Journal.
A gentle man
Michael Foot was the first Labour Party leader to lodge himself in my consciousness. I have strong memories of watching a Nationwide feature on the leadership election when I must have been no more than eleven, and comprehending even then that his election as leader was a real surprise.
Reading the tributes to Foot yesterday, I’m struck both by happily noting their generosity, but also the memory of the highly personalised playground bullying and ridicule from the press that Foot suffered at the time. He led Labour at a point in time when its primary mission was survival, not government. For me, Michael Foot is not the man ‘responsible’ for what the Labour Party became in the early 1980s – that had many, many authors – but one of those people who stayed in to fight to hold together a Labour movement turning in on itself. A man who led the party out of loyalty to it: less a leader, more a full-time counsellor.
Jeremy Thompson, the Sky News anchor, managed to describe Foot in an interview with Peter Hain as a ‘firebrand extremist’. Hain took him to task over this ridiculous caricature – Foot was nothing of the sort, yet it was indicative of the image of Foot that remains lodged in the memory of many as an object of pity and ridicule, rather than the dignified and gentle man he was.
My own memory of Foot will be particularly as a writer. His classic biography of Nye Bevan is a two volume love letter, achingly personal and utterly moving. He may have failed as a party leader but he was a great communicator and a fine human being. He’ll be missed.
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