Non, non, non ! Le Combat tory d’Enoch Powell contre les réformes de la Chambre des Lords en 1958 et 1969

Cet article vise à analyser pourquoi Enoch Powell s’insurgea contre les réformes de la Chambre des Lords en 1958 et 1968-1969. Ce dernier fut formé en politique en 1946 au sein du Conservative Research Department, influencé par l’héritage disraélien, et développa ainsi un instinct tory justifiant une défense des institutions politiques. Ce fut à la lecture de Burke que Powell reprit à son compte le principe de prescription pour nourrir la dimension tory de sa pensée. Par ailleurs, Powell entreprit d’écrire l’histoire de la Chambre des Lords qu’il publia en 1968. Il s’insurgea contre la réforme d’Harold Wilson en 1968 et 1969, créant « une alliance contre-nature » avec des députés travaillistes et Michael Foot empêchant le Premier Ministre de faire aboutir son projet.This paper analyses why Enoch Powell opposed the 1958 and 1968-69 reforms of the House of Lords. He started his political career working at the Conservative Research Department that was influenced by the Disraelian legacy, and thus developed a Tory attitude consisting in defending British political institutions. After reading Burke, Powell promoted the principle of prescription to fuel the Tory dimension of Powellism. In addition, he decided to write a history of the House of Lords that he published in 1968. Powell butchered Wilson’s bill in 1968-1969, after forging “an unholy alliance” with some Labour MPs and Michael Foot, which resulted in the Prime Minister’s failure to implement his reform

Approche iconoclaste d’Enoch Powell au ministère de la Santé (1960-1963) : entre liberté économique et puissance étatique ?

Enoch Powell fut nommé ministre de la Santé en juillet 1960 par Harold Macmillan, puis élevé au rang de ministre du Cabinet en 1962. Calcul politique de la part du Premier ministre, qui ne portait pas Powell dans son cœur, visant à la fois à l’empêcher de critiquer le gouvernement avec son credo libéral pendant les années de la mise en œuvre de la Middle Way et à le mettre en difficulté à la tête d’un ministère assez dispendieux. Powell tenta d’imprimer sa marque et de rompre avec les politiques de ses prédécesseurs : il s’agissait pour lui de rationaliser les dépenses de son ministère, tout en suivant un objectif de modernisation et d’humanisation du NHS par le biais de la mise en place d’un plan ambitieux de construction de nouveaux hôpitaux. Powell était convaincu que le NHS pouvait être modernisé et défendit une vision publique de ce dernier tout en encourageant les canaux privés. Cet article a pour objectif d’analyser l’approche iconoclaste de Powell en s’appuyant sur les archives nationales de Londres et celles de Powell détenues à Cambridge. Afin de compléter les analyses historiographiques, l’étude se penchera sur trois points (gestion powellienne des questions du coût des médicaments, de la publicité sur le tabac et de la fluoration de l’eau) afin de démontrer comment Powell dut gérer un autre dilemme que celui d’humaniser et rationnaliser en même temps le NHS : jusqu’à quel point était-il possible de défendre les idées de liberté et de choix dans un système public de santé où la puissance étatique était force motrice ?Enoch Powell was appointed Minister of Health by Harold Macmillan in July 1960, before being promoted to the position of Cabinet Minister in 1962. This was seen as a political manoeuvre from a Prime Minister who was hardly well disposed towards Powell. He thus planned to both prevent him from attacking the government with his free market beliefs in the years of the implementation of the Middle Way and put him in a difficult position at the head of a costly department. Powell attempted to leave his mark on it and break with his predecessors’ policies: he intended to streamline NHS spending, while at the same time modernising and humanising the NHS through the introduction of an ambitious Hospital Plan. Powell was convinced that the NHS could be modernised. He believed that the latter should remain in the public domain but at the same time supported private health investment. This paper analyses Powell’s iconoclastic approach by using primary sources from Kew’s national archives and the Powell Papers from Cambridge. In order to enhance historiographical debates, the analysis will focus on three particular points: Powell’s handling of the cost of drugs, cigarette advertising and the fluoridation of water. These issues reveal an additional dilemma that Powell had to face: to what extent could freedom of choice be introduced into a public health service in which the State was the main driver

