It is easy to dub Michael Foot a hypocrite and a poacher turned gamekeeper. For example, his ultimatum to Tony Benn, and his insistence that shadow cabinet policy supercedes conference policy, can be contrasted with the following incident recorded in the recent book on Foot by Simon Hoggart and David Leigh:
'When Foot arrived at Westminster (in 1945).. he lost little time in making it clear how he intended to cally Ull. In October, at the first full meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party, he seconded a motion moved by Barbara Castle, worded in feline lashion to call on ministers "to preserve the unity of by consulting decisions went the annual conference.' Heretics Or take the following paragraph written by Foot in 1958:
"The Labour Party can be made a most instrument for achieving socialism nome ana peace abroad.
perpetual remedial action is taken to prevent hardening of the Socialist Challenge 18 November 1981 arteries, softening brain. the domination the young by the old or the domination of the heretics by the stuffy and the ultraorthodox, officeseekers and the power maniacs.
Today, it is Tony Benn who is judged to be the 'heretic' Michael Foot who is 'stuffy and orthodox' , and it is Neil Kin nock and other aco vtes ot Foot who are the 'officeseekers' and power maniacs' And yet, it is a bit too simple to explain what has happened to Michael Foot by saying that he has 'sold reneged on his past. For, in many wavs that past is not so inconsistent Foot's present politics.
Foot's radical reputation was established because of the stand he took on number of issues. Support Michael Foot - young witchhunter, old Callaghanite. nepuducal spain in int cIvil war. participation ir the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the rate 1950s and early 1960s denunciation of the US in were his most notable causes.
More generally, he was OIC OI Aneurin Bevan's chief neutenants WICH Bevan was as popular in the constituency parties as Benn is today. And Foot himself has been associated the Tribune Group.
Indeed Foot became editor of one in yar and the direction in which took the newspaper then gives • a clue to the direction he is seeking to take the Labour Party today.
Dried By 1948, the radicalism which the Labour government had snown election three years earlier had largely dried up. But so too had the finances of Tribune. This encouraged Michael Foot to seek one ot his now tamous compromises.
In 1949 he Jallual y negotiated a deal with the national headquarters of less and less critical of the Labour government at the very time that this government was lurching more and more to the right.
in September 1949, was an economic ' crisis and devaluation Tribune backed the government's policy. 'even though it carries with it some increase and even though unemployment may be inevitable'.
When public spending cuts were introduced October, Foot was critical of the government only for 'not presenting the cuts in more understandable way.' In the context of the economic crisis Tribune called for 'sacrifice' and 'self-discipline in the cause of British socialism'.
All this was written when Michael Foot was meant : to be a darling young. leftie foretold was the Michael Foot who ander ea the Wilson Callaghan cabinets, and who sought to justify the rise in unemployment and decline in living standards from the national Labour rarty, Ivichael root ran the newspaper in such way as to suggest that his own sympathies were movaway ICE U rhetoric which Tribune had built upon.
Thus • solicited articles from non-Tribunites such as Roy Jenkins, who became the newspaper's main . correspondent financial matters and from Anthony Crosland.
Tribune published series of Jenkins' articles in a pam. phlet form with the title Fair Shares for the Rich Cuddling up to the Labour right was thing, but the treatment Tribune gave to those on its left was something else Foot's leadership the newspaper became venement Communist, both at home and abroad. NATO Internationally, Tribune had previously sought a 'third way' between American erialism and the Sovie Union. Now it became Tribune expressed support for NATO saying 'any increase in world tenmation was a necessary US intervention Korea was enthusiastically welcomed. Although admitting this intervention was 'pre-meditated attack', Tribune consoled its readers with the news that 'the West had shown it will fight' Woodrow Wyatt in a column in Tribune even pondered whether or not the Us should be advised to drop an atom bomb on North Korea.
The expression of such explained by the different contemporary political circumstances in which 'Foot the lefty' and 'Foot the anti-lefty' operated.
The Michael Foot of and the Vietnam days was alve Wue! the crisis of world and imperialism was not quite so acute as in 1949/50 and 1981. It was possible to be liberal without being anti-
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