Michael Foot 1913-2010
Posted on Friday 5 March, 2010
Filed Under Obituaries
I’M PROUD to possess two books given to me as presents by Michael Foot. One of them – a witty polemical assault on a couple of wartime Tories – was penned by himself. The other is an early edition of Leon Trotsky’s ‘Where is Britain going?’
As many of the obituaries since his death at the age of 96 this week have noted, Foot was the last Labour leader who was both a writer of substance and sufficiently literate to have read the Marxist classics.
Tributes from all quarters have been manifold, and not a few of them have been motivated largely by conventional piety. Let’s just say that the Michael Foot I knew would not have wanted the praise of Margaret Thatcher or David Cameron, or to be lauded by the very newspapers that ludicrously calumniated him as a KGB agent.
Foot and I met when I was working for leftwing newspaper Tribune in the mid-1990s. Although already a frail old man, he showed up several days a week to conduct his business in adjoining office.
As many of his friends have reminisced at length over the last couple of days, his company was worth having. Whether he was nursing a pint of Guinness in the grotty boozer round the corner or pronouncing on politics at the cheap little Italian restaurant the staff used to frequent, he was always erudite and entertaining.
What I did notice was his tendency to pull back from the logical conclusion of an argument. He would, for instance, agree with the premises of my criticisms of the latest policies emerging at the birth of New Labour, but could not bring himself to oppose the policies themselves. Or perhaps he did oppose them inside his head, but felt unable to say so in words.
Personally speaking, I am saddened to learn of Foot’s passing. But what of the political assessment? Foot embodied a radical tradition that was already anachronistic at the time he led the Labour Party, and has since effectively been extirpated by the organisation that currently uses that name.
I don’t entirely buy the ‘nice guy, electoral no-hoper’ stance that has characterised much commentary. Let us not forget that there were times on his watch when he was far ahead of Thatcher in the opinion polls; the disaster of 1983 was as much to do with the Falklands factor and the treachery of the Gang of Four as the manifesto on which Labour stood.
Yet somehow he failed the tests posed by real events during his years in charge, including that most misguided little conflict in the South Atlantic and the debacle of the Bermondsey by-election.
Foot was always far too leftwing for the right, and far too rightwing for the left. That, I am sad to say, was to prove his undoing.
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37 Responses to “Michael Foot 1913-2010”
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It’s the passing of a whole generation, their like will not come again. Or, hopefully they will, but let’s not wait too long. I can’t think of anyone in the current Labour Party leadership that I would want to spend time with. Can you?
Yes he had many many good points – though I have yet to find much in the way of Marxist influence in Foot he liked the essayists many of us like, and if his book on bevan is memorable only for its vagueness, it was well-written.
There is a dark shadow over Foot’s past: his very active public support for Indira Ghandi’s Emergency in India – mid 1970s (while Foot enjoyed significant influence in the Laboru Party and government). This involved, amongst other things, the suppension of democracy, real political oppression and the gaoling of opponents of Congress.
To my knowledge Foot never repented of this.
SueR. I would have no problem sharing a few malts with Gordon Brown and explaining to him that cuts in the pubic sector are not required. Michael Foot may have made some good speeches but his rhetoric did not get him into power. The Tories celebrated his election as leader of the Labour party for eighteen years.
Jimmy Glesga: Ever the Party hack and loyalist.
@Jimmy Glesga: The tories celebrated the SDP split and the Falklands conflict, the evidence (as opposed to the New labour rhetoric) suggests Foot didn’t actually loose a significant number of votes through any means other than the SDP split.
Simon & SueR. Simon he lost. The Falklands did not get Maggie bad face in again it was the economy. SueR all the verbal diahorea in the world does not mean you will gain power. You cannot legislate from the sidelines.
“You cannot legislate from the sidelines.” writes Jimmy Glesga. Quite true but look what’s happened since Labour gained power in ’97: a gallop to the right, the succesfull Thatcherisation of the party, stealing the Tories clothes and attack, after attack after attack on the working class. What’s the fecking point of being able to legislate if that’s what you do when you get there???? Are you utterly incapable of seeing what passes before your eyes?
