This is very sad news, a great politician

An honourable man. Didn’t agree with much he said but he did say it so very well.

The BBC have him at 96. A long, distinguished career either way.

“The BBC have him at 96.”

I’d guess 92 is a typo, considering that he was born in 1913. A sad loss.

…unless that 92 referrs to when he commented on the BNP.

As we drive through the streets of Hampstead to
Michael Foot’s house, my predictably right-wing cab
driver is ranting about asylum seekers and how they
are destroying Britain and eating swans and… blah
blah. In a desperate attempt to change the record
before my head bursts, I tell him I tell him who I’m
about to interview. He pauses, and unexpectedly looks
slightly gooey. “Ah, Michael Foot. He’s a lovely man.
Lovely.” Then – quick as a beat – he adds, “Still,
couldn’t ever have been Prime Minister, could he?”

http://www.johannhari.com/2003/07/24/michael-foot-at-

…unless that 92 referrs to when he commented on the BNP.

Correct.

RIP

Sad news but a good innings. I hope the inevitable tributes will change perceptions of who he was and what he stood for. Too long he has been used simply as an example of unelectable Labour and why Labour had to change. He was described patronisingly as a great parliamentarian and man of integrity while being portrayed as a political dinosaur who didn’t have the appetite for the necessary change. In fact he kept the party together at a fractious and difficult time when with any other potential leader it could have folded entirely. He brought in the first measures against Militant without instituting the witch-hunts that would later divide the Party. He made up 6 points during the short campaign in 1983 – if Labour could do that today we might go into election day ahead of the Tories!

And before he became leader he oversaw positive legislation in parliament on trade unions some of which remains to this day (eg the establishment of ACAS). He looked for constructive solutions where the Tories were purely destructive. His work together with Jack Jones stopped inflation problems becoming crises on a couple of occasions. Had Callaghan followed his advice we may not have had the disastrous defeat of 1979.

RIP Michael. I’m proud to say I voted for him.

He was part of a very special generation of Labour MPs. I’ll miss him.

Sad news. One of the best British politicians ever, in my opinion.

used to see him walking his dog on Hampstead Heath, he used to get the 24 bus down to Westminster and use his OAP pass

never accepted any honours or baubles, a Plymouth Argyle fan (& a proper one – he went to games till he got too old)

a Labour leader with socialist principles unlike the ones we’ve had for the past 13 years

RIP

That Observer quote made me tear up.

RIP, Michael Foot.

Christ, Daniel Hannan has paid a fulsome tribute (must be the shared Euroscpetism):

“I was lucky enough, as an undergraduate, to listen to one of Michael Foot’s last great orations, when he spoke to a spell-bound Oxford Union about the iniquities of the EU. True heir to the English radical tradition, he had little time for “-isms” of any sort, and was one of the few Lefties of his generation never to have flirted with either Mussolini or Stalin. Although he was wrong about many things – his economic policy would have ruined us every bit as comprehensively as Gordon Brown’s wastrel clottishness – he got the big issues right, eschewing fascism, Communism and Euro-integrationism as intrinsically un-English doctrines.

Men of power have not time to read; yet the men who do not read are unfit for power,” said the great man, and it was truer than he knew. Foot’s introduction to the Penguin edition of Gulliver’s Travels is, for me, one of the finest essays ever written about Swift, and will be remembered long after Foot’s political career is forgotten. Yet he was ill-suited to the politician’s trade. Cerebral, incorruptible and curiously innocent, he represented a noble and exalted tradition on the British Left. How small his successors appear by comparison.

We are not here in this world to find elegant solutions, pregnant with initiative, or to serve the ways and modes of profitable progress. No, we are here to provide for all those who are weaker and hungrier, more battered and crippled than ourselves. That is our only certain good and great purpose on earth, and if you ask me about those insoluble economic problems that may arise if the top is deprived of their initiative, I would answer ‘To hell with them.’ The top is greedy and mean and will always find a way to take care of themselves. They always do.

vinny@15: You seem surprised. But “right-wingers” are able to see humans as something more than their politics. For your average lefty, other humans are either with us or against us. That’s all they are – their politics determine them entirely.
And 16, no, we’re not here “to provide for all those who are weaker and hungrier, more battered and crippled than ourselves. That is our only certain good and great purpose on earth”. No, we’re here as part of the carbon cycle. In 100 years the atoms that compose me and you, and all other readers of this blog will be cast to the four winds and be taking their place in the life-cycles of other organisms. That’s the marvellous thing.

