Michael Foot: A Life

Michael Foot: A Life
Kenneth O. Morgan

The authorised – but not uncritical – life of one of the great parliamentarians and orators of our times, the former Labour Party leader, who was also an eminent man of letters.Michael Foot was a controversial and charismatic figure in British public life, political and literary, for over sixty years.Emerging from a famous west-country Liberal dynasty, he rose as a crusading left-wing journalist in the late 1930s: ‘The Guilty Men’ (his book on the pre-war appeasers of Nazi Germany) is one of the great radical tracts of British history. He was the voice of libertarian socialism in parliament, an international socialist and government minister, and was Labour leader for two-and-a-half years between 1980 and 1983.His political friendships with people like Beaverbrook, Cripps, Aneurin Bevan and Barbara Castle were passionate and profound, but he also had a remarkable and quite different career as a man of letters, with Dean Swift, Tom Paine, Hazlitt, Byron, Wordsworth, Heine, Wells and Silone amongst his heroes. Foot’s two-volume life of Aneurin Bevan is a triumph of political biography.Kenneth Morgan's biography does full justice to both the public and the private side of Michael Foot – no more tellingly than his descriptions of Foot's long and happy marriage to the filmmaker, feminist and writer Jill Craigie.

Kenneth O. Morgan

MICHAEL FOOT

A LIFE

DEDICATION (#uab45db08-0e2b-5479-a9e8-f2ad9dd96fb0)

For Joseph

CONTENTS

COVER (#ubb1abef3-f653-5bb4-ab82-7b7d2667c04d)

TITLE PAGE (#uab9f09de-3a07-5a7f-8c0e-1364cbb46e31)

DEDICATION (#u38604687-5b24-5668-b3cd-992e329cbf51)

PREFACE (#udf4bd50f-39f8-5508-9629-f2531e35bd18)

1 Nonconformist Patrician (1913–1934) (#u2232910b-0873-5ae8-9fb1-2b2747e1ff81)

2 Cripps to Beaverbrook (1934–1940) (#u80ae8a09-23a2-5e35-b0c7-2ff6b5529483)

3 Pursuing Guilty Men (1940–1945) (#u07f4307f-7bb6-58e3-8cbc-8f18a48d8f6c)

4 Loyal Oppositionist (1945–1951) (#uefc669ae-b9f4-506e-a60d-a0a186dee3e5)

5 Bevanite and Tribunite (1951–1960) (#litres_trial_promo)

6 Classic and Romantic (#litres_trial_promo)

7 Towards the Mainstream (1960–1968) (#litres_trial_promo)

8 Union Man (1968–1974) (#litres_trial_promo)

9 Social Contract (1974–1976) (#litres_trial_promo)

10 House and Party Leader (1976–1980) (#litres_trial_promo)

11 Two Kinds of Socialism (1980–1983) (#litres_trial_promo)

12 Into the Nineties (#litres_trial_promo)

ENVOI: Toujours l’Audace (#litres_trial_promo)

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY (#litres_trial_promo)

INDEX (#litres_trial_promo)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR (#litres_trial_promo)

PRAISE (#litres_trial_promo)

NOTES (#litres_trial_promo)

BY THE SAME AUTHOR (#litres_trial_promo)

COPYRIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER (#litres_trial_promo)

PREFACE (#ulink_1b965bf2-9af2-54e5-a932-b729e9ea1d3a)

Michael Foot has had a very long and colourful life. He was chronicler and participant in central aspects of British twentieth-century history. His first general election found him crusading for Lloyd George’s Liberal Party in 1929. His twentieth and last saw him campaigning for Labour in his old seat, Ebbw Vale/Blaenau Gwent, seventy-six years later. He spans the worlds of Stafford Cripps and Tony Blair. He was a doughty opponent of appeasement in the later 1930s: his book Guilty Men made him famous at the age of twenty-seven. He was vocal in condemning the invasion of Iraq in 2003. He stands, and feels himself to stand, in the great and honourable tradition of dissenting ‘troublemakers’, the heir to Fox and Paine, Hazlitt and Cobbett. He played in his life many parts. As icon of the socialist left, he was custodian and communicator of British socialism. He was the greatest pamphleteer perhaps since John Wilkes, a formidable editor, and author of a glittering biography of his idol, Nye Bevan. He was a scintillating parliamentarian, an inveterate critic and peacemonger as Bevanite, Tribunite and founder member of CND, yet also a belligerent patriot and internationalist from Dunkirk to Dubrovnik. He was a central figure and champion of the unions in the Labour governments of the 1970s, a key player in Old Labour’s last phase. Less happily, he was for almost three tormented years Labour’s leader. Perhaps most important of all, he was a deeply cultured and literate man whose learning was absolutely central to his politics. He was heir to the Edwardian men of letters, the Liberals Morley or Birrell, and politically more innovative than either. Over sixty years he was an inspirational and civilizing force, if a deeply controversial one. His passing will symbolize a world we have lost.

