Stalin
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Apr 4, 2008
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RIP Michael Foot - a man who had the misfortune the be running against the rip-off Thatcher whose contribution to science was putting more air in ice cream and whose contribution to poltics was war, poverty and wasting the North Sea oil gift. For this, the egregious UK press adored her.
"...Michael Mackintosh Foot (23 July 1913 – 3 March 2010) was a British Labour politician and writer, who was a Member of Parliament from 1945 to 1955 and from a by-election in 1960 until 1992. He was also the Leader of the Opposition from 1980 to 1983.
A figurehead of what was later called Old Labour, he was a passionate supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, state ownership of major industries and British withdrawal from the European Economic Community. These were at the forefront of Labour's manifesto for the 1983 general election (described as "the longest suicide note in history") and caused a major defeat for the party.
...Following Labour's 1979 general election defeat by Margaret Thatcher, Foot was elected Labour leader in 1980, beating Denis Healey in the second round of the leadership election (the last leadership contest to involve only Labour MPs). Foot presented himself as a compromise candidate capable, unlike Healey, of uniting the party, which at the time was riven by the grassroots left-wing insurgency centred around Tony Benn. The Bennites demanded revenge for the betrayals, as they saw them, of the Callaghan government, and pushed the case for replacement of MPs who had acquiesced to them by left-wingers who would support the causes of unilateral nuclear disarmament, withdrawal from the Common Market and widespread nationalisation. (Benn did not stand for the leadership: apart from Foot and Healey, the other candidates – both eliminated in the first round – were John Silkin, a Tribunite like Foot, and Peter Shore, an anti-European right-winger.)
When he became leader, Foot was already 67 and frail – and almost immediately after his election as leader was faced with a serious crisis: the creation in early 1981 of a breakaway party by four senior Labour right-wingers, Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams, David Owen and William Rodgers (the so-called "Gang of Four"), the Social Democratic Party. The SDP won the support of large sections of the media, and for more than a year its opinion poll ratings suggested that it could at least overtake Labour and possibly win a general election, as the Tories were proving unpopular because of the economic policies of Margaret Thatcher, which had seen unemployment reach a postwar high.
With the Labour left still strong – in 1981 Benn decided to challenge Healey for the deputy leadership of the party, a contest Healey won by the narrowest of margins – Foot struggled to make an impact and was widely criticised for it, though his performances in the Commons, most notably on the Falklands war of 1982, won him widespread respect from other parliamentarians, though he was criticised by some on the left who felt that he should not have supported the Thatcher government's immediate resort to military action. The right-wing newspapers nevertheless lambasted him consistently for what they saw as his bohemian eccentricity, attacking him for wearing what they described as a "donkey jacket" (actually he wore a type of duffel coat) at the wreath-laying ceremony at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Day in November 1981, for which he was likened to an "out-of-work navvy" by one of Labour's own MPs. Foot did not make it generally known that HM the Queen Mother had complimented him on it; he later donated the garment to the People's History Museum in Manchester.
more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Foot
Comrade Stalin
"...Michael Mackintosh Foot (23 July 1913 – 3 March 2010) was a British Labour politician and writer, who was a Member of Parliament from 1945 to 1955 and from a by-election in 1960 until 1992. He was also the Leader of the Opposition from 1980 to 1983.
A figurehead of what was later called Old Labour, he was a passionate supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, state ownership of major industries and British withdrawal from the European Economic Community. These were at the forefront of Labour's manifesto for the 1983 general election (described as "the longest suicide note in history") and caused a major defeat for the party.
...Following Labour's 1979 general election defeat by Margaret Thatcher, Foot was elected Labour leader in 1980, beating Denis Healey in the second round of the leadership election (the last leadership contest to involve only Labour MPs). Foot presented himself as a compromise candidate capable, unlike Healey, of uniting the party, which at the time was riven by the grassroots left-wing insurgency centred around Tony Benn. The Bennites demanded revenge for the betrayals, as they saw them, of the Callaghan government, and pushed the case for replacement of MPs who had acquiesced to them by left-wingers who would support the causes of unilateral nuclear disarmament, withdrawal from the Common Market and widespread nationalisation. (Benn did not stand for the leadership: apart from Foot and Healey, the other candidates – both eliminated in the first round – were John Silkin, a Tribunite like Foot, and Peter Shore, an anti-European right-winger.)
When he became leader, Foot was already 67 and frail – and almost immediately after his election as leader was faced with a serious crisis: the creation in early 1981 of a breakaway party by four senior Labour right-wingers, Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams, David Owen and William Rodgers (the so-called "Gang of Four"), the Social Democratic Party. The SDP won the support of large sections of the media, and for more than a year its opinion poll ratings suggested that it could at least overtake Labour and possibly win a general election, as the Tories were proving unpopular because of the economic policies of Margaret Thatcher, which had seen unemployment reach a postwar high.
With the Labour left still strong – in 1981 Benn decided to challenge Healey for the deputy leadership of the party, a contest Healey won by the narrowest of margins – Foot struggled to make an impact and was widely criticised for it, though his performances in the Commons, most notably on the Falklands war of 1982, won him widespread respect from other parliamentarians, though he was criticised by some on the left who felt that he should not have supported the Thatcher government's immediate resort to military action. The right-wing newspapers nevertheless lambasted him consistently for what they saw as his bohemian eccentricity, attacking him for wearing what they described as a "donkey jacket" (actually he wore a type of duffel coat) at the wreath-laying ceremony at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Day in November 1981, for which he was likened to an "out-of-work navvy" by one of Labour's own MPs. Foot did not make it generally known that HM the Queen Mother had complimented him on it; he later donated the garment to the People's History Museum in Manchester.
more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Foot
Comrade Stalin
