reviews a fairly constant upward trend have expected to have been in policy agenda. Sadly these quali- since about 1995; and some the post for much more than ties proved to be not enough supporters of other potential three years stretch it out to four? for leading a third party lacking candidates began to try and In the end, he didn’t hesitate. a clear national message in an trigger a new leadership elec- Menzies Campbell is a decent, increasingly media-intensive tion. The Parliamentary Party honourable and thoughtful age. in the Lords was a particular man, driven by a sense of duty problem; he alienated many of and responsibility underpinned Duncan Brack is Editor of the them by supporting a referen- by an instinctive, slightly old- Journal of Liberal History. He dum on the European constitu- fashioned liberalism, rather has chaired the Liberal Democrats’ tion (Lib Dem peers, for many than by any clear ideological or Conference Committee since 2003. of whom the European question was a defining issue of their time in politics in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, tend to be a good deal more pro-EU than their The Left Foot counterparts in the Commons), and mentions a prickly meeting Kenneth O. Morgan: Michael Foot, A Life (HarperPress, 2007 with a Lords delegation in July (hbk); Harper Perennial, 2008 (pbk)) 2007. The final thirty-six hours before Campbell’s resignation Reviewed by Bill Rodgers saw both the Party President, Simon Hughes, and the Deputy Leader, Vince Cable, make n the day Michael Foot friends, and the historical per- markedly unhelpful comments: was elected Labour spective can be distorted. But Hughes said Campbell had to Oleader, on 10 Novem- ten years ago, Kenneth Morgan ‘raise his game’, Cable that the ber 1980, I met Ian Aitken, the negotiated a persuasive ‘Life’ leader’s position was ‘under Guardian’s political editor, an of James Callaghan and he has discussion’. In the end, as he old friend since my Oxford days repeated his success in his ‘Life’ observes in the book, even his and an unreconstructed Bev- of Michael Foot. own office didn’t try very hard anite. He was over the moon. When I knew he was work- to dissuade him from going. ‘It’s marvellous’, he said, then ing on his new book, I was And, as I mentioned before, pausing, ‘although it will be a uneasy. The historian, A.J.P. he was notably unlucky. The disaster’. This seemed to sum up Taylor (who taught me), wrote a local elections of 2007, which the romanticism of what I then book called The Trouble Makers; began to drive the nails into the called Labour’s ‘legitimate left’, and Taylor and Foot performed coffin of his leadership, were Menzies now more often described as the together in successful televi- not actually all that bad; 26 per ‘soft left’. sion debates in the 1950s. Until cent of the vote, only one point Campbell is a The Winter of Discontent the penultimate stage of Foot’s lower than the year before, and 1978–79 had wrecked the last career, when he was in the Cab- 246 seats lost, against the party’s decent, hon- chance of survival for the Calla- inet, he too had been above all a own internal expectations of ghan government. The Militant trouble-maker. Could Morgan up to 600 losses; furthermore, ourable and Tendency, ugly and threaten- get inside the skin of his subject the defeats were highly con- thoughtful ing, was on the march, the trade when Callaghan had been a centrated, with large numbers unions were lacking responsible very different man? of losses (of district council man, driven leadership and Labour MPs Michael was one of the seven seats with small electorates) in were demoralised and scared. children of Isaac Foot, the patri- a handful of areas accounting by a sense As the Gang of Four was mov- arch of a well-established and for the bulk of them. Neverthe- ing towards the SDP, Michael well-respected West Country less, it looked bad. And then, of of duty and Foot should have recognised the professional family, Noncon- course, Brown failed to call the responsibility crisis that was facing his party. formist in religion, Liberal in election in the autumn. Had the But he failed and Labour fought politics and steeped in litera- election been called for autumn underpinned the 1983 election on a manifesto ture and music. (See Kenneth 2007, Campbell could well have described as ‘the longest suicide Morgan’s article earlier in this ended up leading the party that by an instinc- note in history’. The party had Journal.) The first chapter of the held the balance of power in the reached its nadir. book – perhaps the only one Commons; he could have made tive, slightly It is difficult to publish an – leaves me with unqualified a very able cabinet minister. But old-fashioned honest biography while the warmth towards Michael as he in its absence, could a caretaker subject is still alive. There are grows up in the far-off world of leader who cannot realistically liberalism. pressures from the family and the interwar years. I admit that

