I listened to this, that night of March 28Th 1979 on my tiny portable radio. Jim had waited too long to call an election, the same mistake which Gordon was to make in May 2010. This is rated as one of the best speech's to Parliament in many years.
He would get no industrial peace on pay claims, from the unions, after an election, even if he won it. The parties were running closely and there was a chance of losing. Polls could undermeasure Tory support, as in 1970 when Wilson had gone early + lost.
Did he actually wait too long? Polling can be wrong (they were incorrect in 1970 and February 1974). I remember Wilson being interviewed after Labour's 1970 defeat and David Dimbleby suggested the election was called too early. Hindsight is a great thing and no one could have predicted the winter of discontent.
How I wish there were cameras for this, to have seen the reactions, seen Foot in full command of the House...it is a pity. So glad audio exists at least.
I do not share Michael Foot's politics in any way at all but this is a Parliamentary performance of the highest quality with a standard of oratory which is nothing but superb. The fact that this was delivered on what we now appreciate was such a significant occasion makes it all the more laudable.
There is, in my opinion, nobody of Foot's intellect in Parliament these days, nor of St.John-Stevas, Enoch Powell, Roy Jenkins . Ect. How lamentable. And the present incumbent of No. 10 bears no comparison with the the wit of Thatcher.
I am very grateful for 'harmlessdrudge' posting this speech. I have listened to it quite often and it is quite superb. I think Harold MacMillan's first speech in the House of Lord's (as Earl of Stockton) trumps it, but I have been unable to find it on here. Cheers, Julian
A superbly natural and fluent speaker and orator. In fact, you would not know at first which party he was in. I don't think the miners picking at the face or the steel workers brandishing their irons would begrudge him his parliamentary sense of humour during the Winter of Discontent.
What a brilliant parliamentarian he was, and he was right. If the country had taken heed of the arguments, then Labour would've won in '79. Sadly for the country, and for the people, that election campaign wasn't about arguments, but all about the packaging.
5:04 "she I and I have always share an interest in this young man". Michael Foot referring to the Liberals's David Steel voting with Mrs Thatcher against the government.
Perhaps the most telling thing about this speech is how much that he predicted came true. If only Callaghan had gone to the country in the Autumn of 1978 we would never have had to suffer the decade of the fucking woman!!!
Christ, oh for the days when I could differentiate Labour and Tories. Mr Foot, huge respect....the last politician I can recall that I truly believed was speaking what he truly believed.
A pet hate of mine is RU-vid comments that exalt the past and decry the present, but I really can't imagine a speech of this calibre being delivered now in the House of Commons. Not that the members 'these days' are incapable of it, but they'd be too wary of being accused of elitism.
The difference, I think, is that the best oldschool oratory was lit by a genuine fire and conviction. Galloway, too often, sounds like a preening caricature animated mostly by narcissism; a pale shadow of Tony Benn.
Labour lost because the Tartan Tories of the SNP sided with Maggie Thatcher. The resultant devastation of Scotland's industrial base (and the rest of the Uk's for that matter) is now history but has its genesis in this vote.
Callaghan's memoirs make for interesting reading: he laid the blame for the defeat squarely at the feet of certain Labour backbenchers. The Cunningham Amendment as it came to be known - though actually devised by Robin Cook - is far too often overlooked as the catalyst for the nightmare that was the Thatcher years
election would have happened october 79 anyway, which labour was bound to lose thanks to the constantly disastrous performance of the right wing of the labour party
Compared to Keir Starmer (the leader of the Labour party as I write), Michael Foot was both politically astute and an astoundingly great socialist. "Within months of his appointment - and in a hung Parliament - Foot passed one of the most important bills for workers’ rights in British history: the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, which still stands as the basis for workplace safety and has been deployed to defend safe workplaces in the coronavirus pandemic. Foot’s tenure as employment secretary was prolific. It is where he left his most substantive legacy. Foot is responsible for the creation of the independent body Acas, which oversees employment dispute resolution. In the Employment Protection Act 1975, Foot protected against dismissal for pregnancy and provided for maternity pay. Foot also led the repeal of Ted Heath’s anti-trade-union provisions in the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act 1974, ending the legal concept of “unfair industrial action” and removing unions’ liability to civil action for damages connected to strikes. In the hung parliament, in the midst of an economic crisis, Foot shepherded bills of great importance through the Commons: increases in pensions and benefits, the establishment of the Police Complaints Board, expansion of comprehensive education, a statutory responsibility to provide housing for the homeless, universal child benefit, grants to inner cities, further workplace safety legislation, grants to insulate houses, the Consumer Safety Act 1978, the creation of credit unions, nationalization of the shipbuilding industry, phasing out pay beds in NHS hospitals, and housing security for agricultural workers." www.jacobinmag.com/2021/07/michael-foot-uk-labour-party-legacy-defeat-sdp-socialism-1983-election?
