Michael Foot remembered
The , the former leader of the Labour Party, and one of the great Parliamentary orators of the 20th Century. He may not have been a successful party leader, but he was a mesmerising speaker. As I write, Jack Straw is recalling one of his great orations in a tribute in the Commons.
My memory, as a young nerd, was of the radio broadcast of the great No Confidence Debate of 28 March 1979, which resulted in the fall of the Callaghan government, of which he was the effective deputy prime minister...
It's hard to appreciate from the bald print of Hansard how his voice could drop from thundering condemnation to a note of silken irony - here's his whole winding up speech from that debate from the archive:
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It's a taste of Foot in full flood during that debate....With a playfully scornful account of the manoeuvring between Margaret Thatcher ("the right hon. lady"), David Steel, the then Liberal leader, and the Scottish Nationalists, in the run up to the vote. You have to imagine for yourselves the atmosphere of a packed Commons chamber - you can hear the cheers, the laughter and the sometimes boozy heckling. Foot was in his element...(the sequence starts at seven mins in).
(The blushing Conservative chief whip, by the way, was the late Humphrey Atkins.)
"...Which brings me to the leader of the Liberal Party. He knows that I would not like to miss him out. I am sure that I shall elicit the support and sympathy of the right hon. lady when I say that she and I have always shared a common interest in the development of this young man. If the right hon. lady has anything to say about the matter, I shall be happy to give way to her. I should very much like to know, as I am sure would everybody else, what exactly happened last Thursday night."I do not want to misconstrue anything, but did she send for him or did he send for her or did they just do it by billet doux? Cupid has already been unmasked. This is the first time I have ever seen a chief whip who could blush. He has every right to blush. Anybody who was responsible for arranging this most grisly of assignations has a lot to answer for.
"That brings me to the right hon. lady. I have never in this House or elsewhere, so far as I know, said anything discourteous to her, and I do not intend to do so. I do not believe that is the way in which politics should be conducted. That does not mean that we cannot exchange occasional...pleasantries. 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.
"I must say to the right hon. lady and I should like to see her smile that I am even more concerned about the fate of the right hon. gentleman than I am about her. She can look after herself. But the leader of the Liberal Party¬, and I say this with the utmost affection, has passed from rising hope to elder statesman without any intervening period whatsoever."
Lovely stuff, from a man even his opponents remember with affection.
I'm Mark D'Arcy and I'll be writing about what goes on in the chambers and committee rooms at Westminster.
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