48 Journal of Liberal History 60 Autumn 2008 reviews

I underestimated the strength of Above all, he was a radical It was Neil Kinnock, Foot’s his passion for Swift, Hazlitt and libertarian. protégé, who broke the spell Byron, equal to his passion for He was an opponent of in the Labour conference of polities. party discipline in the Com- 1985 by denouncing Liverpool’s But in the second chapter, mons and played an major role Derek Hatton and his allies. and the second half of the 1930s, in the 1960s – in harness with At last, the legitimate left – we find Michael a left-wing Enoch Powell – in defeating including the unreconstructed socialist in Liverpool, becom- the Labour government’s bill Bevanites – were ready to join ing a journalist in London and to reform the House of Lords, together to save the party as meeting Aneurin Bevan, a fiery because it might have enhance it was squeezed between Mrs young Welsh MP, and Lord the second chamber’s influence. Thatcher and the SDP/Liberal Beaverbook, the newspaper He believed in the traditional Alliance. magnate and much besides. cut and thrust of debate in the Michael Foot is now seen as a Both became his heroes; Bevan chamber and disliked cross- loveable elderly gentleman with deeply influenced the whole of party select committees. And a dog and a walking stick. I wish his life. in the 1970s, when we were I could share this simple affec- At the 1945 election, four both in the Cabinet, he strongly tion, as Kenneth Morgan has members of the Foot family opposed compulsory seat belts written an excellent, perceptive were Parliamentary candi- – on libertarian grounds – and ‘Life’. But for me the dominant dates, but only Michael stood effectively killed my own pro- image will remain the Michael for Labour and he alone was posals despite the fact that I had Foot in the photograph on the elected. Henceforth, for forty won a Cabinet majority. jacket of the book, angry and years he was a significant fig- Michael Foot, now aged over unforgiving. ure in the politics of the left, as sixty, arrived in the Cabinet in MP for Plymouth for ten years 1974 as ‘an incorrigible rebel’ Bill Rodgers (Lord Rodgers of and then, after a short gap, for with no previous experience Quarry Bank) was a member of Ebbw Vale. of government. Harold Wil- James Callaghan’s Cabinet, one of Through much of the 1950s, son appointed him to balance the SDP’s Gang of Four and leader the Labour Party was in tur- the predominantly right-wing of the Liberal Democrats in the moil, uncertain where to go and membership and to please the House of Lords 1997–2001. how to change following the trade unions. wartime coalition and Clem- Kenneth Morgan recog- ent Attlee’s successful post-war nises the dangerous growth of administration. Hugh Gaitskell the power of the unions in the became Attlee’s successor, but 1970s, and calls one of his own Bevan was the charismatic chapters ‘Union Man’, doubling leader of the left. As much as up his description of Foot’s Michael Foot loved Bevan, he chosen role and the title of the could not abide Gaitskell and it autobiography of Jack Jones. But conditioned his political dispo- he is much too gentle in treating sition long after their death. He the cosy relationship between could not, for example, forgive Foot and Jones that gave the my role in campaigning in sup- unions almost all they wanted. port of Gaitskell and against In early January 1981, unilateral disarmament at a Michael Foot called on me at critical time in 1960–61. my home in Kentish Town. The Bevanites were a mixed He had decided to make a bag both inside Parliament and last attempt to persuade me out, held together by the weekly to stay in the Labour Party of newspaper Tribune. Some were which I had been a member fellow-travellers, close to the for thirty-two years. I have Communist Party during the no idea whether his attempt Cold War; others were bloody- was genuine, but there was no minded, or natural campaign- meeting of minds. He did not ers, enjoying the political grasp the serious consequences battle and uneasy about the of an imminent split because responsibility of office. Michael for most of his life he had pre- Foot was very much part of the ferred be associated with the far eclectic left-wing show, but was left than with the Fabian social never a hard-line ideologue. democrats.

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