RIP Michael Foot

[Sheilbh]

Michael Foot
Michael Foot, the former Labour leader who died today aged 96, spent the latter part of his political career vainly attempting to unite a party which, during his many years as a backbench MP, he had seemed positively eager to split.



Published: 1:26PM GMT 03 Mar 2010

Temperamentally, Foot was far better suited to criticism than construction. In his mental universe idealistic Socialists strove heroically against the dastardly machinations of capital and privilege. While he could admire an unprincipled adventurer like Disraeli, or a self-destructive logician like Enoch Powell, he felt only withering contempt for Tories anxious to protect interests for which they had neither toiled nor spun.

For most of his life he appeared to regard with even more loathing the Labour Judases who compromised the one true faith. As a backbench zealot of the Left, Foot had regularly flouted the Whips, sallying forth like the Levellers or Ranters of old in defence of Socialist virtue.

His literary heroes – Swift, Hazlitt and Byron – were all rebels, and Foot was proud to stand beside them against the dragons of reaction. He was a fine speaker, at his best when addressing a vast meeting with the moral fervour of an Old Testament prophet, but also an accomplished performer in the House of Commons, where even opponents delighted in the wit and venom that poured from him.

Yet the ideologue who appeared in public debate to be drained of all sympathy for his enemies presented a different face in private. Foot was wholly without vanity or side, and part of him eagerly withdrew from the arena to indulge his literary tastes.

Away from the hustings he became an immensely likeable man of charm and sensibility, exuding in every contact the courtesy and kindliness conferred upon him by his middle-class Methodist background.

Foot was capable of bestowing kindly attention upon Enoch Powell after his dire predictions of racial conflict had provoked outrage on the Left. He even maintained friendships across the rancorous divides of Labour politics – a facility which in 1980 helped persuade a sorely split Labour Party that he might be the man to hold them together.

Up until 1970, when he was 56, Foot had never even put himself forward as a candidate for the Shadow cabinet. When he first appeared on the Labour front bench a journalist observed that "it was as if Mrs Mary Whitehouse had turned up in the cast of Oh! Calcutta!".

Yet perhaps Foot's apparent disdain for power had masked a deeper attraction. His relish for the company of Lord Beaverbrook – "I loved him, not merely as a friend, but as a second father" – did not indicate a character immune to the lure of worldly power.

On joining the front bench Foot remained as committed as ever to nationalisation and nuclear disarmament. Nevertheless, something had changed. In 1960 Barbara Castle told Foot that he had "grown soft on a diet of soft options because he never had to choose". After 1970 he was subject to the shifts and compromises that political survival requires.

At first all went well, and his debating triumphs received golden notices from journalistic cronies. In October 1971 Harold Wilson appointed him Shadow leader of the House, with the responsibility of opposing the legislation to make Britain a member of the Common Market.

Foot's romantic nature reacted against the notion of this "rich nations' club" which threatened the sovereignty of the House of Commons. He launched some blistering attacks on the Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath – though without ever overturning his majority.

By October 1971 Foot was standing against the inveterate Europhile Roy Jenkins for the deputy leadership; though beaten, he was no means disgraced. When Labour scraped back to power in February 1974, he was appointed Secretary of State for Employment.

Foot began by settling the miners' strike which had toppled the Conservative government, by the simple expedient of allowing rises of between 22 and 25 per cent. Next came a Trades Union and Labour Relations Act, which repealed the Conservatives' Industrial Relations Act and accorded extensive recognition to union rights.

Such was the Social Contract, under which Jack Jones, General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union, dictated the priorities of government without delivering any firm commitments on wage restraint. Covered by this inadequate fig-leaf, Labour achieved a minuscule majority in the general election of October 1974.

Afterwards, an Employment Protection Act was welcomed by Jack Jones as "a shop stewards' charter". The act also set up tribunals against unfair dismissal, gave women rights of maternity leave and reinstatement, and established the Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS). The Manpower Services Commission, responsible for training and job creation, was another creation of this period.

