1983-7
In 1984, Powell claimed that the Central Intelligence Agency had murdered Earl Mountbatten of Burma and that the deaths of the MPs Airey Neave and Robert Bradford were carried out by the USA in order to stop Neave's policy of integration for Northern Ireland. Then, in 1986, he again argued that Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) had not killed Neave but that "MI6 and their friends" were responsible instead, claiming to have been told so by Royal Ulster Constabulary officers. Margaret Thatcher however, rejected and dismissed these claims.
In autumn 1985, riots broke out in London and Birmingham, and Powell repeated his belief that civil war would be the result of immigration and called for massive repatriation. Hattersley in response called him "the Alf Garnett of British politics". At a meeting of the Monday Club Powell said when someone compared him to Garnett, "Garnett, Alf Garnett? Who's he? One of the new ministers?"
Powell later came into conflict with Thatcher during November 1985 because of her support for the Anglo-Irish Agreement. On the day it was signed, 14 November, Powell asked her in the Commons: "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?" Thatcher replied that she found his remarks "deeply offensive".
Along with other Unionist MPs, Powell resigned his seat in protest and then narrowly regaining it at the ensuing by-election.
In 1987, Thatcher visited the Soviet Union, which signified to Powell a "radical transformation which is in progress in both the foreign policy and the defence policy of the United Kingdom". In a speech in the Commons on 7 April, Powell claimed the nuclear hypothesis had been shaken by two events. The first was the Strategic Defense Initiative or "Star Wars": "Star wars raised the terrible prospect that there might be an effective means of neutralising the inter-continental ballistic missile, whereby the two great giants who held what had become to be seen as the balance of terror would contract out of the game altogether: the deterrent would be switched off by the invulnerability of the two providers of the mutual terror".
America's "European allies were brought along to acquiesce in the United States engaging in the rational activity of discovering whether there was after all some defence against nuclear attack... by the apparent assurance obtained from the United States that it was only engaged in experiment and research, and that, if there were any danger of effective protection being devised, of course the United States would not avail itself of that protection without the agreement of its European allies. That was the first recent event which shook to its foundations the nuclear deterrent with which we had lived these last 30 years". The second event was Mikhail Gorbachev's offer of both the Soviet Union and the United States agreeing to abolish intermediate ballistic missiles. Powell said that Thatcher's "most significant point was when she went on to say that we must aim at a conventional forces balance. So, after all our journeys of the last 30 or 40 years, the disappearance of the intermediate range ballistic missile revived the old question of the supposed conventional imbalance between the Russian alliance and the North Atlantic Alliance".
Powell further claimed that even if nuclear weapons had not existed, the Russians would still not have invaded Western Europe: "What has prevented that from happening was... the fact that the Soviet Union knew... that such an action on its part would have led to a third world war-—a long war, bitterly fought, a war which in the end the Soviet Union would have been likely to lose on the same basis and in the same way as the corresponding war was lost by Napoleon, by the Emperor Wilhelm and by Adolf Hitler. It was that fear, that caution, that understanding, that perception on the part of Russia and its leaders that was the real deterrent against Russia committing the utterly irrational and suicidal act of plunging into a third world war in which the Soviet Union would be likely to find itself confronting a combination of the greatest industrial and economic powers in the world".
Powell said, "In the minds of the Russians the inevitable commitment of the United States in such a war would have come not directly or necessarily from the stationing of American marines in Germany, but, as it came in the previous two struggles, from the ultimate involvement of the United States in any war determining the future of Europe". Thatcher's belief in the nuclear hypothesis "in the context of the use of American bases in Britain to launch an aggressive attack on Libya, that it was 'inconceivable' that we could have refused a demand placed upon this country by the United States. The Prime Minister supplied the reason why: she said it was because we depend for our liberty and freedom upon the United States. Once let the nuclear hypothesis be questioned or destroyed, once allow it to break down, and from that moment the American imperative in this country's policies disappears with it".
At the start of 1987 general election, Powell claimed the Conservatives' prospects did not look good: "I have the feeling of 1945". During the final weekend of the election campaign Powell gave a speech in London reiterating his opposition to the nuclear hypothesis, calling it "barmy", and advocating a vote for the Labour Party, which had unilateral nuclear disarmament as a policy. He claimed that Chernobyl had strengthened "a 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".
However, Powell lost his seat in the election by 731 votes to the Social Democratic and Labour Party's Eddie McGrady, mainly due to demographic and boundary changes that resulted in there being many more Irish Nationalists in the constituency than before. Ironically, the boundary changes had arisen due to his own campaign for the number of MPs representing Northern Ireland to be increased to the equivalent proportion for the rest of the United Kingdom, as part of the steps towards greater integration. McGrady paid tribute to Powell, recognising the respect he was held by both Unionists and Nationalists in the constituency. Powell said, "For the rest of my life when I look back on the 13 years I shall be filled with affection for the Province and its people, and their fortunes will never be out of my heart". He received a warm ovation from the mostly Nationalist audience and as he walked off the platform, he said the words Edmund Burke used on the death of candidate Richard Coombe: "What shadows we are, what shadows we pursue". When a BBC reporter asked Powell to explain his defeat, he replied: "My opponent polled more votes than me".
He was offered a life peerage, which was regarded as his right as a former cabinet minister but declined it. He argued that, as he had opposed the Life Peerages Act 1958, it would be hypocritical for him to take one, but even if he was willing to accept a hereditary peerage (which would have been extinct upon his death as he had no male heir), Thatcher was unwilling to court the controversy that might have arisen as a result.
Read more about this topic: Enoch Powell, Ulster Unionist