How Michael Foot Saved the Labour Party

(C) jimjay

Unless you have been in a media-free bubble in the last week (such as the one artificially created in the BBC’s new-David Mitchell-presented-comedy) then you will have heard that on 3 March, Michael Foot, former leader of the Labour Party, died aged 96.

Tributes and accolades have since poured in from political allies, enemies, pundits and correspondents alike. No matter what has been said, whether “good, compassionate and dedicated to his country,” as by Gordon Brown, or, “a great speaker, a fantastic orator, a beautiful writer,” according to David Cameron, the consensus is that Michael Foot, whilst an unsuccessful leader (particularly in terms of electoral success) was a man of stern conviction and passionate ideology. This from an age where even the mainstream divisions between left and right represented fundamental differences of opinion in how society should be structured.

Michael Foot was active as a parliamentarian during some of the most politically turbulent periods of the 20^th Century. In his book Guilty Men he demonstrates solidarity with Churchill when criticising the policy of appeasement towards Nazi Germany in the 1930’s.

Quintessentially Old Labour (though perhaps by default), his death in March comes two days before the anniversary of his first Cabinet level appointment as Secretary of State for Employment on 5 March 1974. In government he played a key role in relations with the trade unions, for which, rather ironically as Michael White points out in his article in the Guardian, he was criticised for acting as their “appeaser”.

However, Michael Foot’s history is very well documented and there have been innumerable obituaries written already; examples can be found here, here and here, for those more interested in a biography. However, in this article I would like to look at how, in his own subtle and I daresay at times accidental way, Michael Foot, during his short 3 year stint as leader between 1980 and 1983, may have helped to save the Labour Party.

To begin with it is striking to consider the context in which Michael Foot emerged as Labour leader. The political landscape was one in which his party was in turmoil. The Winter of Discontent and the Scotland Act 1978 debacle had prompted a vote of no confidence in Callaghan’s government, which it subsequently lost. Foot’s biographer, Mervyn Jones stated:

“When the Labour Party loses power, the sequel is a rigorous, and in some quarters venomous, examination of the defects of the fallen government. There are accusations of missed opportunities, broken promises, decisions and policies that outraged the tenets of socialism, and in particular indifference to, or defiance of the opinions of the party rank and file and the resolutions of party conferences”

The Labour Party, rife with internal squabbles, factions and polarised opinions, was a cumbersome and in electoral terms an unwieldy beast. The struggles between the right of the Labour Party (Denis Healey) and its extreme left (Tony Benn) demanded the newly elected leader, Michael Foot (upon his election in 1980) to arbitrate the rather brutal tug of war.

The conclusion ultimately saw the Labour Party in 1983 suffer one of its worst electoral defeats and led to its manifesto being dubbed the longest suicide note in history.

Despite being described as a communist and being generally considered to the hard left of the Party; Foot is in fact seen by many, including those within what used to be the Militant Tendency, as the principle architect that led to what they might describe as the death of socialism within the Labour Party.

In 1980, Tribune, the journal for the Labour left, wrote a scathing attack on MT, and its editor was a close friend of Michael Foot. Indeed, MT’s front man, Tony Benn, locked horns with Michael Foot for much of the period, the latter urging Benn not to contest the 1981 Deputy Leadership election. They were also at odds over the Conservative Government’s invasion of the Falkland Islands, with Foot being supportive of the action. His agreement with this policy is often cited as another key reason why Labour failed to be competitive in the ’83 election.

In his book on Foot Kenneth Morgan concludes: “For all Foot’s inadequacies, it was vital that he should vanquish Benn. With Denis Healey’s help, he did.” The rationale behind this view is that Foot was, by all intense and purposes, a liberal. Foot’s family background and heritage was one that was closely associated with the Liberal Party, his father having been a Liberal MP. Morgan describes in his book a certain feeling of obligation amongst those liberals, like Foot, who had joined the Labour Party after witnessing the steady decline of the Liberal Party, to re-brand themselves as socialists through and through. The resurgence of militant socialism in the 1970’s and the ability of trade unions to muscle Labour governments caused Foot to wobble into line, using a rhetoric that, arguably, he never really believed.

As Tony Benn moved further away from parliamentary process as the sole mean of enacting social change (making a similar argument to that made by David Moss in his article: The Future of the British Left), Foot moved the Labour Party, finally, towards the social-democratic party that his protégé Neil Kinnock, and later Blair and Brown, would fully realise. The new Party would firmly believe in parliamentary process (as did Michael Foot) and would eliminate the word “redistribution” from its lexicon. Indeed, in a fascinating letter that Tony Blair wrote to Michael Foot in 1982 we see the roots of the direction that the Party would take under his leadership.

Foot’s Labour was a battleground that saw the emergence of a whole other Party in the SDP and that came to set Labour back on the path to success. Some would argue that far from “save” Labour, Michael Foot destroyed it, basically setting the foundations that would rid it of any powerful socialist voice.

Of course, I would not argue that Foot ever masterminded a grand putsch by Machiavellian means. Indeed, I believe that many of the events happened by accident. In lots of ways Foot did see eye to eye with the left of the Labour Party (his strong links with CND), however, the left-wing nature of the 1983 manifesto and the subsequent disastrous electoral defeat made the Party understand that it needed to move more towards social democratic policies in order to come back into office. Foot was full of passion, ideals and his time as leader stabilised the party and paved the way for its modernisation.

His legacy, however, for better or worse, is New Labour.