When Michael Foot asked me if I would write a new authorized biography, I was, of course, both excited and honoured. At the same time, I had some doubts. After writing a large biography of one veteran Labour leader, Jim Callaghan, I wondered whether it would be wise to write another, especially on someone so removed from Callaghan’s own wing of the party. Although Callaghan and Foot worked with immense loyalty as colleagues in the Labour government of 1976–79, they were very different as men and as democratic socialists. Someone who worked for them both told me that they were not ‘best buddies’, while Jim Callaghan himself, just before he died in March 2005, showed himself to be a bit wary of my new project. Another point was that, while I had never really been on the right in Labour terms since I first joined the party in 1955, I was not really Old Labour either, despite the stereotypes of amiable journalists who have vainly tried to depict me as its ‘laureate’. On the contrary, I have always been a liberal devolutionist rather than a state centralist (being Welsh may have something to do with that), while on several major issues my views were not those of Michael Foot, notably on CND and on Europe. Although an admirer of Bevan (whose features adorn the sticker on my car window), I was not a Bevanite. And finally, at the start of 2003 I was doing something else, namely writing an academic book on the public memory in twentieth-century Britain. I have always been a historian rather than a biographer; only six of my books have been biographies. I was also an active member of the Lords (dissident Labour), an institution of whose abolition Michael Foot has always been an ardent supporter.

But as soon I began work and began talking to Michael Foot about his career, my doubts immediately dissolved. Having written on Jim Callaghan’s equally fascinating career proved to be a huge stimulus, both in seeing somewhat similar episodes from another perspective, and in finding contrasts and comparisons between two totally different men, each capable of the greatness of spirit to work with someone to whom he was not naturally attuned. The fact that I started from a somewhat different political (and perhaps literary) standpoint from Michael Foot was in itself exciting in trying to examine his principles and his crusades from the outside. Michael himself was typically honourable and honest in recognizing that I came from somewhere else on the Labour continuum, and that in any case I was writing as a detached scholar and lifelong academic. It is characteristic that he has made no effort to read, let alone censor, anything I have written. His view of freedom of expression and interpretation, and the need to pursue them uninhibitedly and audaciously, has been most admirably exemplified in his approach to his own biographer, and I greatly respect that. Even membership of a non-elected House has not, perhaps, been a barrier. And finally, to someone working on the public memory, there is no finer custodian or exemplar of it than Michael Foot, deeply aware, as hardly any contemporary politicians are, of the vital importance of the past – history, legend, memory and myth intertwined – in shaping the present and pointing the way ahead. So writing on Michael Foot has enormously stimulated my earlier interests. As I have moved into my eighth decade, it has given me several new ones: I know far more about Montaigne, Swift or Hazlitt, for example, than I ever did before, and my mind is much the richer for it. In all ways, I have found writing about Michael deeply stimulating. This book has been great fun to write, and it would be nice to think that some readers might find it fun to read. No doubt I shall find out.

There is another personal aspect too. Back in 1981 I received a letter from Jill Craigie, Michael’s wife, in effect suggesting that I might write his life. She invited my wife Jane and me to their house in Pilgrims Lane for a delightful dinner and talk. In fact, for whatever reason, the offer was never actually made – to my relief at that time, as I was then heavily involved with two long books, two small children and a beautiful and dynamic young wife, as well as being a busy Oxford tutor. I was not exactly looking out for ways of filling up my empty hours. I met Jill for the last time in the autumn of 1997 at an event at Congress House, near the British Museum, to celebrate the centenary of Nye Bevan’s birth. She had not been well, and she looked ill and rather sad as she came up to me and (without needing to explain) said quietly that we both knew she should have taken a different decision years earlier. I felt deeply moved, but mumbled something to the effect that I was still very much alive, and that there was still time. Jill died two years later. I would like to think that in writing this book I have been fulfilling a kind of secret bond of trust between us. I well know she would not have agreed with all its contents, but it would have been fun to have been appropriately chastised by this tough, determined but warm, loyal and lovable woman.

