Michael Foot interview | Labour Party | Party Conference | TV Eye | 1981 | Part 2

TV EYE's Llew Gardner interviews Michael Foot, leader of the Labour about unity, policies and the effectiveness of the Labour Opposition to the Tories in the year ahead. Including leaving the EEC, Nuclear weapons and the welfare state.
First shown: 01/10/1981
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Quote: VT25538

[@th8257]

Michael Foot's nephew, the famous journalist Paul Foot, said that Michael Foot became a "kind of living parenthesis" during this period. He had to talk out interviews and waffle during replies to fill air time so that the interviewer wouldn't be able to pin him down on party divisions, because they were so bad.

[@stuartwilliams-fw4vo]

The brilliance of Footie!

[@th8257]

Michael Foot being diplomatic about Tony Benn here. He was reported to have said to him in private 'You're nuts'.

[@paulbrownrigg5109]

Great historical material, thanks for uploading this

[@cactussauce3452]

Excellent. A tragic figure in Labour Party history. I honestly feel that Benn did as much damage as the SDP did to Michael Foot and he was his supposed ally!

[@insertclevername4123]

The more I watch news coverage and documentaries about the period, the more struck I am by similarities (certainly in terms of tactics) between Benn and people like David Owen, even though I tend to agree with Benn's politics much more.

[@th8257]

​@@insertclevername4123the thing about Tony Benn is that he was pulling a direction totally different to the way the country wanted to go. As Denis Healey said of Benn "If he had been right, Thatcher would never have got elected in the first place". Interestingly, Tony Benn's legacy is perhaps most visible now in the Tory party. His arguments about Brexit were repeated verbatim by the Tory Brexiteers. Benn's changes in "internal party democracy" to make the unrepresentative and non democratically accountable party members decide who the leader is have also been adopted by the Tories - resulting in Truss and Johnson.

[@insertclevername4123]

@@th8257 [ETA: After hitting post I realized just how long and rambling this is, so if you want to bail now, no-one--myself included--would blame you.] I think I largely agree with you. For me--especially after listening to clips from Benn's diaries on YT and seeing his interviews--it's weird to me that he either didn't recognize or didn't care how much the Overton window had shifted to the right under Thatcher (or Reagan for those of us in the US), or even how much it had started under Callaghan. And even if he did recognize it, he seems to have thought that the solution wasn't to learn the lessons of what had gone wrong and what the people who were winning general elections were doing so as to gradually shift things back in his direction, but rather to replace it all if people would just listen to his speeches (I think it was Kinnock who said that even if he never admitted it to himself, Benn felt like he had a birthright to be a leader). As for internal democracy, I don't think you could put the genie back in the bottle, but maybe there are ways to tweak it so as to avoid the outcomes of people who are or should be unelectable winning the leadership...maybe a modified electoral college--not like Labour had in the 80s, but something simpler, like the parliamentary party and the party membership both being counted, with the parliamentary vote being weighted so heavily that the party membership could only sway a close election rather than handing it to someone who managed to lose by less than all of the other also-rans.

[@davelowe1977]

He was an interesting character.

[@buddha1736]

Had to switch of early, the interviewer keeps butting in and not letting him get his point across, they never seem to do that with the conservatives. 😉

[@th8257]

What utter nonsense.

[@thelasttimelord7550]

This man would have made a fantastic Prime Minister. True socialist and Pragmatic

[@edwardalexander9486]

I think leaded fuel has had a major influence on children from the 60s/70s. Compare Foot's insight and articulate debate to Johnson now. Remember that Foot was a failed politician but still clearly towers over Johnson.

[@sevenscounty409]

The longest suicide note in history.....

[@Da1Dez]

Until 2019

[@christopheroshea9799]

Well Blair caused the biggest homicide note in labours history

[@AlJalandhari]

People forget how hated thatcher was in these days, and how well like foot was. Unfortunately Galtieri lost the Falklands war and made thatcher more popular than Foot.

[@andybray9791]

A Michael Gove and someone else but different

[@danielmurray1490]

One of the orginal Brexiteers

[@th8257]

He actually changed his mind in later years

[@danielmurray1490]

@th8257 did he really this is not widely known

[@wilsonfisk6626]

Callaghan should have stayed on.

[@briandelaney9710]

Callaghan was throughly disgusted with what had gone on at Party conference and wanted out

[@wilsonfisk6626]

@@briandelaney9710 I didn't know that. Care to expand?

[@sanchog5704]

Is this Jeremy Corbyn??

[@moran68]

It’s his dad .

[@AlJalandhari]

00:42 you think Corbyn ever had those approval ratings? Bloody SDP split and Falklands war turned things around for thatcher