A pulsed field gradient and NMR imaging investigations of the water retention mechanism by cellulose ethers in mortars

International audienceThe study presented in this paper is devoted to improve the knowledge on the influence of cellulose ethers (CE) on the freshly-mixed mortars water retention. Indeed, this crucial property is the most important imparted by these polysaccharides. One of the assumptions proposed to explain this phenomenon is that CE acts as diffusion barrier to the water. To test this hypothesis, the CE effect on the self-diffusion coefficient of water in solution and on the water mobility between two fresh cement pastes was studied by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. CE does not significantly modify the water self-diffusion coefficient in CE solution or in admixed cement pastes. Moreover the interdiffusion imaging experiments demonstrated that the water diffusion at the paste/paste interface is not affected by the presence of cellulosic admixture

Using solution state NMR spectroscopy to probe NMR invisible gelators

Supramolecular hydrogels are formed via the self-assembly of gelator molecules upon application of a suitable trigger. The exact nature of this self-assembly process has been widely investigated as a practical understanding is vital for the informed design of these materials. Solution-state NMR spectroscopy is an excellent non-invasive tool to follow the self-assembly of supramolecular hydrogels. However, in most cases the self-assembled aggregates are silent by conventional 1H NMR spectroscopy due to the low mobility of the constituent molecules, limiting NMR spectroscopy to following only the initial assembly step(s). Here, we present a new solution-state NMR spectroscopic method which allows the entire self-assembly process of a dipeptide gelator to be followed. This gelator forms transparent hydrogels by a multi-stage assembly process when the pH of an initially alkaline solution is lowered via the hydrolysis of glucono-δ-lactone (GdL). Changes in the charge, hydrophobicity and relative arrangement of the supramolecular aggregates can be followed throughout the assembly process by measuring the residual quadrupolar couplings (RQCs) of various molecular probes (here, 14NH4+ and isopropanol-d8), along with the NMR relaxation rates of 23Na+. The initially-formed aggregates comprise negatively charged fibrils which gradually lose their charge and become increasingly hydrophobic as the pH falls, eventually resulting in a macroscopic contraction of the hydrogel. We also demonstrate that the in situ measurement of pH by NMR spectroscopy is both convenient and accurate, representing a useful tool for the characterisation of self-assembly processes by NMR

A review of current techniques for the evaluation of powder mixing

Blending a mixture of powders to a homogeneous system is a crucial step in many manufacturing processes. To achieve a high quality of the end product, powder mixtures should be made with high content uniformity. For instance, producing uniform tablets depends on the homogeneous dispersion of active pharmaceutical ingredient (API), often in low level quantities, into excipients. To control the uniformity of a powder mixture, the first required step is to estimate the powder content information during blending. There are several powder homogeneity evaluation techniques which differ in accuracy, fundamental basis, cost and operating conditions. In this article, emerging techniques for the analysis of powder content and powder blend uniformity, are explained and compared. The advantages and drawbacks of all the techniques are reviewed to help the readers to select the appropriate equipment for the powder mixing evaluation. In addition, the paper highlights the recent innovative on-line measurement techniques used for the non-invasive evaluation of the mixing performance

Enoch Powell’s Contribution Within the One Nation Group (1950-1955): Towards a Proto-Thatcherite Appropriation of One Nation Conservatism?

Powell was the ninth and final recruit to the One Nation Group (ONG) created in 1950 to effectively counter Labour social policies. Their strategy was to produce a number of pamphlets while reappropriating the rhetoric, myth and legacy of Disraeli to promote One Nation Conservatism. The ONG was heterogeneous, resulting in the promotion of ideas and proposals for compromise. However, Powell played an increasingly prominent role within the group, pushing more and more for a free market ideological positioning. The purpose of this paper is to analyse Powell's contribution and role within the ONG, showing that redefining conservatism through the prism of One Nation could provide an effective way to oppose Socialism in the battle of ideas. Powell and Macleod also sketched out a One Nation vision of the Welfare State in 1952. This was a very important date for Powell, as it marked a serious free market inflection in his thinking which was clearly felt in the pamphlet drafted by the ONG in 1954. The study of the ONG through Powell's lens will show the plasticity and fluidity of One Nation Conservatism from the 1950s onwards