'... an astoundingly great socialist.' - No, h was at heart a radical liberal and not a socialist. HSWA was a great thing, but a reform that could as easily have been brought in by the Liberals, tidying up capitalism rather than overthrowing it.
If you have chance you should watch the Brilliant Play “This House” which deals with the period 74/79 in the Whips office of both parties and culminates with this no confidence vote. It is both funny, tragic, and farcical in equal measure. If it had been fiction you would not believe how events unfolded over those years. The equally excellent Dominic Sandbrook book, “Seasons in the Sun” covers the events in brilliant detail along with life in Britain in general.
And that ladies & gentlemen is how you do it. How far has politics & the quality of Members of the House of Commons fallen. I give you Michael Foot on the one hand & offer Lee Anderson, Johnathan Gullis, Esther McVey, Liz Truss et all on the other. 47+ years of service to his country & it's people, whatever your politics, here is the fire that we should be holding the feet of these characters & those like them up to.
Stephen Beet that's the problem as I'm at no fixed address or without a card as a skint student, but if you put it up in parts or on whole on maybe Dropbox from the CD then the world could see at once, I realise it's probably no concern of yours but I'm doing a uni lecture on this vote soon and it would mean the world haha
I've always wondered why the Speaker (this would have been George Thomas, no?) initially said that he thought the no's had it when there clearly was going to be a division--is that a pro forma thing that the Speaker has to give some initial call before announcing a division?
21 Letters Thank you very much. I thought it was. This clearly serves as an example of his vibrant and rigorous wit, the likes of which Mrs. Thatcher never possessed.
And? Certainly, the Conservative Party is more responsible for Churchill becoming PM than the Labour Party, which only would have had an incidental contribution.
lel, not an argument. You first say there's no point in trying to convince me, as if I somehow don't want to be convinced, then blame me for not having done the research, and as if you can't decide which reason you're going to use to stop posting while leaving a snide and insulting bit of personal advice, like you've contributed anything clever or worthy of claiming victory up until that point. In any case, Churchill "got a chance to serve," regardless of the support he received afterwards from Labour, merely because Chamberlain resigned, Halifax declined the offer to serve instead, and the party leadership decided on Churchill. Labour had no say in the matter.
I don't think I made a mistake in your intention, but I had, next time keep asinine advice like suggesting I live in ignorance if I want to myself. And I did the research, (which was unnecessary, as this should be common knowledge), and wouldn't you know it, the Labour party didn't do shit to get Churchill the premiership. Instead of droning on with personal attacks, consider actually providing evidence for your claims, and you might learn something, like that maybe you're wrong, which was the case now.
Foot was an academic Oxford Cambridge Don and a good public speaker. So what. Another Labour flop. Ramsey Mcdonald Kinock Milliband etc. Starmer next perhaps.
This was a brilliant speech & should be required learning for all aspiring public speakers. However I have to pull you up on the claim he was an Oxbridge Don. He was not. A Second in PPE from Wadham as well as President of The Oxford Union. Dons who became politicians include Harold Wilson & Enoch Powell. The latter also having the distinction of being a Professor & Brigadier.
He was a great speaker and an accomplished man. But the defeat of Callaghan's government was the beginning of a new dawn for Britain; an opportunity for a remarkable woman and an excellent government to reverse decades of decline and bring about an extraordinary transformation in the fortunes of our nation.
It opened the way for conservative policies that destroyed so many things that were great about Britain. The beginning of the end of the NHS, the destruction of our industrial base, the destruction of close knit communities, the disastrous privatisation of the utilities, the taking away of social housing. The UK has never recovered from the terrible damage that these policies did. My feeling against Mrs Thatcher are not personal, I am giving my view of her policies, no more. Despite all propaganda to the contrary Foot would have been an excellent Prime Minister. The Labour MPs of the time should be ashamed of themselves for their horrendous misrepresentation of the Labour manifesto, which actually contained policies that most people agreed with, These were not failed 1980s policies as the BBC likes to tell us but common sense policies that were not implemented and that would have been excellent for this country.
Michael Foot should be remembered as an orator and bibliophile; some interesting ideas but not a leader; he seemed stubborn and obdurate, unable to find the holes in his own arguments. In particular, he never seemed able to take a realistic view of the Soviet Union and the threat it represented then (and now, to an extent).
The cold war is over mate, we all now know that the Soviet union never posed us a threat. The only threat that existed did so insofar as we allied ourselves to the most wicked and evil power to exist in the latter half of the 20th century, the United States.
This indivi... former Michael foots, I don't hear. Too much about hims, maybe.i turn too the.sames primers, over.again thats could haves somethings too do.with it. Too bad he's, talks intellig...
