Foot again

David Boothroyd is the author of a fascinating collection of UK election data, in which I have happily immersed myself. I particularly enjoyed the detailed and annotated list of by-election results in successive parliaments. I had forgotten that the Liberal Democrat candidate in the 1994 Rotherham by-election was a Mr Wildgoose, with all that that implied for those who followed him (especially those who did so at a rapid pace); that Labour's candidate (an impressive one, at a time when good Labour candidates were sparse) in the 1985 Brecon and Radnor by-election was called Dick Willey; that Enoch Powell came close to losing South Down in the collective gesture of the Ulster Unionists against the Anglo-Irish Agreement; that the SDLP performed no service to democratic politics in failing to run a candidate against the IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands in Fermanagh and South Tyrone in 1981; that Tony Blair lost his deposit in the Beaconsfield by-election in 1982 (when the required percentage share of the vote was higher than it is now); and that a group of malcontents in Vauxhall ran a candidate supposedly representing the constituency's black population in protest at Labour's imposition of the excellent Kate Hoey (for whom I voted) in the 1989 by-election, managing a princely 300 votes (why are the self-appointed agents of the oppressed always let down by their ungrateful charges?). But I clearly remembered the disastrous victory of an excellent Labour candidate, Ossie O'Brien, in the Darlington by-election of 1983, and that brings me to the subject I wish to discuss.

Labour came to that by-election - which was a marginal Labour seat then, and is a safe one now - having lost the Bermondsey by-election a month earlier by a landslide. Bermondsey's candidate was Peter Tatchell, who was representative of much that repelled the public about Labour's extremism at that time. He was also - in a way that I am glad to say is now almost eradicated from British public life - the victim of a despicable personal campaign against his known but not yet declared homosexuality. (I should add that, while I considered Tatchell a perfectly dreadful candidate, I met him a couple of times after his humiliating defeat - when he spoke at my university Labour Club and Fabian Society about his experiences - and found him, as I believe everyone does who meets him, an exceptionally pleasant and decent man, who took in good spirit my own views on the merits of his candidature.) O'Brien was as far removed from the Tatchell stereotype as can be imagined: articulate, moderate (except on nuclear weapons) engaging and convincing, while the SDP candidate - a television presenter called Tony Cook - turned out to be a featherheaded blusterer. O'Brien won, and thereby saved the hopeless, pitiable leadership of Michael Foot. Labour went thus equipped into the 1983 general election, with predictably catastrophic electoral consequences (not least for O'Brien himself, who lost his seat to the Tories).

I recount this history because below my post about the worst of all party leaders David Boothroyd has added this comment, which I wish to respond to:

There is a defence of Michael Foot, although I don't happen personally to accept it. It is that the Labour Party was ripping itself apart anyway in the early 1980s and though Foot was obviously never going to win an election, he did manage to minimise the SDP split and keep the Labour Party going such that it got through the 1983 election in one piece and still the official opposition - so that the next Leader could start to rebuild it.

That is indeed the case of Foot's defenders, such as his biographer Mervyn Jones. It should be obvious that I don't accept it either, and it's worth saying why. Foot did not minimise the SDP split: he did the opposite. By 1981 the Labour leadership had already made too many concessions to the obscurantist elements of the Left to prevent the formation of a new party. Jim Callaghan had not fought hard enough against the Left's constitutional 'reforms' - in reality a means of supplanting MPs' independent judgement - and the party had ended up with Michael Foot as leader and a preposterous new method of electing future leaders (an electoral college in which trade union block votes were allocated the largest share). At that point, Foot ought to have fought back. In practice he was like a soft cushion with 'Sit On Me' embroidered in cross-stitch. He ought to have tried to keep in the party at least one of the founders of the SDP: had he offered Bill Rodgers, the most conspicuously social democratic of that group, a top post within the Shadow Cabinet, he might have succeeded. When Tony Benn announced his campaign for the meaningless post of Deputy Leader against Denis Healey, Foot ought to have stated bluntly that he wished Healey to continue. In every single case, Foot provided the most feeble and thus the most polarising of leadership styles. Even when he did the right thing - such as denouncing Tatchell in the Commons in an effort to head off a by-election - he reneged on his decision later on and thereby demonstrated his own weakness.

There are some political leaders who manage to get by with a hazy grasp of policy but a forceful personality. Foot had a pitiable knowledge of politics and an even smaller grasp of economics, coupled with a personality of scant distinction apart from insuperable vanity. Even his supposed literary accomplishments were a joke, as his superficial and ahistorical musings on Swift and H.G Wells among others demonstrate.

Labour's survival as Opposition after 1983 was determined by one factor alone, and it was not Foot. The British electoral system, in which Labour's vote was concentrated while the SDP-Liberal Alliance's support was dispersed, ensured that no matter how badly Labour did in the popular vote, there was no way the party could fall below 200 seats in the Commons. Even with its pitiable harvest of 209 seats, Labour took years to attempt even rudimentary steps towards realism and sanity. It took six years for Foot's successor, Neil Kinnock to jettison the policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament.

