Michael Foot died this week at the age of 96. He was a writer, rebel, orator, CND supporter, Labour radical, democrat and party loyalist. A great man of the Left, and a notoriously unsuccessful leader of the British Labour Party. Have a listen to this BBC 4 programme about his life, musings from the Guardian’s editors, a great photo gallery on Foot’s political life, and the New Statesman has a collection of obituaries.
A great loss to the world
He was not a great success as party leader – in some ways he was a victim of the early trivialisation by media that is now quite unremarkable. It was however wonderful hearing him speak at Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament rallies. He must be one of the last links to the enormously influential immediate post 2nd WW Labour Government that brought in the National Health Service, social welfare system and some significant nationalisations of services and industries that were under-invested and run down from the before the depression and right through the war.