Michael Foot, who died today at the age of 96, is best known as the leader who led Labour to disastrous defeat to Margaret Thatcher in 1983. But he deserves a much better epitaph, as a cultured and principled man who fought for the underdog.
Foot lived so long that it's extraordinary to reflect that he first stood for parliament in 1935, and was editor of the Evening Standard during the second world war. He also won fame as one of the authors of Guilty Men, a book published on the eve of the Battle of Britain that exposed the men who appeased Hitler.
He was a renowned orator, possibly the last of his kind in British politics. But he found the transition from rebel to high office a tough one. As deputy to prime minister James Callaghan, he oversaw the loss of thousands of steel jobs in his own Ebbw Vale constituency. And when he finally became Labour leader, it became obvious that this figure from another political generation could not compete with the brutal challenge of Margaret Thatcher.
I met Michael Foot once, at the Cheltenham Festival of Literature in 1996. As Cheltenham-based PR manager for Eagle Star, I was involved in the company's sponsorship of a discussion about the biographer's craft. (Foot was superb writer, chronicling the lives of Hazlitt and Aneurin Bevan amongst others.) After the debate, I got the chance to talk to Foot and the poet Stephen Spender. My boss, a lifetime Tory, offered Foot a bet: if Labour won the 1997 general election, he would give him a bottle of champagne. I suspect the former Labour leader never got the bubbly, despite Labour's triumph.
PS: the image above shows Michael Foot's signature on a copy of the biography about him, Michael Foot by Mervyn Jones, presented to us at the 1996 Cheltenham event.
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