More controversial was the legalisation of the closed shop. Foot had always piqued himself on his libertarian ideals; this measure, however, limited the rights of editors to publish contributions by those who did not belong to the NUJ.

The urge to appease the unions grew apace. A succession of ruinously high wage settlements – 31 per cent for the electricity workers, 27 per cent for the railwaymen, 37 per cent for the National Union of Seamen – produced roaring inflation.

When, in 1975, the Chancellor, Denis Healey, argued for a statutory incomes policy, Foot threatened resignation. It was agreed that statutory powers would not be used unless the voluntary policy broke down.

By the time of Harold Wilson's resignation in 1976 Foot's reputation was such that he came top of the first ballot for the election of a new leader. Though Jim Callaghan finally emerged victorious, Foot became deputy leader and was appointed Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House.

Reality was crowding in. In the summer of 1976 Foot actively helped Healey to agree plans with the unions for a second year's wage restraint – and though he baulked at the expenditure cuts demanded by the IMF that autumn, he no longer threatened resignation. Indeed, he told Tony Benn to "face the real problems".

Yet the most dangerous threat to the government was Foot's determination to carry out devolution for Scotland and Wales. He was a leading proponent of the Liberal-Labour pact, which lasted from February 1977 to June 1978.

Then, believing that the limit for wage increases could be held, Foot made a fatal error in helping to dissuade Callaghan from calling an election in the autumn of 1978. In the ensuing "winter of discontent" the government's standing collapsed; then, in March 1979, the devolution legislation, which had passed through Parliament, was foiled by referenda in Wales and Scotland.

Still Foot tried to cobble together alliances with the minority parties. But Labour lost a motion of no confidence by one vote, which meant a general election and the triumph of Mrs Thatcher.

Just before the government fell, Foot achieved a long-standing ambition when he guided a bill to establish public lending right through the Commons. It seemed that he himself was now destined for a quiet literary retirement; in 1980 he published Debts of Honour, in celebration of various heroes.

But when Callaghan resigned as leader in 1980, Foot was the only candidate of the Left with a chance of defeating Denis Healey. This time he came second on the first ballot, but was elected after John Silkin and Peter Shore withdrew.

Two days later he fell downstairs and had his leg encased in plaster. The accident created an image of Foot which he was never able to throw off, that of an old man struggling gamely, but ineffectively, against manifold physical disabilities.

It was true that, since a bad car crash in 1963, he had been obliged to walk with a stick; while in 1976 he had lost the sight of an eye after an attack of shingles. But Foot did not lack energy; his problem was that he was crippled politically.

His own past rendered him powerless to prevent the Labour Party from drifting further to the Left after the defeat of 1979. The consequence was that, in 1981, the Gang of Four (Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams, David Owen and William Rodgers) left to found the Social Democratic Party.

By the time of the general election of 1983, 24 Labour MPs defected to the SDP. To add to Foot's woes, in 1981 Tony Benn insisted against his express wish on standing against Denis Healey for the deputy leadership. For weeks on end the hopes of the extreme Left were paraded before an appalled electorate. The fact that Foot could not shake off accusations that he had worn a donkey jacket to Remembrance Sunday events at the Cenotaph that year (he claimed it was a respectable green jacket) did not help.

The Falklands war further undermined Foot's position. He seemed to fall between two stools, at first demanding an effective riposte against Argentinian aggression, and then emphasising the need to work for a peace settlement with the Junta.

The Labour Party entered the general election of 1983 with a programme which included unilateral nuclear disarmament, withdrawal from the Common Market (Foot had campaigned vigorously for the Nos in the 1975 referendum), the re-nationalisation of industries privatised by the Tories, the abolition of the House of Lords, an annual wealth tax and massive increases in public investment.

While the Conservatives concentrated on televised sound bites, Foot toured the country, drawing huge and enthusiastic crowds at public meetings. All the old gestures were there, reported the journalist John Akas: "The stooping down over the rostrum in mock dismay. The waving of the arms from that position, suggesting hope. The suppressed chuckle at the folly of his enemies. The strange, random emphasis on inconsequential words like 'however' or 'Tuesday'.

