Michael Foot

[Hofzinser]

RIP

[Gangster Octopus]

Michael Foot

Ah, I thought he was going to reach the ton...

[Spearmint Rhino]

Michael Foot

RIP indeed.

I saw him one night, by then retired from Westminster, walking his dog around Kings Cross. You can't imagine any other former leaders of a major party living in (what was then still) a very rough inner-city area, let alone blithely walking their dog around it in the dark.

One of the things for which he took the most stick - wearing a scruffy donkey jacket to the Cenotaph on Remembrance Day - I actually thought was brilliant, a sign of solidarity with the working class and a reminder that it was the ordinary people who suffered the worst privations and bereavements during the wars, not the top brass.

A good innings and a good man.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Michael Foot

It's hard to know how to assess Michael Foot's place in history. On the one hand, he was Spitting Image's bumbling fool who played right into Thatcher's hands with "the longest suicide note in history" (the Labour Party Manifesto in 1983 that promised, amongst other things, unilateral nuclear disarmament) and led to ten years of wilderness for Labour.

On the other hand, he was the last Socialist leader of a major party in this country, so much so that the SDP four buggered off because they couldn't work for him. And because one went with the other, Labour hasn't anyone even resembling a socialist on its front bench ever since. Which isn't necessarily a great legacy either.

[treibeis]

Michael Foot

About ten years ago, when I was walking down the street wearing my old donkey jacket, a bloke sitting in a van wound down his window and shouted: "Michael Foot!" at me.

The astonishing thing about it was that I wasn't on the way to a football game in Plymouth or on Hampstead Road waiting for the Number 24 bus (on which Mr Foot could often be seen), but in a suburb of Lübeck. The bloke doing the shouting didn't sound particularly English, either (what he actually shouted was "Michael Food!").

[Houdi Elbow]

Michael Foot

The "donkey jacket" was an invention of the Murdoch press - good to see they have no influence. RIP.

[Spearmint Rhino]

Michael Foot

Duffel coat, then. The point stands.

[meregreen]

Michael Foot

Spearmint Rhino wrote:

One of the things for which he took the most stick - wearing a scruffy donkey jacket to the Cenotaph on Remembrance Day - I actually thought was brilliant, a sign of solidarity with the working class and a reminder that it was the ordinary people who suffered the worst privations and bereavements during the wars, not the top brass.

Wasn't it just the case that he was quite a scruffy dresser?

He was a politician who came from an era when substance counted for much more than style. It was his misfortune to become Labour leader at a time when style was becoming more important than substance. Also, he was leader at a time when the Mckenzie-edited Sun was at its most vicious and, in the wake of the Falklands, at its most confident. He never really stood a chance.

I'm really quite sad he didn't outlive Thatcher. RIP Michael Foot.

[Spearmint Rhino]

Michael Foot

meregreen wrote:

Wasn't it just the case that he was quite a scruffy dresser?

Oh, sure. But he didn't give in to the pressure to smarten up into something 'ceremonial' and statesmanlike. Of course, Labour didn't know about spin in those days. In more recent years they'd have turned it into a positive. (Although in more recent years a man like Foot wouldn't have been allowed anywhere near the leadership in the first place...)

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Michael Foot

Yeah, I'd have liked him to have turned up to her funeral. In a donkey jacket.

[Houdi Elbow]

Michael Foot

Was he a 'scruffy' dresser or was it just a label that the press gave him? SR, I find it difficult to imagine that he made a concious decision to wear a duffel coat to make a political statement - nobody would have given it a second thought had the press not had it in for him.

Anyway it was a sad day when politicians started being judged on appearance over ability.

[Spearmint Rhino]

Michael Foot

By any standards he was a scruffy dresser. Come on, now. (The press banging on about that as if it mattered more than his politics is another thing entirely...)

[sw2borshch]

Michael Foot

Well, everyone was a scruffy dresser in those days.

But, definitely an RIP - besides being Labour leader, I've read a fair few very admirable things re his personal life too.

[Spearmint Rhino]

Michael Foot

It didn't help that he looked like one of the Sea Devils from Doctor Who, or that his surname was Foot.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Michael Foot

Anyway it was a sad day when politicians started being judged on appearance over ability.

Yes, that would be the election of the clean and youthful JFK over the scruffy and apparently unshaven Richard Nixon in 1960.

[Wyatt Earp]

Michael Foot

96 isn't bad, is it? Sad, though. I've just given the news to my Mum, who's a great admirer of his.

We saw him speak at a public meeting at my secondary school once, the two of us. At the time, the Tories were in the press, talking about how some Labour policy or other would have been disapproved of by men of honour from the old Labour Party, like Nye Bevan. I remember Foot referring to this, then grinning a bit impishly and saying "Well, they weren't very fond of Nye when he was alive, you know." Cameron's tribute brought that to mind.

[meregreen]

Michael Foot

Rogin the Armchair Fan wrote:

Anyway it was a sad day when politicians started being judged on appearance over ability.

Yes, that would be the election of the clean and youthful JFK over the scruffy and apparently unshaven Richard Nixon in 1960.

I think it was less to do with their respective appearances and more to do with the fact that Nixon was visibly perspiring during a TV debate, leading to the perception that he was nervous and shifty, while, in contrast, Kennedy seemed calm and composed.

Besides, isn't it generally acknowledged that Nixon had the election stolen due to vote rigging in Chicago?

[steveeeeeeeee]

Michael Foot

I have no anecdote to offer, I just want to say he's a person I greatly respected and this news has saddened me.

[Wyatt Earp]

Michael Foot

meregreen wrote:

Besides, isn't it generally acknowledged that Nixon had the election stolen due to vote rigging in Chicago?

Kennedy, you mean.

[meregreen]

Michael Foot

Why on Earth... wrote:

meregreen wrote:

Besides, isn't it generally acknowledged that Nixon had the election stolen due to vote rigging in Chicago?

Kennedy, you mean.

Sorry, that was unclear. I meant the election was stolen from Nixon.

[ursus arctos]

Michael Foot

That's also been largely discredited.

Nixon would have lost Illinois even if Daley had not engaged in typical Cook County electoral fraud on JFK's behalf.

[meregreen]

Michael Foot

ursus arctos wrote:

That's also been largely discredited.

Nixon would have lost Illinois even if Daley had not engaged in typical Cook County electoral fraud on JFK's behalf.

OK right, cheers.

[The Exploding Vole]

Michael Foot

Surely the thread title should have read A Foot in the Grave.

Anyone else remember the bit from Harry Hill's Fruit Corner which consisted of Mr Foot "singing the Radio 2 jingles"?

[E10 Rifle]

Michael Foot

RIP indeed.

He will, I suspect, be treated more kindly by history than he was by politics.

The precise reverse will likely be said of many of his successors.

[Bruno]

Michael Foot

One Foot Under?

Coming back to the "donkey jacket", which apparently is a duffel coat, I'm struggling to discern how exactly wearing a duffel coat somewhere causes a scandal.