Michael Foot in Apr 1972. Photograph: Leonard Burt/Getty Images
1.04pm: Michael Foot is right afar remembered predominantly for his short and luckless duration as Labour personality in the early 1980s, but he was a heading figure in Labour governing body via the postwar duration and one of the superb orators of his time. Today politicians from all parties are profitable reverence to him.
1.23pm: This is from Peter Hain, the Welsh Secretary. Foot wasn"t a Welshman, but he was MP for Ebbw Vale, that done him an titular Welshman.
Michael was maybe Wales"s infancy shining adopted son. A good friend, he gave me infancy personal await over 40 years, from the Anti-Apartheid Movement to the work together on the Tribune newspaper. He will be sorely missed. Never again will we see such mountainous oratory, revolutionary passion and wit. Wales and Welsh Labour are in mourning.
1.27pm: Gordon Brown has described Foot as "a man of low element and ardent idealism".
1.28pm: This is from Ken Livingstone on Sky News.
He was the nicest authority I ever met at a some-more aged turn in politics. He had time for everybody. It is extraordinary that someone that good gets to the tip of the Labour Party but maybe not as well startling that someone that good didn"t win the election.
1.29pm: This is from Ray Collins, the Labour"s party"s ubiquitous secretary.
Michael Foot"s flitting is unequivocally unhappy headlines for the Labour Party and the wider movement. As personality of the party, a Labour Minister, a bard and a man he was a untiring supporter for amicable justice, whose intelligence, appeal and aplomb will be remembered for years to come.
As Michael Foot himself said, supervision by determine is the infancy dedicated equates to of all. As a immature man I was advantageous to see at initial palm Michael"s own ability in government, when as Secretary of State for Employment, with Jack Jones of the TG, he fake the Health and Safety at Work Act that stable millions of operative people from damage and illness.
It is a symbol of Michael Foot"s peculiarity as a man and th e scale of his grant to open hold up over roughly 7 decades that it is tough to summarize in a singular sentence. He was presumably one of the integrate of writers who could. As well as main biographies, Labour Party members will recollect the distinctness and passion of his essay opposite the appeasement of the 1930s, chief weapons, or Apartheid and in await of amicable justice.
Michael Foot will be longed for by infancy but infancy of all by those who knew him best, his family and friends, and my thoughts and condolences are with them today.
1.32pm: I"ve right afar got the full content of Gordon Brown"s tribute. It"s long, but I"ll post the total thing given I can"t find it on the web. (The Labour website hasn"t got a word about Foot yet.) It"s additionally heartfelt, as you can tell. Like Brown, Foot was an intellectual, a historian, a writer, a genealogical Labour patriot - and a football fan.
Michael Foot was a man of low element and ardent self-assurance and one of the infancy expressive speakers Britain has ever heard.
He was an unassailable figure who continually stood up for his ideology and possibly people concluded with him or not they dignified his impression and his steadfastness.
The apply oneself he warranted over a enlarged hold up of have use of equates to that opposite the nation currently people, no have a difference their domestic views, will weep the flitting of a good and merciful man.
All his life, Michael campaigned and fought for the ideals he believed in. I recollect fondly my time with him and Jill Craigie, the love of his hold up - they both desirous me with their passion and kindness. They leave at the behind of so infancy people whose pique overwhelms us today.
While Michael was a shining thinker – a initial rate publisher and a distinguished memoirist – he continually knew that for the people and causes he had entered governing body to represent, the Commons was not simply a forum for discuss but the entertainment of change.
As Leader of the Labour Party in the infancy formidable resources he was a reputable and unifying figure who sought to drive it by violent times. And his jot down as a Labour apportion and hold up of operative men and women will continually be a reverence to his philosophy and a source of honour - heading by Parliament the Health and Safety at Work Act.
He served the communities of Plymouth and Ebbw Vale with distinction. But Michael wasn"t usually a good parliamentarian - a historian, a publisher and an author, he showed the same ability as one of the youngest editors of a inhabitant journal in his twenties as he did when essay articles and books well in to his nineties.
A owner piece of of CND, he is mostly remembered for being a self-proclaimed "inveterate peace-monger" nonetheless his firmness to mangle the climb of Fascism in Europe in the 1940s was demonstrated in his hugely successful book, "Guilty Men".
A lifelong Plymouth Argyle fan who one after an additional in attendance Home Park well in to his 90s, his love of his football bar mirrored his love of the Labour Party: adhering by the Pilgrims by thick and thin, no one could ever disbelief his faithfulness and firmness to see them reach the limit of success.
We will never dont think about his good humour, his passion and on top of all his fast values and firmness to quarrel for them - as, one of his budding poets, Shelley proclaims "Ye are infancy — they are few".
Michael Foot was a genuine British in advance - one who hexed a absolute clarity of community, a honour in the on-going past and self-assurance in the country"s intensity for a in advance future.
1.40pm: John Reid, the former cupboard apportion who was a Labour central in the 1980s, is on BBC News recalling perplexing to have a air wave foster with Michael Foot. He says it took him and Helen Liddell all day given it was tough to get Foot to regulate to the medium.
He was a careful sort of man in an age of pointy soundbites. He was a master open public orator in an age of the air wave interview.
