Rt Hon Michael Foot
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 02:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
caddymanSo, Michael Foot, erstwhile leader of the Labour Party and CND campaigner has died today, aged 96.
I never had much time for his brand of politics, however it was meant, it always came across as the politics of envy, and the “equalising” of opportunity and entitlement it represented was always a levelling down, rather than a raising up. Still, like many of the other now sidelined dinosaurs of the left, it was hard not to admire someone who stuck to his guns and spoke from principle rather than expedience. Agree with his views or not, we could do with more of his salt in Parliament these days. I didn't agree with his opoposition to British membership of the EEC at the time, but now it has evolved into the EU and becoming less democratic, more authoritarian and federalist, I see he was spot on with that.
I passed him in the street a few of times in the late 80s and early 90s and he looked exactly as he did on TV – which is not always the case: a scarecrow in a hurry.
Michael Mackintosh Foot (23 July 1913 – 3 March 2010)
I never had much time for his brand of politics, however it was meant, it always came across as the politics of envy, and the “equalising” of opportunity and entitlement it represented was always a levelling down, rather than a raising up. Still, like many of the other now sidelined dinosaurs of the left, it was hard not to admire someone who stuck to his guns and spoke from principle rather than expedience. Agree with his views or not, we could do with more of his salt in Parliament these days. I didn't agree with his opoposition to British membership of the EEC at the time, but now it has evolved into the EU and becoming less democratic, more authoritarian and federalist, I see he was spot on with that.
I passed him in the street a few of times in the late 80s and early 90s and he looked exactly as he did on TV – which is not always the case: a scarecrow in a hurry.
Michael Mackintosh Foot (23 July 1913 – 3 March 2010)