Guiding angel who created his own place in history

Published: 4 March 2010
Editor's Comment

MICHAEL Foot was among the honoured few who enriched the  radical ideas that permeated the Labour movement in the last ­century – a movement that had in its sights the promise of a better society.

He never attained the highest office but, like his great mentor Aneurin Bevan, the founder of the National Health Service, his ideas have had more of an enduring influence on the shifts and ­movement of the Labour Party than those of others who held higher ­ministerial posts.

Michael Foot can be placed alongside Keir Hardie and Aneurin Bevan as the three most significant orators, pamphleteers and thinkers of the Labour Party in the 20th century.

Michael Foot was in his mid-20s when, as a journalist, he wrote, along with two colleagues, the pamphlet Guilty Men, an ­exposure of the appeasers of Hitler, that was so fiery and ­moving, that it was bought in its hundreds of thousands and helped to stiffen the nation’s resolve against Nazism. That alone was of great historical significance to Britain, but in the 1940s, as an MP, he reinforced the radical ambitions of the Atlee government, then he helped to found the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, poured his radical energy into the Labour administrations of the 1970s and then led the Labour Party.

His ideas, derided by party opponents and much of the media at the time, are still on the agenda of radical youth today.

Michael Foot was also a rare politician of the last century, though not of the 19th century – he was learned, bookish and could wield a great pen. And unlike politicians of today, he had a sense and knowledge of history.

He loved Hampstead and the Heath and, surprisingly, given his busy schedule in Parliament and the Labour Party, he closely ­followed local affairs. This led him to become a kind of guiding angel of this news­paper.

When our predecessor, the ­Camden Journal, was closed down by its proprietor he took up our cause and was delighted that we resurfaced again as the ­Camden New Journal.

He recognised the radicalism of this newspaper and its uniqueness in the mainstream media.

As a Hampstead man, and an accomplished pamphleteer, Michael Foot also naturally felt at home among the pages of such great 19th-century radical essayists as Leigh Hunt, William Hazlitt and William Cobbett – all of whom walked our streets of ­yesterday.

Inspired by the ideas and ­passion of Michael Foot, we hope to carry on his tradition.