next ignoramus to become President of the United States.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Sunday Express (4 February 1982), quoted in Simon Heffer, Like the Roman: The Life of Enoch Powell (1998), p. 853
“I would sooner receive injustice in the Queen's courts than justice in a foreign court. I hold that man or woman to be a scoundrel who goes abroad to a foreign court to have the judgments of the Queen's courts overturned, the actions of her Government countermanded or the legislation of Parliament struck down.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Ilford (13 March 1982), quoted in Simon Heffer, Like the Roman: The Life of Enoch Powell (1998), p. 853
“The Prime Minister [Margaret Thatcher], shortly after she came into office, received a soubriquet as the "Iron Lady". It arose in the context of remarks which she made about defence against the Soviet Union and its allies; but there was no reason to suppose that the right hon. Lady did not welcome and, indeed, take pride in that description. In the next week or two this House, the nation and the right hon. Lady herself will learn of what metal she is made.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons after Argentina's invasion of the Falkland Islands (3 April 1982)
“It is not unknown for people coming to my house to be told by the taxi-driver that there is no charge. It is an unintended and unsought testimonial, but I would be surprised if that I feel is not what the mass of my fellow countrymen feel. I don't feel separate just because I was a professor of Greek. My countrymen say: "this man sees what we see, he feels as we feel, he's one of us, thank God.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with The Daily Mail (13 April 1982), quoted in Simon Heffer, Like the Roman: The Life of Enoch Powell (1998), p. 855
“The British Labour Party has always been nationalist, if not insular, and...not just democratic but parliamentarian. But it is confrontation with the EEC that has presented the Labour Party with an uninhibited appeal to patriotism. Internationalist it may be in phrases; when it comes to policy, it is nationalist.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'In judgment on political casebooks', The Saturday Times (9 April 1983), p. 5
“By one of those happy combinations of circumstance in English history which half persuade us that our nation is specially favoured by Providence, the Book of Common Prayer was preserved intact through more than four centuries while the passage of time subtly imparted to it the supercharge of archaism and familiarity which it could not possess at the outset but which make it a uniquely English vehicle of religious and ritual expression.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'The Language of the Prayer Book', address to The National Conference of The Prayer Book Society in Trinity Hall, Cambridge (10 September 1983), published in The Salisbury Review, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Winter 1984), quoted in …
“I refer to the misunderstanding of Soviet Russia as an aggressive power, militaristically and ideologically bent upon world domination—'seeing', to quote a recent speech of the British Prime Minister, 'the rest of the world as its rightful fiefdom.' How any rational person, viewing objectively the history of the last thirty-five years, could entertain this 'international misunderstanding' challenges, if it does not defeat, comprehension. The notion has no basis in fact... If Russia is bent on world conquest, she has been remarkably slothful and remarkably unsuccessful.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at Torquay (7 October 1983), quoted in George R. Urban, Diplomacy and Disillusion at the Court of Margaret Thatcher. An Insider's View (1996), p. 60
“I don't think that would be entirely unfair. There are some things which get on one's nerves and some things that don't. And I'm, to use a rather journalistic word, allergic to the things that are typically American. I think that's fairly natural to someone who has just been described as a Tory and is always ready to describe himself as a High Tory.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: When asked if he was 'anti-American' (Face the Press, Channel 4 TV, 9 October, 1983), quoted in Reflections of a Statesman: The Writings and Speeches of Enoch Powell (1991), p. 428
“At the invitation of Her Majesty's Government, the United States is about to station on the soil of the United Kingdom nuclear weapons which, we are told, will be used only after consultation and by joint decision with Her Majesty's Government. Anyone who, after the experience of the last few days and of recent years, imagines that the United States will defer to the views of the Government of this country is living in a dangerous fool's paradise. Anyone in office who entertains that illusion is in no position to serve the security of this country.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons during the debate on the American invasion of Grenada (26 October 1983)
“Having risen at my customary hour of seven, going down, tiptoeing down, and seeing the paper slanting through the letterbox, and reading the words “Heath's Gamble...” Heath's Gamble? I thought. Gamble? So I pulled it through and it fell out flat on the mat: “Heath's Gamble Fails”. So I took it up with me to the bathroom and sang the Te Deum.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1974 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Recalling the day after the February 1974 general election, quoted in Phillip Whitehead, The Writing on the Wall: Britain in the Seventies (1985), p. 113
