UNITED KINGDOM
Daily Mail
By SIMON HEFFER FOR THE DAILY MAIL
29 March 2015
Four years before he died in 1998, Enoch Powell did me the honour of asking me to write his biography. I spoke to almost everyone alive who knew him. When he died, I had unique access to a vast collection of private papers, including numerous intimate letters. If there is anyone alive other than Enoch’s widow and daughters who knows more about him than I do, I’d like to meet him.
I never detected the slightest whiff of scandal about Powell. His probity in personal and financial matters was rock solid. When on Saturday evening a fellow journalist told me of the allegations made by the Church of England, my first instinct was to laugh: but that soon changed into utter outrage when I realised he was serious.
The Church has publicly accused Enoch of being involved in ritual satanic abuse on hearsay, without the slightest evidence. They might as well accuse him of having been a war criminal or an armed robber, for there would be as much truth in either allegation.
The appalling slurs are just like those made against 91-year-old Lord Bramall, a D-Day veteran and former chief of defence staff, whose homes in London and North Yorkshire were gratuitously raided by police recently on the back of an unspecified allegation of a sexual nature dating back to the 1970s.
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