I voted Labour in the 1983 general election, when Foot was party leader. Indeed I heard him speak at an election rally in Oxford town hall, at which he gave a ludicrous performance attacking Lord Hailsham for his stance on appeasement in the 1930s - not an entirely unfounded case, but hardly a pressing issue of public policy. I speak only for myself, but I can only say that I felt much easier casting that vote than I might have done in other circumstances - for I knew, without the merest flickering of doubt, that the man I was thus voting for to be Prime Minister had as much chance of occupying the post as I had of becoming Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster.

Comments

[Brownie]

Oliver,

Have you read Foot's "Bevan"?

If so, do you not mention the finest political biography of the modern age because to do so would be counter-intuitive to any notion of Foot's limitations as a writer?

[Oliver Kamm]

I omitted to mention the finest political biography of the modern age because this is a post about Michael Foot. Foot is not even the author of the finest political biography of Aneurin Bevan, for that has been written by John Campbell. I concede that if I were to make an award for tedious, trivial and didactic hagiography, Foot's life of Bevan would be a strong contender.

[Brownie]

Oliver,

You don’t answer directly, but reading between the lines I infer you have read it.

Oh well, one man's, “tedious, trivial and didactic hagiography,” is another’s stimulating, intimate and instructive…hagiography - - - I’ll give you the last one, but only because I, too, am inclined to regard Bevan as a worthy subject for canonisation.

I was simply struck by your description of Foot’s literary ‘achievements’ as a “joke”. You cite what you call his “musings” on Wells and Swift, omitting a reference to what is widely-acknowledged as his literary magnum opus. One would have to suspect that any assessment of Tchaikovsky’s contribution to music or Milton’s gifts to verse that failed to consider ‘Pathetique’ and ‘Paradise Lost’ respectively, was influenced by some degree of cognitive dissonance.

As it is, it appears your opinion of Foot’s “Bevan” is so low that no nefarious motive can be construed in light of your failure to acknowledge this work.

Fair enough, albeit I dissent from your view, obviously.

On the question of Foot’s leadership, I agree that he was the wrong man for the job at the wrong time, but then I’ve always suspected that Foot himself shares this view, evidenced by the fact that he had to be cajoled into standing for the leadership in the first place. I also believe you have previously overstated the significance of Labour’s policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament in the 1983 election and understated – as in failed to mention – the Falklands campaign and how this avoidable conflict revived a flagging and increasingly desperate Tory administration. I note, too, your reference to the poisonous campaign against Tatchell, yet hear nothing of the orchestrated hatchet job performed on Foot by Fleet Street’s guttersnipes.

Finally, quite whence you pulled the “insuperable vanity” coup de grace I cannot know. Foot’s fiercest critics have traditionally eschewed no opprobrium and no calumny against his person has gone unspoken.

But “vain”? Foot?

I concede I’ve never met the man, but doubt I’ll defer to your judgement on this occasion even if you have

[Pete]

I helped in Tatchell's by-election campaign in 1983 - was against his selection but for the party's candidate, and can well remember 'telling' for Labour at a polling station on the day where the tellers for the 9 other candidates refused to sit or stand near me (for danger of catching something?) and pointedly stood together at the opposite end of the primary school entrance. Among the group who stood together against Tatchell/Labour/me? : the 'real' Labour party, ie, Bob Mellish's mafia; the fascist British Party, leading light Patrick 'Sky at Night' Moore (who did visit and offered to shake my hand, I rather churlishly refused)the Tories and SDP! What a craven bunch!

[Dan Hardie]

'that the SDLP performed no service to democratic politics in failing to run a candidate against the IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands in Fermanagh and South Tyrone in 1981'.

I am aware I am in danger of becoming this blog's Northern Ireland bore, but it is a matter of record that the SDLP chose a candidate; armed IRA members turned up at his house for a quiet word; he chose not to stand, and nobody else could be found to do so, since they correctly believed that this would be suicidal. Shortly afterwards, IRA members burned down the house of West Belfast SDLP MP Gerry Fitt, and ran him out of town, paving the way for the entirely free and fair election in 1983 of the noted statesman and hero of the American media, Mr Gerry Adams. See any narrative of the Troubles, eg Jonathan Bardon's.

I note, in passing, that one of the victims of the Sept 11 mass murder in NYC was a Father Mykkal Judge, who had officiated at a number of fund-raisers for the aforementioned Mr Adams, in common with New York's distinguished Republican Congressman Pete King. These things are good to mention whenever one hears an American talking about 'Europeans being soft on terror'.

[Brownie]

" matter of record"?

Here's a "matter of record". The SDLP failed to field a candidate for Fermanagh and South Tyrone in the 1979 General Election with saw the return of Frank Maguire. They also failed to field a candidate in the General Election in the August by-election in 1981 after Sands' death. The SDLP failing to field a candidate in this constituency is hardly unknown…except of course in revisionist analyses of election history..

