Michael Foot
March 3, 2010 by David Torrance
So farewell then, Michael Foot, who died today aged 96. There’s a fine obituary already on the Daily Telegraph‘s website, with undoubtedly more to follow tomorrow, but his death has reminded me of perhaps his finest House of Commons performance, his winding up speech on a motion of no-confidence in James Callaghan’s government on 28 March 1979. In this he combined wounding humour with a solid analysis of where British politics was at.
A motion prompted by the SNP’s unhappiness and Sunny Jim’s inability to deliver devolution to Scotland, Foot said that no matter how misguided Donald Stewart, the SNP’s Westminster leader, ‘may be if he adheres to his apparent resolution to vote in the Lobby with those who are most bitterly opposed to the establishment of a Scottish Assembly, hon. Members who heard his speech must acknowledge the remarkable allegiance that the right hon. Gentleman commands from his followers. It is one of the wonders of the world. There has bean nothing quite like it since the armies of ancient Rome used to march into battle. It is only now that we see the right hon. Gentleman in his full imperial guise. Hail Emperor, those about to die salute you.’ As Callaghan remarked in his own contribution to the debate, the SNP Members were like turkeys voting for an early Christmas.
Foot then turned, most memorably, to David Steel, the youthful leader of the Liberals, who also proposed to vote with the Conservatives and against the Labour government. ‘What the right hon. Lady has done today is to lead her troops into battle snugly concealed behind a Scottish nationalist shield, with the boy David holding her hand.’ Steel, he added, had ’passed from rising hope to elder statesman without any intervening period whatsoever’.
The always-eloquent Foot had good Scottish credentials. His mother was the daughter of a Scottish doctor named Mackintosh – Foot always stressed this as his middle name on visits to Scotland – while his brother, the improbably named Dingle Foot, was the Liberal MP for Dundee between 1931-45. Last, but by no means least, Foot, as Lord President of the Council in the ill-fated Labour governments of the late 1970s, was in charge of the equally ill-fated devolution legislation for Scotland and Wales. With his keen sense of history, Foot feared that by not devolving power to the Celtic fringe then the UK government risked repeating its mistakes in Ireland a century before.
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Your obituary on Michael Foot was very well written, and reasonably fair considering that you appear to be a Conservative.
I first heard Foot making a very emotional (did he make any other kind?) address at the Holy Loch base, c. 1960, and recall him mentioning the fact that he was named after the Irish Fenian, Michael Davitt. His biography of Bevan ranks as one of my favourite literary works.
I look forward to reading, in due course, your biography of Alex Salmond.
Norrie Paton.