Michael Foot (1913 – 2010)
British politician, son of the politician Isaac Foot.
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We are not here in this world to find elegant solutions, pregnant with initiative, or to serve the ways and modes of profitable progress. No, we are here to provide for all those who are weaker and hungrier, more battered and crippled than ourselves. That is our only certain good and great purpose on earth, and if you ask me about those insoluble economic problems that may arise if the top is deprived of their initiative, I would answer 'To hell with them.' The top is greedy and mean and will always find a way to take care of themselves. They always do.
The crisis afflicting this country, along with other countries of the Western world, is a crisis of capitalism. It is a crisis of the dominant economic system that prevails in all those countries.
Think of it! A second chamber selected by the Whips. A seraglio of eunuchs.
Of all the sights and sounds which attracted me on my first arrival to live in London in the mid-thirties, one combined operation left a lingering, individual spell. I naturally went to Hyde Park to hear the orators, the best of the many free entertainments on offer in the capital. I heard the purest milk of the world flowing, then as now, from the platform of the Socialist Party of Great Britain.
[There are] judges who stretch the law...to suit reactionary attitudes.
I was very sorry to hear the news. He was a great parliamentarian and a man of high principles.
The right hon. Member for Heseltine-- [Laughter.] --well, that is what he is ; he sticks to that principle more than he does to Henley
It does so happen to be the case that if the freedom of the people of this country—and especially the rights of trade unionists—if those precious things in the past had been left to the good sense and fairmindedness of judges, we would have precious few freedoms in this country.
It's impossible to write the history of freedom in this country without telling how trade unions have contributed to it.
He was without question the master, spell-binding orator in the House of Commons in my day. When his name came up on the ticker-tape, people would come to hear him. He had this capacity for immense passion laced with humour.
How long will it be before the cry goes up: "Let's kill all the judges"?
Michael Foot, who has died aged 96, was a supreme parliamentary democrat who used his great gifts as an inspiring speaker and writer to urge peace, security, prosperity and opportunity for humanity and punishment for bigots and bullies of every kind. His bravery and generosity were unsurpassed. He used both to ensure that the Labour party survived as a political force when self-indulgent factionalism could have doomed it to irrelevance.
I've been on the left of the Party since I joined it about 1934 and I haven't seen much reason for altering...I have always been a strong libertarian both inside the Labour Party and outside...what I want to seek to do over a period of course is to establish a Socialist society.
I certainly think that a Labour Government will have to have effective powers to control the outflow of capital.
Since the matter has been raised, can I say, Mr Speaker, that the individual concerned is not an endorsed member– [jeering] .. the individual concerned is not an endorsed member of the Labour Party, and so far as I am concerned never will be an endorsed member?
It is not necessary that every time he rises he should give his famous imitation of a semi-house-trained polecat.
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