Ha ha — this is great:
The Zimbabwe president said his country would have better relations with London if the Conservatives got in.
“We have always related better with the British through the Conservatives than Labour,” he said. “We have a better chance with David Cameron than with Brown.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/zimbabwe/7370383/Robert-Mugabe-gives-David-Cameron-election-backing.html
H. What I see is Labour have looked after the elderly weak and infirm. They have invested billions in the NHS. Whats wrong H. HOW DO YOU DEFINE THE WORKING CLASS H! Mr Foot was hardly working class was he. You are a loser H.
Jimmy,
Often debates are subjective – oftentimes there’s no clear cut right or wrong and/or both view may have merit. Other times, though, one point is just wrong, that is the view or opinion is demonstrably and clearly worng when compared with objective reality.
For example: 2 + 2 = 5. Might be your opinion but it’s wrong. Not a matter of My opinion but a matter of FACT. All the blustering in the world won’t change that simple truth.
Another example is: “Labour have looked after the elderly weak and infirm”
This is also simply not true. They have slashed, hacked and cut social care, ramped up the privitisation of care for the elderly, are now actively seeking to raise the retirement age so old people die on the fecking job after a lifetime of wage-slavery, thus saving the state the money on pensions, care etc. They have forced thousands, probably even millions, to sell off their homes, assets and use life savings to pay for care in run-down, badly-managed care-homes run by Tory spivs and Del-Boy crooks. Only a fucking idiot or a mental defective could class that as Labour looking after the weak and elederly.
The other, typically stupid comment of yours that “They have invested billions in the NHS” is so crass, brain-dead and fucking removed from reality that, again, you demonstrate all the political acumen of a fucking reatard. Yeah, millions on semi-private trusts, while prescription charges soar, waiting lists soar and management and administrators wages increase at the expens of point-of-delivery services.
I’m going to take full advantage of Dave’s open comments policy here: You’re a fucking imbecile, a twat and a moron. You have no fucking idea about anything instead you have close-minded,unthinking prejudice and the political equivalent of battere.d-wife syndrome.
If Nye Bevan could read the shit and bollocks you regularly spew forth he’d be spinning in his grave.
You’re a fucking turkey voting for christmas and I can’t wait for December 25th, you fucking moron.
H. Typical angry language that one expects from the looney left and right. This is why none of you will ever be in power. Oh and the dead are dead they do not spin in graves!
The choice hasn’t been between Old Labour and New Labour, though- it hasn’t been between Michael Foot and Tony Blair, it’s been between the Tories and New Labour.
New Labour ain’t perfect, but can you imagine a Michael Howard government following another five years of Major? What would be the state of the country’s pensioners and the NHS then?
On a bad day Michael Foot was a posturing ninny [as ‘Private Eye’ memorably observed.
On a good day – and there were many – he was one of the few Labourites who really and truly was a blood-and-bone socialist-of-conviction.
He always had a word for anyone who wanted a chat on the Aldermaston marches, no matter how young, provincial and totally of zero “importance” in the peace movement.
Jimmy Glesga has a cheek. Has he forgotten how he revealed his profound psycho-sexual problems on here with his use of swear words and obscenities? I know Michael Foot wasn’t a Marxist, but I think Bill Corr is right. He was one of the last of the old school Labour politicians, although he came from a priviledged background, through intellectual and religious conviction he was on the side of (broad-brush) progress and welfarism. I’m sure he was not perfect, but, at least he was willing to try.
To Foot’s eternal credit: although a CND’er and peacenick, he didn’t oppose the humanitarian intervention into Bosnia to save the Muslim population from Serb genocide (in fact, he very vigorously supported the intervention), unlike most “friends of the Muslims” like Galloway and the SWP, who opposed that intervention in the name of “anti-imperialism.”
SueR. You are clearly a frustrated old nanny with all that talk about sexual problems. Foot was good on demos and rhetoric like a lot of lefties but it was Attlee that had the tenacity to give us the NHS. You need to be in power to do such things not standing on the sidelines whinging. And indeed it was Blair and Brown that had to save the NHS after 18 years of the Tories.
