Enoch Powell’s official biographer has hit out at the Church of England after it alleged that the former MP was involved in “satanic sex abuse”.

Powell was on a list of several high-profile former MPs that was handed to police by Paul Butler, Bishop of Durham. Another name on the list was Labour’s Leo Abse who piloted the decriminalisation of homosexuality through parliament in the 1960s.

The Daily Mail reports that Butler was given the politicians’ names by Dominic Walker, former Bishop of Monmouth, who heard the allegations while counselling in the 1980s.

However, Simon Heffer, Powell’s official biographer, has written a strongly-worded condemnation of the allegations, describing the Church of England’s actions as “disgraceful” and “remarkably un-Christian”.

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.

It is not just that the bishops who have made these accusations are behaving in a remarkably un-Christian fashion by putting this smear into the public domain. But that they do not appear even to have engaged what passes for their brains, or consciences, before behaving in this grotesque and offensive fashion.

Powell achieved notoriety in 1968 when he gave a strongly-worded speech opposing mass immigration and warning of dire social consequences if it was allowed to continue. Although the speech, which was Christened ‘Rivers of Blood’ by the media, won support from a significant section of society, Britain’s media and political class rounded on Powell.

He was sacked from Ted Heath’s shadow cabinet and never held a senior political position again. Heffer writes:

For decades, Enoch Powell has long been a bug-bear of the liberal Establishment.

He has been demonised not least because to attack his memory is a quick and effective way for them to score points by setting out their own political correctness.

What better way for some mischievous Leftist priest to damage Enoch further than by linking him with the current rash of stories about child abuse?

The allegations against Powell and Abse have emerged at a time of mounting claims of a ‘paedophile network’ at the heart of Britain’s political establishment, with allegations of a cover-up by police, civil servants and government ministers.

However, Heffer maintains that as Powell had been shunned by the political establishment at the time of the allegations, there is no way he could have got away with such behaviour:

I have long dreamt of the day when ignorant politicians and Establishment figures would stop manipulating Enoch’s memory for their own advantage. But I never thought I would hear of bishops of the Church of England doing it.

The allegations are a monstrous lie. That the lie appears to have been retailed by a priest is beyond contempt.

There must be an investigation and, for all the distress this outrage has caused, there must be a reckoning.