"Oh yes, it is a very good act and it might have lasted him a lifetime if he had not made the mistake of becoming Party Leader and in theory a potential Prime Minister."

Labour registered but 27.6 per cent of the votes cast, a mere 680,000 more than the 25.4 per cent which the Alliance achieved. Foot immediately resigned the leadership. "I understand the scale of the defeat which we suffered at the general election," he told the party conference. "I am deeply ashamed that we should have allowed the fortunes of our country and the fortunes of the people who look to us for protection most ... to sink to such a low ebb."

It was a sad political envoi, yet wholly in character. For Foot had sprung from an evangelical tradition which, while stressing the obligation to sustain the unfortunate, never underestimated the importance of worldly achievement.

The fifth of seven children, Michael Mackintosh Foot was born at Lipson Terrace, one of the best addresses at Plymouth, on July 23 1913. Of his three elder brothers, Dingle would serve as Solicitor-General in the first three years of Harold Wilson's administrations; Hugh became Britain's representative at the United Nations from 1964 to 1970 and was created a life peer as Lord Caradon; and John, who took over the family law firm, was also made a life peer. The youngest boy, Christopher, followed his elder brother into the family firm.

Isaac Foot, the father of this brood, was himself a remarkable man: a solicitor; Liberal MP for Bodmin and briefly parliamentary secretary for mines in the National Government of 1931; and Lord Mayor of Plymouth. He was also a book collector on a scale that required the purchase of a large country house in 1927; a Methodist lay preacher steeped in the poetry of Shakespeare, Milton and Wordsworth; and a radical in the 17th-century Puritan tradition. His children were brought up to believe that the ultimate sin was to vote Tory.

Michael's mother, daughter of a Scottish doctor named Mackintosh, shared both her husband's Methodism and his Liberalism. Such was her concern that her sons should make their way in the world that she instructed her daughters to make their brothers' beds, that they might have more time for study.

Young Michael suffered badly from eczema, which persisted well into middle age, and from asthma, which disappeared only after his car crash in 1963.

Continued..

[Sheilbh]

He was educated at Leighton Park, the Quaker School near Reading, from where he won a History exhibition to Wadham College, Oxford, where he read PPE. He obtained only a second-class degree but became President of both the Union and the Liberal Club.

After coming down he went to Palestine and then represented the Oxford Union in a debating tour of the United States. His first job was with the Blue Funnel Line at Liverpool, where the poverty and unemployment helped to make him a Socialist. He had also become a protégé of the Labour Cabinet minister Stafford Cripps, whose son had been a friend at Oxford.

In November 1935, only a few months after joining the Labour Party, Foot stood as a candidate in a by-election at Monmouth. Back in London, he worked briefly for the New Statesman before finding a more permanent berth on Tribune, the Left-wing weekly newspaper founded by Aneurin Bevan and financed by Cripps. One of his colleagues was Barbara Betts, the future Barbara Castle.

In 1938 Foot went to work for The Evening Standard as a feature writer. "I've got a young bloody knight-errant here," Aneurin Bevan told Beaverbrook by way of recommendation.

Such was Foot's admiration for Beaverbrook that he managed to persuade himself that the press magnate – at once a capitalist and an appeaser – was not really a Tory at all, but a man of "deep and abiding" radicalism.

At least Foot was not required to compromise his views in his journalism, for he worked under the editorship of Frank Owen, another man of the Left and later the biographer of Lloyd George. Foot's pieces for the Standard were later developed into a book, Armistice 1918-39 (1940).

In 1940 Beaverbrook was appointed minister for aircraft production, changing abruptly from an apostle of appeasement into a member of the War Cabinet. Foot and Owen, no longer working against the proprietorial grain, now achieved their finest hour. Leader after leader insisted, with copious historical reference, first that the war must be won and secondly that a social revolution was required to mobilise the energies of the nation.

