Farewell to a giant of socialism

MICHAEL Foot, former MP for Ebbw Vale and for 70 years torchbearer of the radical Left of the Labour Party and who has died aged 96 was at the very heart and soul of the labour movement.

His death severs one of the last links with socialist titans such as Aneurin Bevan who held the Ebbw Vale seat before Michael Foot and who was his mentor.

The profound sense of loss at one whose political character was formed in the crucible of working-class politics during and immediately after the Depression is not confined to those in the Labour Party and trade unions.

Spontaneous tributes have come from all over a county to which Mr Foot always retained close ties.

The politician associated for much of his life with Gwent was born at Plymouth in 1913 the son of Liberal MP Isaac Foot who was of non-conformist stock and who won notoriety as a lawyer during the Great War defending conscientious objectors.

It was journalism rather than politics that initially attracted Michael after he left Oxford.

During his years at university he toured the Valleys with a Welsh college friend, the scenes of poverty during the Depression making a deep impact.

But despite his increasing radicalisation he shied away from communism saying that he would never yield to 'the persistent pressure of a pistol muzzle'.

Already a successful journalist, Michael Foot's first political contact with Gwent came in 1935 when he stood for Labour in Monmouth against an entrenched Conservative majority.

Although he increased the Labour vote by 3,000 the Conservative share on an increased turn-out went up by 9,000 a situation reflected in a Parliament with a huge Conservative majority.

At the beginning of the war Michael Foot volunteered for the armed forces but was rejected on the grounds of his asthma.

Already a contributor to the Left-wing Tribune he joined the Beaverbrook's London Evening Standard maintaining so far as was possible a radical stance and later the avowedly Labour Daily Herald.

During the war years he was introduced to a circle of Anglo-American literary figures which included the writer Ernest Hemingway.

It was at this time that he met Jill Craigie, a socialist and film-maker who was to become his wife until her death in 1999.

With the tidal wave of Labour votes in the 1945 general election Michael Foot gained the seat of Devonport retaining it for 10 years until losing the naval dockyard town in 1955 as a result of his support for nuclear disarmament.

A close alliance with Aneurin Bevan strongly suggested Michael Foot as a replacement for the dying MP and in 1960 he was selected to fight what was then a safe Labour seat.

At this time the fiercest political battles were not with the Conservative party but between Labour disarmers and those who wished Britain to retain nuclear weapons.

A particularly bitter internecine fight broke out after the return of a Labour government under Harold Wilson when the party's incomes policy was threatened by a seamen's strike.

Michael Foot supported the seamen but Wilson made his now-infamous speech about the strikers being manipulated by 'a tightly-knit group of politically motivated men' naming eight senior members of the seamen's union with communist sympathies.

Polemically brilliant and capable of both biting rhetoric and scholarly insight Michael Foot continued to thrive in his Ebbw Vale (later Blaenau Gwent) constituency despite the opening of the Llanwern works near Newport and Ravenscraig near Glasgow, both of which were bound to undermine Ebbw Vale as a steel production centre.

By the 1960s and 1970s Labour was being buffeted by a number of storms including worsening industrial relations, Vietnam, the rise of support for Enoch Powell and bitter fighting with the 'New' Trotskyite Left.

The Labour Party was itself moving to the left and Harold Wilson sought an accommodation with Michael Foot making him employment secretary.

In 1975 Michael Foot was a leader in the 'no' campaign against British membership of the EEC.

With the Labour Party's decline under James Callaghan and its 1979 defeat at the hands of Margaret Thatcher Michael Foot was elected leader of the Labour Party and set about trying to heal the wounds in a party riven by the left-wing antics of Tony Benn.

At 67 years of age he was not in good health. The creation of the Social Democratic Party by the so-called 'gang of four' Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams, David Owen and William Rodgers further taxed him as did press criticism of the 'donkey jacket' (actually an expensive short coat) which he wore to the Cenotaph in 1982.

With Labour politics beginning to take its contemporary shape the strongly socialist manifesto of 1983 was described as 'the longest suicide note in history'.

Labour was engulfed by a Conservative landslide as a result of which Michael Foot resigned to be replaced by Neil Kinnock.

From 1983 Michael Foot took a back seat in Labour politics eventually retiring from the House of Commons in 1992. In 1995 he won damages from the Sunday Times after that paper had suggested - on the basis of information contained in KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky's memoirs - that he been working for Soviet intelligence.

Although many see Michael Foot's political career as marred by disappointment and failure his contribution via his political biographies and biography of HG Wells to the cultural life of the nation is undoubted.

On July 23, 2006, his 93rd birthday, Michael Foot became the longest-lived leader of any British political party.

He remained devoted to the cause of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and to his hometown team of Plymouth Argyle until the end of his life.

Although like his protégé, Neil Kinnock, Michael Foot was a leader who never became prime minister, his role in holding the Labour Party together at a time of crisis is widely acknowledged, as is his standing as one of the great Parliamentarians of our age.

EDITORIAL COMMENT: End of a political era

THE passing of Michael Foot marks the end of a political era as well as the death of a brilliant human being.

As a writer, he was up there with the best journalists of his day, and as a speaker, he could thrill an audience with his passion and eloquence.

He was also a warm and witty individual whose Tredegar home was a fascinating place to visit, especially for young journalists.

His career took him through a number of generations and he bestrode the corridors of power along with some of the titans of 20th-century politics, although he never seemed totally at home as his party’s leader.

The country clearly agreed with that sentiment because it gave Labour a huge thumbs down under his leadership in 1983.

You could love or loathe his political ideals but you could not deny that here was a genuinely sincere man who fervently believed in what he said and what he did.

He was a champion of the poor but he was also a disciple of peace. As a co-founder of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament he never compromised his stance, even though it cost him in political terms.

We are certain that all men and women of goodwill will mourn the passing of Michael Foot and hope that if there is an afterlife he will now be reunited with the great love of his life, Jill.