“The prospect I have put before you demands that government, politicians and public answer the following question: What sort of a country will Britain be when its capital, other cities and areas of England consist of a population of which at least one-third is of African and Asian descent? I have not dodged that question since it was first posed. My answer, upon a maturely considered judgment, is that it will be a Britain unimaginably wracked by dissension and violent disorder, not recognizable as the same nation as it has been, or perhaps as a nation at all.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1985 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'My challenge to Mrs Thatcher', The Times (21 September 1985), p. 8
“Does the right hon. Lady understand—if she does not yet understand she soon will—that the penalty for treachery is to fall into public contempt?”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1985 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Question in the House of Commons (14 November 1985) to Margaret Thatcher the day before she signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement
“I should like to have been killed in the war.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Answer to the question "How would you like to be remembered?" by Anne Brown in a radio interview on 13 April 1986; quoted in Simon Heffer, Like the Roman: The Life of Enoch Powell (1998), p. 901
“Parliament" is a word of magic and power in this country. We refer to "parliamentary sovereignty." We live under the sovereignty of the Crown in Parliament. Our history and political life would be unintelligible if Parliament were removed from that history. There is no other European nation of which the same can be said. There is no other European nation at the heart of whose identity and history lies its parliamentary assembly.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons (26 June 1986)
“She has peaked. I have the feeling of 1945. Mrs Thatcher has never known losing office as Gladstone did and the need to face changing circumstances and clear new obstacles before returning to power.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1987 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks during the general election campaign (27 May 1987), quoted in The Times (28 May 1987), p. 5.
“[Chernobyl has strengthened the] growing impulse to escape from the nightmare of peace being dependent upon the contemplation of horrific and mutual carnage. Events have now so developed that this aspiration can at last be rationally, logically and – I dare to add – patriotically seized by the people of the United Kingdom if they will use their votes to do so.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1987 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at the Royal Overseas League in London hinting that people should vote Labour, who had unilateral nuclear disarmament as their policy (7 June 1987), quoted in The Times (8 June 1987), p. 12
“Powell: The people who think they are the people of this country will be fighting for their country. Ross: I'm not sure that I understand that. Surely many black people regard themselves as genuinely British. Powell: People fight for power, people fight for domination. Ross: And this will be a battle for domination? Powell: And they try to resist it. Ross: What do you think the outcome will be? Powell: Appalling.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1987 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Nick Ross for Channel 4 (1987), quoted in Robert Shepherd, Enoch Powell (1997), p. 366
“England alone found the way to transmute its feudal assembly into a matchless instrument of free government, which the rest of the world vainly aspire to imitate.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1988 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the St George's Dinner of the Honourable Artillery Company (21 April 1988), quoted in Michael Forsyth, 'Constitutional Reform', in Lord Howard of Rising (ed.), Enoch at 100: A Re-evaluation of the Life, Politi…
“The EEC however is not, and never has been, about freedom of trade: it is about, and always has been about, a closed-off internal trading system in Europe... What the EEC is bent upon has nothing to do with free trade or free anything. It is a naked assertion of the will to power, the will to create a unified state to which instead of our own national organs of representation and government we are all to be subordinated.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1988 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Halifax (26 September 1988), quoted in Enoch Powell on 1992 (1989), p. 33
“Q: Who caused the inflation? A: The Chancellor of the Exchequer. Q: How did he cause it? A: By putting a flood of new money into circulation. Q: Why did he do that? A: To prevent the exchange rate of the pound rising last year. Q: Why did he want to stop it rising? A: To keep level with the Deutschmark. Q: What for? A: To make it easier to join the EMS.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1989 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the resurgence of inflation in the late 1980s (The Guardian, 24 July 1989)
“The European Community now fills the place in socialist thinking which used to be occupied by the Comintern.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1989 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the Labour Party's favourable attitude to the European Community's social legislation; speech in Blackpool (12 October 1989), quoted in Paul Corthorn, Enoch Powell: Politics and Ideas in Modern Britain (2019), p. 126
“We obey our laws because we feel them to be our laws; we submit to be governed by our institutions because we feel them to be our institutions. They are identified with us, intuitively and emotionally, because we are, we think, part and parcel of them and they of us.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1989 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in Orpington (17 November 1989), quoted in Michael Forsyth, 'Constitutional Reform', in Lord Howard of Rising (ed.), Enoch at 100: A Re-evaluation of the Life, Politics and Philosophy of Enoch Powell (2012), p. 82