H. Forgot to mention that we have free care for the elderly and are reducing prescription charges eventually to nil. Seems you little Englanders are far behind us.
Seconded woT jImbo The denham says above: a letter he (Foot) signed with others at the very start of the aggression against Bosnia, published in The Guardian on 21 May 1992:
Stop the onslaught
Phyllis Auty, Tony Benn, Bojan Bujic, Chris Cviic, Basil Davidson, Sir William Deakin, Martin Eve, Michael Foot, Fred Halliday, Quintin Hoare, Eric Hobsbawm, Branka Magas, Rusmir Mahmutcehajic (deputy prime minister of Bosnia-Herzegovina), Ralph Miliband, Tom Nairn, Mike Rustin, Kate Soper, Tom Stoppard, Mark Thompson, Mark Wheeler, Peter Worsley
Glesga, two things: I am NOT English and am not, by any kind of definition at all a ‘Little Englander’
Secondly, “And indeed it was Blair and Brown that had to save the NHS after 18 years of the Tories.”
You’re actually scaring me now – are you genuinely unaware that Balir enthusiastically embraced Tory ‘reforms’ and deepened and widened them throughtout the NHS????
You need help. Seek it. Now.
PS. Dear Comrade Osler,
You have a lot of fuckkinG nuts commenting on your site these days — you need to ban and delete the wierdo cretins.
Thank you,
W
H. The Tories were dismantling the NHS. Are you saying Blair continued with this! Seems we Scots are getting a better deal up here with new hospitals and health centres. Whats happening doon sooth to you chaps. Do you need help! A few extra quid from the oil revenues perhaps.
Will. What is this comrade crap! I assume you have decided you are not a weirdo cretin.
See woT I mean?
delete and get rid of the scum. It is an easy matter (especially now).
Will is wrong 1,000 times over
Enduring the semi-nutters on a site like this is far better policy than hurling them off, as Andy at SOCIALIST UNITY does whenever anyone expresses an ungoodthinkful opinion or links to an ungoodthinkful site.
Jimmy made a point at 22.29 about better social welfare in Scotland. This is 100% jolly good and very laudable [and we need say nothing about cans of McEwans*, endless ciggies or fried Mars bars] but I think I’m right in saying that the English taxpayer subsidises Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and that the subsidy per Scot per annum is around a thousand quid.
Of course, one can then argue that the Croydoners subsidise Geordies, but so far as the two Kingdoms, one Principality and one Province are concerned, the English are the ones who are paying for the others’ treats.
* Nothing wrong with McEwan’s, of course.
While on about Labour politicians, whether ranked among the quick or the dead, this is of interest:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1256086/Labours-migrant-policy-damaged-sons-education-says-Minister-Phil-Woolas.html
I’m going to have to side tentatively with Jimmy Glesga on this one- we have a situation in which the nation state is becoming icnreasingly irrelevent and increasingly has to cow to international finance and international capitalist organizations like the IMF- our elected politicians only have so much wiggle room.
I’m bloody glad Labour managed to adapt to the new rules of the game, because even in the unlikely event of a socialist party getting elected in this country, international forces out of their control would hammer them and make it completely unworkable. The little concessions here and there that New Labour manage to sneak in are likely the best we can hope for with things as they are.
Socialist politicians wouldn’t be particularly useful at the moment- what exactly could they do? What we need is to stop playing at being “revolutionary vanguards”, cease taking Lenin and Trotsky as gospel, and get back to the likes of Marx and Jean Jaures- internationally coordinated trade unionism to combat internationally coordinated capital. Workers of the world unite and all that.
My opinion, anyway.
New Labour haven’t adapted to the new rules, they have made them! And not only have they made them, they have actively stopped progressive legislation for workers rights being applied to the UK.
What would Britain look like now had a socialist party won power in 1997?
An island that doesn’t play by the rules dictated by international unaccountable bodies and enforced by the flows of international finance- we would be Cuba, except that I’m pretty sure people wouldn’t want a dignified, cod-socialist austerity and would be voting Tory in order to have freer access to all the sweatshop made trinkets we so love.