Foot and Owen also joined with Peter Howard to write (in four days) Guilty Men (1940), which dissected the failings of those who had governed Britain in the 1930s – perhaps with rather too much relish, given that Hitler would scarcely have been deterred by the cloudy idealism which the Labour Party had offered in that decade.

In 1942 Owen was called up, and Foot, disqualified from active service by his asthma, took over as editor of the Standard. He still found time to publish The Trial of Mussolini (1943), as much a condemnation of Il Duce's British admirers as of the dictator's actions.

Another book, Brendan and Beverley, appeared the next year. The names in the title were shorthand for Brendan Bracken, a Conservative politician close to Churchill, and Beverley Baxter, the editor of The Daily Express; together they discuss prospects for the forthcoming election in the cynical fashion of Disraeli's Mr Tadpole and Mr Taper.

Foot was exceptionally well-off at this period, being paid nearly £4,000 a year by The Evening Standard, to which Beaverbrook would add an occasional "princely bonus" on his own account. But the nearer the end of the war – and the general election – came, the more the ideological gap between proprietor and editor widened.

Foot left the Standard in 1944 and took up a far less well-paid post on The Daily Herald, to which he contributed a political column twice a week for the next 20 years.

Having been adopted as the Labour candidate for Plymouth Devonport in 1938, Foot was swept into Parliament in the Labour landslide of 1945. Typically, his maiden speech in the Commons contained a slashing attack on Winston Churchill, "an avowed supporter of the police government of Signor Mussolini".

Soon, though, he was turning his guns on the Labour government's foreign policy. At the end of 1945 he was one of 23 Labour MPs who voted against the terms imposed by an American loan: "American capitalism", he fulminated in Tribune, "is arrogant, self-confident, merciless and convinced of its capacity to dictate the destinies of the world."

Foot at first subscribed to "the third force" of Democratic Socialism, as against Russian Communism and American laissez-faire. He also vigorously opposed the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, in the Zionist cause. "If I were a Jew in Palestine," he declared in the House of Commons, "I should certainly be a member of the Haganah."

When Bevin refused to implement the recommendations of a commission which urged the admission into Palestine of 100,000 Jews who had been the victims of Nazi oppression, Foot joined with Richard Crossman to produce a pamphlet provocatively entitled A Palestine Munich?

But he never blinded himself, like some on the Left, to the difference between Democratic Socialism and Communism. In 1946 a visit under Bevin's auspices to Tehran and Azerbaijan left him convinced of Stalin's imperialist aims.

In 1945 Foot had rejoined Tribune as managing director – a post he would hold until 1974, with spells as editor from 1948 to 1952 and from 1955 to 1960. By October 1946 the paper was reluctantly acknowledging that the defence of democracy might require help from the Americans.

In 1948 the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia and the Soviet blockade of Berlin underlined the threat to the West. Foot found no difficulty in supporting the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, formed in 1949, as a "pact for peace". But his views were still sufficiently unorthodox to preclude the possibility of office in Clement Attlee's administration. At the same time his popularity within the party was demonstrated by his election in 1949 to the constituency section of the national executive committee.

In the virulent disputes that rent the Labour Party at this period Foot was passionately behind Aneurin Bevan in opposition to the more moderate counsels of Herbert Morrison and Hugh Gaitskell.

The impression of a fanatical, humourless bigot gained strength after 1950 from Foot's appearances on the television programme In the News. The public would have been surprised to discover that the radical firebrand was living in a cottage provided by Lord Beaverbrook on his Cherkeley estate.

Though the Conservatives won the 1951 election, Foot held on to Plymouth Devonport, aided by the choice of his friend Randolph Churchill as the Tory candidate. In 1955, however, he lost the seat to Joan Vickers.

Out of Parliament, he settled down to write The Pen and the Sword (1957), which gleefully described how Jonathan Swift's polemics had brought down the great Duke of Marlborough. Foot also satisfied his urge to slay contemporary dragons by publishing a second book entitled Guilty Men (1957), this time distributing blame for the Suez crisis.