The April by-election won by Sands was a straight fight between the UUP's Harry West and Sands' Anti-H Block campaign group. Other nationalist/republican parties did stand aside/not contest, but then there was no UUUP or Alliance candidate either.

If the IRA had threatened the SDLP to withdraw their candidate (for which there is no credible evidence) and if this had indeed been a matter of record, this would have been manifestly counter-productive in any attempt to persuade SDLP voters to transfer their allegiance to Sands. The logical response from disenfranchised SDLP supporters would be to stay at home - except the turnout of over 82% suggests not many did.

One presumes the election of Owen Carron 4 months after Sands on the same ticket was also the result of intimidation of the parties of the 5 other candidates who contested the seat?

Sands received over 30,000 votes and won with a majority of nearly 1,500. It's a real bugger democracy, innit?

[Ross]

"It's a real bugger democracy, innit?"

Sinn Fein-IRA certainly seem to think so.

[David Boothroyd]

Actually, Dan, the burning down of Gerry Fitt's house happened after the election of 1983, not before. 3rd July 1983.

[Brownie]

Ross,

Is it Sinn Fein who brought down the executive last spring? Was it Sinn Fein who postponed elections to the assembly? Is it Sinn Fein MLAs who are refusing to work with the democratically elected representative of their political opponents? Is it Sinn Fein who are stalling on implementation of the GFA?

For decades, successive British administrations and Unionists pointed to a republican refusal to engage in the political process as evidence of the scant popular support their policies enjoyed. So when republicans eventually do engage and go on to win elections, the nay-sayers cry 'foul'.

You couldn't make it up.

[Ross]

"So when republicans eventually do engage and go on to win elections, the nay-sayers cry 'foul'."

Despite your enthusiastic spinning for them they came did not win the election, they moved from 4th to 3rd. Secondly in the period discussed they showed their respect for democracy by murdering politicians who opposed them and trying to bomb Northern Ireland to their will. Thirdly the current impasse is down to Sinn Fein's insistence on maintaining a private army.

Even with your willingness to bend the truth for Adams and co you can hardly claim that having several hundred armed men at your disposal with a record of massacring both soldiers and civilians shows a commitment to the democratic process.

[Oliver Kamm]

Dan - Of course you're right on the intimidation of the SDLP candidate, and I'm at fault in not referring to it. What was particularly in my mind, however, was the contrast between the SDLP's non-participation in that by-election and their running against Gerry Fitt (standing as an Independent Socialist) in 1983. Fitt and Joe Hendron split their votes almost equally, thereby enabling Adams to walk the election with a vote substantially below the combined Fitt/Hendron vote. Adams held on to the seat in 1987 against Hendron, so far as I recall, because unionist voters would not so readily support Hendron to defeat SF as they would Fitt. Perhaps there is an extentuating circumstance for the SDLP's (in effect) defeating Gerry Fitt in 1983 whereas they didn't act to defeat Sands in 1981; if so, I'm not aware of it.

[Brownie]

Is anybody going to offer some actual evidence for the intimidation of the (as yet un-named) prospective SDLP candidate, or is the plan to stick with the tried and trusted technique of merely repeating the allegation the requisite number of times such that the charge becomes self-validating?

And what about the elections either side of Sands' victory? Any theories on why the SDLP failed to contest these - assuming of course it wasn't more intimidation?

[David Boothroyd]

The SDLP candidate for FST was Austin Currie - later a Fine Gael minister in the Republic. When the SDLP stood in 1983 it cost Owen Carron the seat, and they certainly laid into the 'collaborationist' SDLP.

[Brownie]

David,

I'm aware that Austin Currie wanted to stand against Sands, but I was of the understnading that the SDLP leadership decided they should not, rather than Currie was selected as the prospective candidate and then intimidated out of contesting the election.

Does Currie himself claim this? I'm not saying he deosn't, but I can't find any reference to support the claim that the IRA descended on his house one night to talk him out of it. (Wasn't it Currie who stood as an Independent SDLP candidate in 1979?)

Certainly, the contemporary press reporting interpreted the SDLP step-aside as a bit of politicking by the party, anxious as they were not to incur the wrath of moderate nationalists who were increasingly sympathetic to the Hunger Striker cause. The leadership wanted to avoid a nationalist voter backlash in the event they campaigned against bed-ridden hunger-strikers.

For the record, Tommy Murray, an SDLP councillor, was expelled from the party for signing Sands' nomination papers.

[David Boothroyd]

My understanding is that the SDLP's decision not to fight the seat was just a cover. There were other possible nationalist candidates in the byelection: Noel Maguire, brother of the dead MP and a leading political academic was very keen on standing; Bernadette McAliskey wanted to stand but would not if Sands was nominated; Frank McManus (ex MP for the seat) was also mentioned. All fell by the wayside for one reason or another.

There was lasting Sinn Fein animus against Austin Currie, even up to his defeat in Dublin in the 2002 general election by a Sinn Feiner.