FORUM: Baroness Kennedy pays tribute to Michael Foot

Published: 11 November, 2010

Baroness Kennedy pays tribute to her friend and former party leader Michael Foot

I FIRST met Michael on Hampstead Heath. 

Of course I thought I knew him anyway. 

I had grown up with him because in my Labour household he was a hero. 

When I started at the Bar his brother Dingle Foot was another iconic figure who defended African freedom fighters put on trial over their struggles against colonial rule. 

The Foot family was legend. 

And then I became a friend of Paul Foot who tried very hard to get me to join the SWP and who introduced me to the poet Shelley, not in the flesh, but as a radical champion. 

And, of course, I often attended meetings and rallies and demonstrations and heard Michael speak with such passion on platforms – I held him up there in the pantheon of Greats. 

Meeting him on Hampstead Heath was like running into Che Guevara in the post office or Nelson Mandela at the swimming baths.  

Michael was one of those rare people who was a complete human being. He had a formidable intellect, a huge and compassionate heart and profound moral integrity. Even his darkest opponent could never gainsay his moral uprightness, his ethical goodness. He was such a truly sweet-natured, funny and lovely man.

He also knew what was important in life and it was not the trivial and shallow, the short-term and evanescent. His social circle was not peopled with bankers and hedge fund managers, oligarchs and newspaper proprietors, yacht owners or oil barons. 

He was an intellectual. A rare and precious thing. His passion was books and his first question for me was always “what are you reading?” 

His knowledge of everything was staggering: history, biography, the great novels, film, art. His study told you everything; it was a cavern of books and journals, pamphlets and cuttings. 

Precarious piles shivered on tables, collapse always looked imminent, and yet he could find the relevant book or source after a few minutes riffling in some dark corner. Here it is – and he would find support  for his argument in some well-read tome.

He was a campaigner to the end, horrified by war and man’s inhumanity to man and to woman. I loved that he was such a great feminist – how could he be otherwise given his marriage to Jill who was herself so committed and knew every last thing about the suffrage movement? But Michael’s feminism derived not just from Jill but from his genuine, deeply held belief in equality. 

What he wanted was a society that was just and fair, where people were treated as equal regardless of sex, race or their class beginnings. Where every child could have a truly decent life. Where poverty was genuinely a thing of the past.  

Freedom and liberty were what was precious. He was as saddened at erosions of civil liberties, knowing so well that the long history of struggle that went into securing them in the first place – knowing that it was the history of ordinary men and women  – and believing that this strand of liberalism was a vital part of Labour tradition. He seemed to know as much about the law as everything else.

His was the politics of substance over style. In an age of soundbites and breakfast TV sofa-politics he could never be what the Sun or Mail wanted in a leader. Bound in their own ignorance he was easy to attack. 

Today, in a world of immense challenges we have to create a new politics, a politics of civility, of honour, of dignity and honesty. 

Where we are clear about what we stand for which is social justice and the creation of a fair society where everyone is able to be the best they can be and is valued and provided with opportunities to fulfil their human potential.

The victory for a new politics will be when men and women in the emotional mould of Michael Foot lead our party and our nation. People of profound integrity, who know what they believe. People who understand that to lead is not to control. 

That to spin is to deceive and to deceive is to fail. Leadership is to create the conditions in which those around you flourish. Labour leadership is about the creation of the Good Society. 

Those really are the lessons we can find in Michael Foot’s legacy.

• Labour peer Baroness Kennedy was speaking at Celebrating Michael Foot in the Lyric Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, on Monday