But the advent of Hugh Gaitskell as leader at the end of 1955 was "a galling moment" for Foot, even if it seemed at first mitigated by the appointment of Aneurin Bevan as shadow foreign secretary.

Bitter disillusion was to follow. At the 1957 party conference Bevan abandoned the unilateralist disarmament policies which were at the heart of Foot's political creed. Subsequently, Foot was one of the founders of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, to be seen every year in the front rank on the march to Aldermaston.

He underscored his radical credentials by being expelled from France after attacking President Coty for allowing the constitution to be subverted in de Gaulle's favour. "Expelled from France!" Foot wailed. "It's like being shut out from heaven."

Though offered the safe Labour seat of Aberavon, he determined to fight Plymouth Devonport again, only to go down once more to Joan Vickers in 1959. After the death of Bevan in July 1960, however, he was adopted for Ebbw Vale, and returned to the House of Commons that November. Over the years he would conceive a deep affection for the constituency.

But the rift with Bevan, the greatest of Foot's political heroes, had never been completely healed. Jenny Lee, Bevan's widow, attributed her husband's death to the nuclear disarmers: "Until their attacks began, he never had so much as a stomach ache."

Foot began to write Bevan's biography immediately after his death, publishing the first volume in 1962, and the second in 1973. A labour of love, perhaps also of propitiation, it veered too close to hagiography to be the final word on Bevan.

Meanwhile Foot, clinging fast to his belief in unilateral nuclear disarmament, had the Labour Whip withdrawn after he voted against the Army Estimates in March 1961. And when, next year, Gaitskell was shouted down at a meeting in Glasgow, Foot, true to his principle that "most of the freedoms which we possess have been secured by riots", vigorously defended the hecklers.

Hardly had Foot recovered from his car crash in October 1963 – his lungs were pierced, and his left leg and all his ribs broken – than he found himself dropped by The Daily Herald, now being relaunched as The Sun. For the last time Beaverbrook came to the rescue, appointing Foot to succeed Malcolm Muggeridge as The Evening Standard's chief book reviewer.

Despite the death of Gaitskell and the succession of Harold Wilson, Foot did not regain the Labour Whip until November 1964, after Labour had been returned to power. The possibility was aired that he might become number two to Frank Cousins at the ministry of technology, but no such appointment transpired.

Soon Foot was at loggerheads with the Labour government – on the defence of the pound, on steel nationalisation, on the Vietnam War, on Rhodesia and on immigration. In May 1965 he unhesitatingly rejected an overture from Wilson that might have resulted in a place in the government.

The decisive Labour victory in the 1966 general election failed to produce a government more acceptable to the Left. Foot courted expulsion by voting against a statutory prices and incomes policy, against the defence estimates and against the exclusion of Kenyan Asians.

In 1969 he united with Enoch Powell to wage a brilliant parliamentary campaign which thwarted Richard Crossman's proposals to reform the House of Lords. He also struggled determinedly against Barbara Castle's In Place of Strife proposals for the reform of the unions.

Though Foot remained MP for Ebbw Vale (or Blaenau Gwent) until 1992, his resignation as leader in 1983 left him with more time for his books. He published Another Heart and Other Pulses (1984), an account of the election campaign of 1983; Loyalists and Loners (1986); Politics and Paradise (1988), a study of Byron; HG: the history of Mr Wells (1995); Dr Strangelove, I Presume (1999); and The Uncollected Michael Foot (2003).

In July 1995 Foot received "substantial damages" from The Sunday Times, after articles had been published under the heading "KGB: Michael Foot was our agent".

Michael Foot married, in 1949, Jill Craigie, who died in 1999; there were no children of the marriage.

[Viking]

no jokes about the longest suicide note taking the longest time yet? meh.

He had a good innings.

[MadImmortalMan]

He had a most unfortunate name. Unless you're Marty.