Sad to hear of the demise of Michael Foot, although a full life lived to the age of 96 is no mean achievement. He was a champion of Parliament and was motivated by a desire to make things better for people. I hope I leave one tenth the legacy of having "done something" that he did.
However, being committed, passionate, principled and honest is tempered somewhat by being, er, wrong, about so many things. Britain would not have been better served by unilaterally disarming. The British people had no appetite for centralised state control on the scale he espoused. And they are also for the most part not republican in their sympathies.
So he was always on something of a hiding to nothing and the electoral defeat of 1983 certainly involved the use of the word "hiding".
Above all, though, it is difficult to know who provided the biggest boost to Mrs Thatcher's fortunes in the early 1980s: General Galtieri or Michael Foot.
When there was the recent press uproar over Gordon Brown's letters to bereaved service families, I was reminded of the similar rantings many years earlier about Michael Foot wearing his "Donkey Jacket" at the Cenotaph.
ReplyDeleteIn both cases I beleive that the "surface thinkers" of the modern world were putting presentation before sincerity.
I for one regret the passing of a generation of politicians of conviction and principal like Michael Foot who wasted no time on slick presentation - but were passionate about their beliefs.
Like you, I did not agree with many of Michaels veiws, but I appreciated his courage and intellect enormously.
I agree with the above comments, and if there were more people of the calibre of Michael Foot, I would not have set up my Facebook group, which you, Ian, have been kind enough to join.
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