Enoch Powell and Powellism : Wawering between the Disraelian tradition and a neo-liberal one (1946-1968)

Cette thèse étudie le début de carrière d’Enoch Powell de 1946 à 1968 et analyse l’évolution de son système de pensée qui oscilla entre la tradition paternaliste disraélienne et la tradition libérale. Elle montre ainsi, d’une part, que le consensus butskellite de l’après-guerre fut très largement un mythe et, d’autre part, que la rupture thatchérienne ne fut pas seulement préparée par Mme Thatcher et ses gourous dans les années 1970, mais par un long travail de réflexion et d'expérimentation au cœur duquel on trouve Enoch Powell. Après une formation au Département de Recherche Conservateur pendant trois ans, Powell devint député pour la première fois en 1950 et rejoignit le groupe "One Nation" qu’il quitta en 1955. Lors de ses neuf premières années politiques, il s’intéressa principalement à la situation de l’Empire britannique et à la politique du logement. Il tenta à partir de 1952 de convaincre ses collègues du groupe "One Nation" de défendre plus activement des positions libérales au détriment du paternalisme disraélien. Puis, pendant ses trois expériences ministérielles successives – au Logement, au Trésor et à la Santé, il appliqua des idées libérales sans toutefois renier complètement la philosophie disraélienne, car le Premier Ministre Macmillan défendait une approche paternaliste qui visait à mettre en œuvre les conceptions qu’il avait développées vingt ans auparavant dans son ouvrage intitulé The Middle Way. Powell refusa de participer au gouvernement de Douglas-Home en 1963, décida dès lors de rompre avec l’héritage de Macmillan et inventa le powellisme. Il devint le chantre du libéralisme en Grande-Bretagne avant d’être marginalisé au sein de son parti en 1968 à cause de ses vues nationalistes exposées dans le discours des "Fleuves de Sang".This thesis is a study of the early stages of Enoch Powell’s career, from 1946 to 1968, and an analysis of his system of thought, which wavered between the disraelite paternalistic tradition and the liberal one. It thus shows that, on the one hand, the post-war butskellite consensus was mainly a myth, and on the other hand, the Thatcherite revolution was not only prepared beforehand by Mrs Thatcher and her gurus in the 1970s, but was also the outcome of a long process of reflection and experimentation Powell played a major role. After a three-year training at the Conservative Research Department, Powell was elected as Member of Parliament for the first time in 1950 and joined the One Nation Group, which he left in 1955. During his first nine political years, he focused primarily on the situation of the British Empire and on housing policy. From 1952 onwards, he tried to convince his One Nation colleagues that they should defend liberal stances more actively, at the expense of disraelite paternalism. Then, during his three mandates in the Ministries of Housing, of the Treasury and of Health, he applied liberal ideas without entirely denying the disraelite philosophy, for Prime Minister Macmillan defended a paternalistic approach aiming at implementing the ideas he had developed twenty years before in The Middle Way. Powell refused to be part of the 1963 Douglas-Home Government and consequently decided to break with Macmillan’s legacy thereby inventing Powellism. He became the champion of liberalism in Great Britain before being ostracized within his party in 1968 on account of his nationalistic views as presented through the "Rivers of Blood" speech

Le National Front et Enoch Powell : « L’un des leurs » ?

« La défaite humiliante des conservateurs [en 1966] a seulement servi à souligner ce que nous avons affirmé maintes fois, à savoir que maintenant en Grande-Bretagne il n’existe plus de grande force politique qui représente des principes patriotiques de droite ». John Tyndall condamnait la politique extérieure des conservateurs, impulsée par le discours du « Vent du Changement » d’Harold Macmillan en 1960, qui visa, selon lui, à sacrifier l’Empire britannique. Il répudiait également la loi de ..