“I was born a Tory. Define: a Tory is a person who regards authority as immanent in institutions. I had always been, as far back as I could remember in my existence, a respecter of institutions, a respecter of monarchy, a respecter of the deposit of history, a respecter of everything in which authority was capable of being embodied, and that must surely be what the Conservative Party was about, the Conservative Party as the party of the maintenance of acknowledged prescriptive authority.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1990 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Theory and Practice', in G. M. K. Hunt (ed.), Philosophy and Politics (1990), p. 2
“We are taunted—by the French, by the Italians, by the Spaniards—for refusing to worship at the shrine of a common government superimposed upon them all... where were the European unity merchants in 1940? I will tell you. They were either writhing under a hideous oppression or they were aiding and abetting that oppression. Lucky for Europe that Britain was alone in 1940.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1990 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Merseyside Conservative Ladies' Luncheon Club (5 January 1990), from Simon Heffer, Like the Roman: The Life of Enoch Powell (1998), p. 928
“Unlike every other parliament in the world, the parliament of the United Kingdom does not owe its existence to any document or treaty.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1990 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Paper delivered in Oporto (8 May 1990), quoted in Michael Forsyth, 'Constitutional Reform', in Lord Howard of Rising (ed.), Enoch at 100: A Re-evaluation of the Life, Politics and Philosophy of Enoch Powell (2012), p. 65
“[The House of Lords] is an integral part of Parliament simply because that is how Parliament evolved, and its powers, like those of the House of Commons, derive not from a theory but from precedent.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1990 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Paper delivered in Oporto (8 May 1990), quoted in Michael Forsyth, 'Constitutional Reform', in Lord Howard of Rising (ed.), Enoch at 100: A Re-evaluation of the Life, Politics and Philosophy of Enoch Powell (2012), p. 72
“The world is full of evil men engaged in doing evil things. That does not make us policemen to round them up nor judges to find them guilty and to sentence them. What is so special about the ruler of Iraq that we suddenly discover that we are to be his jailers and his judges? ... we as a nation have no interest in the existence or non-existence of Kuwait or, for that matter, Saudi Arabia as an independent state... I sometimes wonder if, when we shed our power, we omitted to shed our arrogance.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1990 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Sunday Correspondent (21 October 1990), quoted in Simon Heffer, Like the Roman: The Life of Enoch Powell (1998), p. 933
“I [also] know that, on my deathbed, I shall still be believing with one part of my brain that somewhere on every ocean of the world there is a grey, grey ship with three funnels and sixteen-inch guns which can blow out of the water any other navy which is likely to face it. I know it is not so. Indeed, I realised at a relatively early age that it is not so. But that factor – that emotional factor... will not die until I, the carrier of it, am dead.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1991 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to the Institute of Contemporary British History at the London School of Economics (July 1991), quoted in Robert Shepherd, Enoch Powell (1997), p. 9
“To me a Tory is a person who believes that authority is vested in institutions—that's a carefully honed definition. We have made the law, not for extraneous reasons, not because it conforms with a priori specifications; it has been made by a particular institution in a particular way and can be changed by that institution in a particular way. A Tory therefore reposes the ultimate authority in institutions—he is an example of collective man.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1992 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interviewed in Winter 1992, quoted in Naim Attallah, Asking Questions (1996), pp. 354-355
“It's not impossible but it's difficult, for a non-white person to be British.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1994 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Iain Macleod (Hutchinson, 1994), by Robert Shepherd, p. 366
“He says to the Sovereign: "I no longer am leader of the majority party in the House of Commons; but I am carrying on as your Prime Minister." Now I don't think anyone can say that—at least without inflicting damage on the constitution... [it is] tantamount to treating the monarch herself with disrespect and denying the very principle on which our parliamentary democracy is founded.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1995 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On John Major's decision to resign as party leader in order to contest a leadership election (The Daily Mail, 27 June 1995)
“A pity she did not understand them!”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1995 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Odd Man Out", BBC TV profile by Michael Cockerell transmitted on 11 November 1995, on Margaret Thatcher's adoption of monetarist economic policies.
“The analytical faculty is underdeveloped in women.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1995 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Odd Man Out", BBC TV profile by Michael Cockerell transmitted on 11 November 1995.
