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also lays bare the absolute absence of the killer instinct
needed for leadership. The venom of the zealot isn’t
there either. Rare asides against Thatcher are dismissive
rather than enraged, bereft of the rabidity she so easily
inspired in so many. Figures such as Ernest Bevin
and others on the Labour Right are appraised admiringly.
Even a review of the autobiography of nemesis
Healey is genuinely warm and salutary. Tom Driberg,
the louche old eccentric (i.e. fantasist) and rogue (i.e.
sociopath) is recalled with the affection of the friend
that he was (though the bad points are laid bare too.)
Anti-Thatcherite Tory and historian Ian Gilmour is
praised, and there is even a short yet powerful defence
of Churchill, paying robust tribute to the old reactionary
against the modern fallacy held by revisionists on
Left and Right alike that a deal could or should have
been struck with Hitler.
This lack of killer instinct means he lacks the final
‘bite’ of the truly great writer too. Eloquent praise pours
freely, but not once is there an effective literary slaying
of a hated foe, not a shortfall that could be levelled at
his friend Orwell.
This politeness, this sheathed sword and profoundly
English politeness can irritate. The kind words found
for that other loveable rogue’, the Tory Kray-groupie
Bob Boothby seem to be stretching the limits of tolerance
past snapping point. And seeking and finding
the good points even in that other arch Conservative
BUY Michael Foot books online from and
icon Edmund Burke; for instance, is hard to take from
the more partisan. Even here though, he does well to
convince. How many of the golf club bores, bigots
and blimps who denounced the man as a “dangerous
extremist” when he led Labour could demonstrate the
barest fraction of his broad minded respect for and
interest in competing points of view?
Foot is a socialist in the truest sense, yet forever free
of the dogma that dogs too many of his tribe. And free
of the great sins too. Absolutely no apologia for the
crimes of Communism from him – Stalin is condemned
here in a brief article taken from the week of his death,
written when the rest of the world were paying tribute.
An unequivocal defence of Salman Rushdie taken from
the time of the Satanic Verses furore, shows that he
would have no part of the alliance with militant political
Islamism which some on the Left have cynically seen
fit to serve. His support for NATO’s bombing of Serbia
is more contentious, though, whatever one may think
of it, still presents him as someone true to a liberationist
vision on his own terms, unaffected by the fact that
such a position would not be popular amongst his own
beloved wing of his own beloved party.
Foot sees socialism as the rightful heir of earlier
struggles for liberty and autonomy that distinguished
the great rebels of the past. This is the socialism of
liberation, not restriction, the vision of liberty which inspired
the creed in the first place, expanding the vision
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