You seem surprised. But “right-wingers” are able to see humans as something more than their politics. For your average lefty, other humans are either with us or against us.

Anyone else spot the incongruity here?

@17

It was quote from a Foot speech. Its still wonderfully apposite.

What made Foot unique compared to most modern day politicians was his superb understanding of British history. Recently he assisted the campaign to preserve the fields in whcih the battle of Bosworth had been fought. He very succinctly explained the importance of the battle to the events which followed. Most politicians appear to have at best no knowledge of history and at worst contempt for it. If we had more MPs like Foot then we would people to stand up to the authoritarian tendencies in government and the importance of tradition in acting as a bulwark against these trends.

Foot was a brilliant man, his loss is very sad. His “we are not here” speech is my favourite political speech of all time. I have the words framed on the wall in my house.

Just to add a little tuppence worth here.

My Father, (no Labour supporter he), often told me of the 1970 General Election (I wouldn’t know, I was only a 3-month old toddler back then), and being in Haverfordwest town centre, (for Pembrokeshire back then was considered marginal), when Michael Foot was campaigning, shaking Michael Foots’ hand and being given best wishes in raising his young family – Dad was far from the left politically from MH then as now yet still was touched by the humanity and sincerity of the man, if not his policies!

Of the Falklands Taskforce Foot said: ‘our first concern in the Labour Party as in the country as a whole must be for their safety and success’.

This, of course was the same Foot who wrote that he ‘would never allow the Tories to purloin the patriotic argument’.

Radical? ‘We envisaged working a mixed economy in a country involved in the Western alliance’.

In March 1981, Michael Foot sent spokesman to Bobby Sands death bed to say that Labour would never support political status for republican prisoners. When Sands died ‘There were loud cheers from all parts of the commons yesterday as Mr Michael Foot, leader of the Labour Party, placed himself firmly behind Mrs Thatcher in her firm rejection of the IRA hunger strikers,’ the Times reported.

@ 18

I very much doubt Trofim will see any incongruity there at all.

The passing of a giant of British political life. His stint as Labour leader was just one chapter.

I’m a Lib Dem and would have supported the SDP out of the Labour Party if I had been around at that time. But there can be no doubt that Foot was a learn’ed man and a lover of his country.

That goes a long way in my eyes.

R.I.P

he was a great man, a man of principle and will be much missed

I’d be interested in knowing how Trofim reconciles his assertions with Chris Mounsey’s comments on the issue:

http://www.devilskitchen.me.uk/2010/03/michael-foot-bollocks.html

Come on Trofim, we’re all waiting.

@23

In March 1981, Michael Foot sent spokesman to Bobby Sands death bed to say that Labour would never support political status for republican prisoners.

And what was wrong with that? The hunger strikers were using a form of asymmetric warfare against the state. ”Do what we want or we’ll kill ourselves”
Why should Britain have yielded to that pressure?

They never gave into that animal rights loon who klled himself on hunger strike either.

No doubt the right-wing are praising Foot now, so that when Thatcher pops her clogs and the left presumably say “good riddance”, they can use their words against them.

The difference is that Foot didn’t destroy half the country in the name of the free market.

Really nice man, meet him a couple of times. The only member of parliament to wear a donkey jacket in the commons. RIP Michael Foot

For your average lefty, other humans are either with us or against us. That’s all they are – their politics determine them entirely.
And 16, no, we’re not here “to provide for all those who are weaker and hungrier, more battered and crippled than ourselves.
Have you ever been to a rugby or golf club or in the back of a black cab. The average righty is no different from the average lefty.
Also I can imagine you as young Tory, if you were around then, laughing your little right wing head off at Kenny Everett’s quip at Foot in 1983.