My main debt of gratitude is, of course, to Michael Foot himself. Apart from honouring me by asking me to write the book, he was always freely available for formal interviews or offhand chats, always open in making his papers (when they could be unearthed!) available to me, and quite astonishingly kind in giving me some of his own or his father’s books, several of them rare. He is an extraordinarily warm and generous person, a man of unforced, spontaneous learning. Simply to work through his personal edition of Montaigne’s writings, read in Hereford hospital after a serious car crash in late 1963 and covered with his own scholarly pencilled annotations, is in itself an education. Whether at home in his Pilgrims Lane basement rooms or cheerfully installed in an upstairs dining room over the goulash, raspberries and white wine at the Gay Hussar in Greek Street, talking to this ever-young nonagenarian has been nothing less than a joy, and I count myself fortunate indeed. I am also greatly indebted to the quite selfless kindness of Jenny Stringer, who has not only looked after Michael but in many ways looked after me as well during the writing of this book. I am also very grateful to Sheila Noble, who allowed me to look through Michael’s papers in her own possession in Clapham. Kay, Baroness Andrews, was kind in making the initial connections, her interest in the book no doubt shaped by her background as a citizen of Tredegar. I am also grateful to Michael’s many nice housekeepers who gave me so many splendid lunches. I particularly recall lunchtime conversations in Welsh with two of them, observed by Michael with amused tolerance. I have never met the authors of two earlier biographies, Mervyn Jones, and Simon Hoggart and David Leigh, but I would also wish to thank them for valuable information in their books which has helped me, especially on the personal aspects.

I am also hugely indebted, of course, to the kindness of Michael’s friends and colleagues. I have greatly benefited from formal interviews with Ian Aitken, Lord Barnett, Francis Beckett, Tony Benn, Albert Booth, the late Lord Bruce, the late Lord Callaghan, the late Baroness Castle, the late Dick Clements, Roger Dawe, Lord Evans of Parkside, Alan Fox, Vesna Gamulin, Geoffrey Goodman, Brian Gosschalk, Baroness Gould, Lord Hattersley, Lord Healey, Lord Hunt of Tanworth, Jack Jones, Dr Hrvoje Kacic, Sir Gerald Kaufman MP, Lord Kinnock, Jacqui Lait MP, Sir Thomas McCaffrey, Keith McDowall, Lord McNally, Baroness Mallalieu, Nada Maric, the late Lord Merlyn-Rees, Lord Morris of Aberavon, the late Lord Murray of Epping Forest, Sue Nye, the late Lord Orme, Lord Owen, Lord Paul, Sir Michael Quinlan, Caerwyn Roderick, Clive Saville, Lord Steel, Sir Kenneth Stowe, Elizabeth Thomas, Hugh Thomas, Lord Varley, Lord Wedderburn, Baroness Williams of Crosby, Vivian Williams and Sir Robert Worcester.

I am also grateful for valuable information gained from, amongst others, Dr Christopher Allsopp, Lord Anderson of Swansea, Sir Kenneth Barnes, Lord Biffen, Lord Brookman, Dr Alan Budd, Lord Burlison, Lord Carter, Lord Corbett, Sir Patrick Cormack MP, Lord Dubs, Lord Eatwell, Robert Edwards, Dr Hywel Francis MP, John Fraser, Baroness Gale, Jadran Gamulin, Lord Gilmour, Baroness Golding, Dr Andrew Graham, Lord Graham of Edmonton, Peter Hain MP, Lord Hogg, Lord Howe of Aberavon, Lord Irvine, Baroness Jay of Paddington, the late Lord Jay of Battersea, Lord Jones of Deeside, William Keegan, Paul Levy, Lord Lipsey, Lord Mason, Mrs John Powell, Professor Siegbert Prawer, Lord Prior, Lord Rodgers, Lord Sheldon, Dr Elizabeth Shore, Robert Taylor, Baroness Turner of Camden, Dennis Turner and Alan Watkins. I am also indebted to Francis Beckett for audio-visual material.

