Foot, Michael

Foot, Michael (b. 1913). Deputy leader (1976–80) and leader (1980–3) of the Labour Party. A distinguished left-wing author and journalist, Foot, as editor and managing director of Tribune, was a leading Bevanite in the 1950s and after 1958 prominent in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. An MP from 1945, he accepted office for the first time as employment secretary 1974–6. Between 1976 and 1979 he was lord president of the council and leader of the House of Commons, before succeeding James Callaghan as party leader. He led a divided party however, and went down to humiliating defeat at the hands of Mrs Thatcher in 1983 on a manifesto described as ‘the longest suicide note in history’. Foot, co-author of a famous polemic (Guilty Men, 1940), biographer of Nye Bevan, littérateur, brilliant orator, and devotee of the House of Commons, was a much admired and respected figure both inside and outside the Labour movement.

Andrew Sanders