Welcome to this latest LDVideo instalment, this week highlighting three political video clips in tribute to former Labour leader Michael Foot, who died this week, aged 96.
First up, let’s see him as a young editor of the Evening Standard sticking up for freedom of the press after the Daily Mirror was censored by the Churchill government for attacking the conduct of the war:
(Available on YouTube here).
Secondly, here’s the BBC’s objectively affectionate obituary of Foot:
(Also available on YouTube here).
And finally here’s a reminder of how Labour almost tore itself to bits in the 1970s over Europe – speech excerpts from (in order) Harold Wilson, James Callaghan, Roy Jenkins, Peter Shore, and then Foot himself:
(Also available on YouTube here).
5 Comments
A good man, if only he had beaten Thatcher…
That chap Herbert Morrison who was mentioned as wanting to control the press in the speech from 1942. I’m sure I’ve heard his name in another connection. Wasn’t he somebody’s grandfather?
The offensive piece in question was, I think, this cartoon by Philip Zec:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/online/a-century-of-satire-wit-and-irreverence-986844.html?action=Popup&ino=5
Rather unobjectionable, we might think in hindsight, but it was enough to get him lambasted as a fifth columnist at the time.
It was odd how he could be a great orator, but lack charisma.
Here of course he has a great deal of charisma. But when he was leader and supporting policies he knew were unpopular, he seemed embarrased in what he believed in. Which really compounded the problem.
He may well have beaten Thatcher if it hadn’t been for the Falklands. People often focus on his appearance and the infighting of the Labour Party rather than the fact that Thatcher was heading for defeat until that moment. For information, Herbert Morrison was Peter Mandelson’s grandfather.