All academic writers are massively indebted to the philanthropic race of librarians. The staff of the House of Lords Library have been extraordinarily helpful, not least their former chief, David Lewis Jones from Aberaeron – diolch yn fawr iawn i ti am dy caredigrwydd. The librarian of the Reform Club, Simon Blundell, has been eternally helpful. I am also much indebted to the staff of the People’s History Museum, Manchester, where Michael Foot’s formal papers are so admirably housed, especially my old friend Stephen Bird. The helpful staff of the New Bodleian Library in charge of the newspaper stacks; my old friend John Graham Jones of the Political Archive, the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth; Drs Allen Packwood and Andrew Riley at Churchill College, Cambridge; Ms Mari Takayanagi of the House of Lords Record Office; Ms Sally Pagan of Edinburgh University Library; and Ms Rachel Hertz at the Harry Ransom Humanities Center, the University of Texas at Austin, have all been kindness itself, while the library staff of The Queen’s College, Oxford, have served me cheerfully as they have done since 1966. I am truly fortunate in my college, its Provost and Fellows, and all its staff.

I am delighted that the Right Honourable Tony Blair allowed me to publish one of his private letters. I am also very grateful for permission to publish material where trustees own the copyright, notably the Beaverbrook Papers in the House of Lords Record Office; to Baroness Jay for material from the private papers of Lord Callaghan in her possession; and to Sir Patrick Cormack MP for showing me the portrait of Michael Foot in 1 Parliament Street as well as to the artist, Graham Jones, for allowing me to use it in illustrating this book.

For the second time, a manuscript of mine has been read by my old friend Professor David Howell of the University of York. His extraordinary learning and attention to detail have both saved me from many errors and much enriched my knowledge on matters ranging from trade union elections to the goal-scoring exploits of Plymouth Argyle. The Dictionary of Labour Biography is in the best of hands. My MS was also read by my daughter Katherine, and she too was immensely helpful for her insights both as a civil servant and as a young person.

I am also much indebted to Alison and Owain Morgan for generously giving me material on and insights into the career of Isaac Foot, whose life they have published with Michael; Chris Ballinger of Brasenose College, Oxford, for great help with the more recent National Archive records; to my colleague at Queen’s, Nick Owen, for giving me material on Indian politics in the thirties; to Clive Saville for sending me fascinating information on his time with Michael Foot in Whitehall; to my old friend Professor Dai Smith for material on Raymond Williams, whose biography he is writing; to another old friend, Professor Roger Morgan, and to John Allinson for sending much helpful information on Leighton Park School; to an almost lifelong colleague, Professor Wm Roger Louis, for help at the Harry Ransom Center, Austin, Texas; and to Dr Peter Gaunt, Professor John Morrill and Dr Stephen Davies for informing me about the Cromwell Association. I have also benefited from the learning of Dr James Ward and my Lords colleague Ted Rowlands for guidance on Dean Swift. Indeed the companionship of many gifted and humane colleagues in the Lords has been a boon beyond measure, since I have had expert advice from Bhikhu, Lord Parekh, on Indian affairs, from Bill, Lord Wedderburn, on the complexities of labour law, and from Trevor, Lord Smith of Clifton, with shrewd thoughts on many matters from the benches of the Liberal Democrats. Anne-Marie Motard of the University of Montpellier has always been a reassuring force. My literary agent, Bruce Hunter, has been friend and wise adviser as for decades past, and my editor at HarperCollins, Richard Johnson, has made my first experience with that great publishing house quite delightful, as has my wonderful copy-editor, Robert Lacey. Since one of my unfortunate common experiences with Michael Foot is to have been the victim in a serious car crash, in my case in 2004, I would also like to thank Professor David Murray of the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, Oxford, for restoring me physically (twice).

Most authors owe much to their families. Partly through adversity, ours is closer than most. I am hugely grateful to my two amazing children, David and Katherine, for their love, moral support, knowledge of word processors and unfailing enthusiasm for their obsessive bookish father; to my lovely daughter-in-law Liz, another writer in the making; and to my little grandson Joseph, a free-thinking, free-walking radical to whom this book is dedicated. This is my first big book since 1973 in which my beloved late wife, Jane, played no part. Yet maybe she was present after all. In 1987, at the parliamentary launch party of my book Labour People, one of the politicians dealt with there (very favourably) ignored the publishers’ invitation. He also ignored us in the Commons corridor as we approached the terrace room. By contrast, Michael Foot had replied at once, and made a very warm and witty speech at the event. ‘No surprise there,’ said Jane with finality. ‘Michael Foot is a gentleman.’ As always, she was right.

KENNETH O. MORGAN

Long Hanborough,

May Day 2006

1 NONCONFORMIST PATRICIAN (1913–1934) (#ulink_645d4388-ba61-5dbf-a6bc-293947bdb611)