What do people here think Britain would look like now if a socialist party had been voted in in 1997?
New Labour spent the 90′s and early 00′s using their Veto to block all kinds of progressive legislation for British workers. This was done because of pressure from business interests.
This is the reality. Now New Labour have been pressured to bring in certain benefits that are worth defending, the minimum wage, extended Maternity and Paternity pay, but their period in office has been one of workers losing their pensions, unions declining and jobs becoming ever more temporary. Not to mention an ever widening gap between rich and poor.
Whether New Labour can be justified in some historic sense is a fair debate but that doesn’t alter these facts. I think MikeSC gives them too much credit.
If Labour had been socialist in 1997? Let’s see. Are we talking revolutionary socialism, or gradualist? Well it is the Labour Party – crap revolutionaries. We have to assume the latter.
First thing: The UK wouldn’t have suddenly, overnight become poorer. By talking of “austerity” you’re indulging in right-wing propaganda. According to this line, the minimum wage was going to drive everyone out of work.
There would have been pressure from financial markets, a reduction in business confidence, fretting in Brussels and Washington. That much is true.
It wouldn’t have been easy at times. But in the medium term, it would have been worth it.
The UK could have seen the re-socialisation of public utilities: railways, water and electricity, for example. Once in control, and with some help from experts in other countries who know how to involve government in industry (France, Japan, Germany etc), the government could have addressed the issues of running these utilities in the public interest, securing long-term investment to help them run in an environmental and efficient way, and democratising to the greatest possible extent.
Moving on, a comprehensive programme of social housing would have helped those in need, more than spending the money on the tax credit system. Social reforms could have increased unemployment benefit, whilst encouraging unions etc. to add a component of top-up unemployment insurance to the state-provided element (as in Sweden). After 1 year of unemployment, there would be a citizens guarantee of work.
Now, you tell me one fricking thing in this moderate socialist programme which would cause capitalism to collapse. One thing!
Moving on, there would need to be an emphasis on identifying export sectors, especially in the regions, and a turbo-speed internet infrastructure could be built, with local democracy and planning decisions opened up to citizens debate.
Details of taxes paid would be made public, thereby shattering the blindness of workers to the value of their bosses and colleagues. With scrutiny, there would come greater accountability.
And just the things that could have been done. I haven’t mentioned the things that shouldn’t have been done.
Could I do a better job than those at the top of the Party since 1997? Probably. But lots of people could. I am simply a whoever, tapping on the internet on a Sunday night, a Nowhere Man thinking of what could have been. Sad. But I believe these things Could Have Been. If I thought New Labour was the best we could have got… I wouldn’t be here.
Bill Corr. We get a subsidy for McEwans’s. ‘The best buy in beer’. All this crap Bill about subsidy to this or that or who gets the most is intended to be devisive. We live on a small island with a large population and the stronger have to pay up for a decent society. So vote Labour. As the Tory campaign said in 1965 ‘You know it makes sense’.
that Corr cunT is real scum (fash).
Does anybody know his actual address or real name?
If so let it out.
“What do people here think Britain would look like now if a socialist party had been voted in in 1997?”
New Zealand?
Sweden?
Norway?
Fucking GErmany?
Any other fucking eoro weenie cuntry?
just about any — all are better than the shithole we live in at the moment..
and i wooD gl;adly kill,you on ypur doorstep forra laff.
so fuck off cunt.\
Is Will on medication?
If so, the dosage may need adjusting [these days Craig Murray and Stephen Fry are totally open about being on medication for bipolarity so there's nothing to be embarrassed about.]
Bill Corr is called Bill Corr but is NOT the Bill Corr formerly of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids who is now an Obama appointee.
Bill Corr is currently in sunny climes but, alas, a worker of sorts rather than a bored retiree.
Not that is matters, Will, but there’s this. See if your local library has a copy:
http://openlibrary.org/b/OL1026770M/Adams_the_pilot
Needs to be killed on his doorstep does Corr.
Kill him.
I offer a bounty of 2 poonds fifty on his thick heed.