“In old age it is no longer possible to credit the sheer, almost physical agony which is caused in youth by the passage of time, when the turning of spring into summer arouses pain as lively as the pain of toothache. The succession of the seasons is like a recurrent inescapable catastrophe, which sweeps away what is young and beautiful, and what is beautiful because it is young.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I hate the ugly, hate the old, I hate the lame and weak, But more than all I hate the dead That lie so still in their earthen bed And never dare to rise.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Oh, sweet it is, where grass is deep And swifts are overhead, To lie and watch the clouds, and weep For friends already dead.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mother, with longing ever new And joy too great for telling, I turn again to rest in you My earliest dwelling.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“While yesteryear I tarried In a garden in the south, I met a youth who carried A rose-bud in his mouth.I gave him chase and caught him, And would not set him free, But held him and besought him To give the flower to me.He smiled, and broke a petal And laid it in my hand— It seared like molten metal, And here is yet the brand.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now I alone sit by the fire, And one remains of three; For two have got their heart's desire And left their grief to me.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I did not speak, but when I saw you turn And cross your right leg on your left, and fold Your hands around your knee, I felt a flow Of white-hot lava seething up the old Volcano-shaft. That selfsame attitude, Though not of yours, it was which long ago Fired me, an innocent, unknowing boy, And led me on to sin and on to learn And onwards to the very fount of woe.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[In Italy, when every sentence is liable to be scanned for traces of anti-Fascist sentiment] it is obviously safer to begin by choosing a more congenial subject than a free Athens or a free Rome. In Germany the effect of National-Socialism has been the opposite. Racial doctrines and political antipathy to the whole Roman Empire and its cognate ideas have had the result of discouraging study of the Italic peoples and of Rome, the mistress of the world. On the other hand, a peculiar kinship has been detected between the ancient Greeks and modern Germans. Not only the Greek civilization in general, but Thucydides in particular, has proved exceptionally congenial. The intensely political outlook of Thucydides may be made serviceable to a doctrine which asserts the absolute dominion of the State over every phase of individual existence; and, as the more striking figures of Caesar and Augustus had already been captured as prototypes by Mussolini, Hitler might well be made to look very like Pericles—or Pericles, rather, to look like Hitler.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1936 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The War and its Aftermath in their influence on Thucydidean Studies", address given to the Classical Association at Westminster School (4 January 1936), quoted in The Times (6 January 1936), p. 8
“The continuance of India within the British Empire is essential to the Empire's existence and is consequently a paramount interest both of the United Kingdom and of the Dominions...for strategic purposes there is no half-way house between an India fully within the Empire and an India totally outside it...Should it once be admitted or proved that Indians cannot govern themselves except by leaving the Empire – in other words, that the necessary goal of political development for the most important section of His Majesty's non-European subjects is independence and not Dominion status – then the logically inevitable outcome will be the eventual and probably the rapid loss to the Empire of all its other non-European parts. It would extinguish the hope of a lasting union between "white" and "coloured" which the conception of a common subjectship to the King-Emperor affords and to which the development of the Empire hitherto has given the prospect of leading...In discussion of the wealth of India it is usual to forget the principal item, which is four hundred millions of human beings, for the most part belonging to races neither unintelligent nor slothful...[British policy should be to] create the preconditions of democracy and self-government by as soon as possible making India socially and economically a modern state.”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1946 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Memorandum on Indian Policy (16 May 1946), quoted in Simon Heffer, Like the Roman: The Life of Enoch Powell (1998), pp. 104-105
“We describe a Monarch by designating the territory of which he is Monarch. To say that he is Monarch of a certain territory and his other realms and territories is as good as to say that he is king of his kingdom. We have perpetrated a solecism in the title we are proposing to attach to our Sovereign and we have done so out of what might almost be called an abject desire to eliminate the expression "British." The same desire has been felt—though not by any means throughout the British Commonwealth—to eliminate this word before the term "Commonwealth." ... Why is it, then, that we are so anxious, in the description of our own Monarch, in a title for use in this country, to eliminate any reference to the seat, the focus and the origin of this vast aggregation of territories? Why is it that this "teeming womb of royal Kings," as Shakespeare called it, wishes now to be anonymous?”
Enoch Powell (1912–1998) first seen 1953 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech in the House of Commons against the Royal Titles Bill (1 March 1953)