Michael Foot: Labour's Old Romantic

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

So, what does revleft think of Foot, and old Labour in general:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wd8LZ-E42AQ

[ed miliband]

this is what i wrote in response to a labour supporting friend-of-a-friend on facebook re: "old labour":


it's really weak trying to draw a distinction between 'labour' and 'new labour' (i'll get to that...), but if you wish to do so why are you supporting burnham here? he's 'new labour' through and through; he voted very strongly for the introduction of foundation hospitals which you describe as a "bad and dangerous idea", for example. if you're against new labour shouldn't you be supporting small groups within the party, like the lrc, (madly) trying to 'recapture' the party from it's 'new labour' leadership? (ugh, reading burnham's voting record he is absolute scum).

but yeah, beyond an exercise in rebranding 'new labour' isn't a thing. it was the logical progression of a party like labour, and that's clear when you look at the way *every single party* in "socialist international" (LOL) followed a similar path throughout the 80s and 90s. look at mitterand and the french "socialist" party, or the german sdp, or pasok in greece. labour/social-democratic parties were built upon a compromise between capital and labour (or rather, labour represented by a small-c conservative trade union bureaucracy) that collapsed in the 70s due to economic crises and wider social struggles and upheavals (for e.g. unions were widely rejected and wildcat strikes became much more common, making unions disciplinary function untenable - labour's response to this, the 'social contract', says a lot about the labour party pre-blair and brown, and was later taken up by the tories). hence labour's whole 'monetarist turn' with callaghan at the end of the 70s. "neoliberalism" wasn't this ideology dreamt up and then put into place by nasty thatcher or reagan (or that nice socialist mr mitterand over in france), it was the response of the ruling class to this crisis, of the collapse of the post-war compromise and the 'golden age of capitalism'. "new labour" is a reflection of that.

pre-new labour labour also did a huge amount of horrible, reactionary shit. they used the police and army against striking workers (nice old tony benn used armed police against strikers at an energy plant; lovely old nye began also advocated the use of troops against strikers). they gave us the atomic bomb and the hydrogen bomb. they supported every imperialist war -- with the exception of the suez crisis (which they opposed because america did -- who said labour's atlanticism began with blair?) they were the first to take away free milk from (secondary) schools -- not thatcher, lol. they introduced the racist commonweath immigrants act *specifically* because asians in kenya - all with british passports - were being persecuted and were seeking to come to britain. it goes on.

tl;dr - the labour party have always been shit, always will be, and their bloated corpse is going to smother any attempt to fight against austerity unless they are fought as strongly as the tories. and that isn't hyperbole.

foot was a lackey for the right-wing, fascist-sympathising newspaper-baron lord beaverbrook; he cheered on thatcher during the falklands war, and later campaigned for the bombing of serbia -- so much for a "man of peace" and "internationalist"

[AConfusedSocialDemocrat]

Fair enough.

[GerrardWinstanley]

I don't know what exactly it was that led those disgusting traitors Roy Jenkins and Shirley Williams leaving the party to set up the SDP, but Foot was the leader of the party while all this was happening under his nose and I think he has to be held partly accountable for this as a weak politician, especially when he presented himself as a 'unifying figure'.

Apart from that, I admit I don't know an awful lot about the man. The fact he supported the Falklands War, the intervention in Yugoslavia and edited Tribune really puts me off him and the fact he generated so much support and respect from 'across the bench' in the Tories rings alarm bells (this dubious honour also belongs to the John Humphrys of the Labour Party, Frank Field). It's nice to imagine how different things might have been had he been elected though.

[ed miliband]

I don't know what exactly it was that led those disgusting traitors Roy Jenkins and Shirley Williams leaving the party to set up the SDP, but Foot was the leader of the party while all this was happening under his nose and I think he has to be held partly accountable for this as a weak politician, especially when he presented himself as a 'unifying figure'.

Apart from that, I admit I don't know an awful lot about the man. The fact he supported the Falklands War, the intervention in Yugoslavia and edited Tribune really puts me off him and the fact he generated so much support and respect from 'across the bench' in the Tories rings alarm bells (this dubious honour also belongs to the John Humphrys of the Labour Party, Frank Field). It's nice to imagine how different things might have been had he been elected though.

they wouldn't have been any different at all.

[Lord Hargreaves]

As has already been said, any pretence that Labour is a party of the working class was completely shredded by the party's actions in the 1970s - specifically, their response to strikes and to the union struggles. But one can argue that clause 4 reformist socialism never really got off the ground, despite Labour's post-war achievements like the NHS.

Labour is, it has to be said, a wildly jingoistic political movement, and the response of even leftys like Michael Foot to British wars has always been disgusting, at best. They are supporters of the British state and British political and cultural institutions before all else, and they will always been found cheerleading and drum-beating for British imperialism.