1.43pm: Lord Steel has usually been on BBC News too. He was the Liberal personality at the time of the Lib-Lab pact. Steel said:
He was but subject the master, spell-binding open public orator in the House of Commons in my day. When his name came up on the ticker-tape, people would come to attend to him. He had this genius for measureless passion laced with humour.
Steel was being generous. He did not discuss the actuality that Foot"s humour was infrequently incited opposite Steel himself. In one Commons discuss (at the finish of the no certainty discuss in 1979, I think), Foot famously described Steel as someone "who upheld from rising goal to elder statesman but any inserted period".
1.50pm: Hilary Benn, the sourroundings secretary, has usually been on BBC News. Rather tackily, I thought, he he attempted to have an anti-Cameron point whilst he was profitable reverence to Foot.
A lot of people will weep his flitting currently ... If we have a preference in in between entrance and substance, I think a lot of people will give us piece each time, given in conclusion that is what governing body [is about] ... If we can have some-more concentration on the substance, the genuine choices that we"ve got, and less on the entrance - if you like, the preference in in between an airbrushed governing body and a genuine governing body - I think we could do with that.
1.57pm: Brown is giving an talk outward Downing Street. He says Foot is mourned as someone who was good and compassionate.
Asked if Foot hold the Labour celebration together, Brown says he was a "great unifier". Foot is hold in good apply oneself "for the self-assurance with that he put his views", Brown says. Foot was "a good man and a unequivocally merciful man".
2.01pm: If any one has any personal memories of Michael Foot they wish to share, greatfully write about them in the comments territory below.
2.03pm: Thanks to DavidSt for posting, in the comments territory below, this remove from a discuss Foot gave in the Commons in 1980. Jack Straw referred to it in the Commons about 90 mins ago. Straw was opening a discuss on the Bribery Bill and he proposed with a reverence to Foot and a anxiety to this speech. Straw attempted to discuss it the wizard joke, nonetheless his version wasn"t half as good as the orginal.
In my youth, utterly a time ago, when I lived in Plymouth, each Saturday night I used to go to the Palace theatre. My budding movement was a magician-conjuror who used to have sitting at the behind of the assembly a man ready to go as a distinguished alderman. The magician-conjuror used to contend that he longed for a pleasing watch from a piece of of the audience. He would go up to the municipal legislator and in the future take from him a eminent bullion watch. He would move it behind to the stage, clinch it in a pleasing red handkerchief, place it on the list in front of us, take out his mallet, strike the watch and pound it to smithereens. Then on his aspect would come usually the undetermined see of the Secretary of State for Industry. He would step to the front of the entertainment and contend "I am unequivocally sorry. I have lost the rest of the trick." That is the incident of the Government. They have lost the rest of the trick. It does not work. Lest any agitator should indicate that the movement at the Palace entertainment was usually a trick, I should assure the House that the magician-conjuror used to come along at the finish and contend "I am sorry. I have still lost the trick."
The fun functions even improved if you know that the traffic cupboard piece of at the time was Keith Joseph.
2.10pm
I"ve been perplexing to find a small footage of Foot on YouTube and I"ve found this. It"s from a discuss Foot delivered in 1942, when he was behaving editor of the Evening Standard and the supervision was melancholy to bury the Daily Mirror. It"s smashing - richly comic, but ardent and critical at the same time.
2.18pm: This is from David Blunkett.
In the 47 years that I have been a piece of of the Labour Party, I have frequency come opposite any one as gracious, courteous and intellectually pointy as Michael Foot. It was a payoff to have well known him and to have schooled from him – not simply as a politician, but as that singular breed: an egghead and a thinker. Everybody recognises that he was the biggest parliamentarian of his generation. In infancy ways, his time as personality of the Labour Party authorised his opponents to lessen the outrageous status that his life-long grant to the contentment of his associate man enabled him to achieve.
2.20pm: And this is from the TUC ubiquitous cupboard piece of Brendan Barber.
Everyone will be saddened by the genocide of Michael Foot – a man who personified goodness and firmness in politics.
Simply to discuss his name is to be taken behind to an epoch when each statesman indispensable to be an open public orator and authority an audience. But we recollect him as well as a good practice cupboard piece of at a time when the economy was underneath genuine pressure.
2.22pm: Neil Kinnock has created a reverence to Foot for Comment is Free. Here"s the opening:
Michael Foot, who has died elderly 96, was a autarchic parliamentary democrat who used his good gifts as an moving open orator and bard to urge peace, security, wealth and event for amiability and low mark for bigots and bullies of each kind. His aplomb and munificence were unsurpassed. He used both to safeguard that the Labour celebration survived as a domestic force when lush factionalism could have cursed it to irrelevance.
2.47pm: Kate Hudson, the authority of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, has released this statement.
Michael Foot"s scrupulous on all sides on chief disarmament has enlarged been used to insist Labour"s improved in 1983, and clear pro-nuclear policies from the Labour Party leadership.
But the 1983 choosing was not an publicity of Mrs Thatcher"s chief policy. We weep the unwashed tricks debate carried out at that time opposite Michael, created to criticise his campaign.
Opinion polls show that his views on chief disarmament are currently usual by the infancy of the British citizens opposite the domestic spectrum - a actuality that the politicians would do well to recognize as they head in to a ubiquitous election.
2.49pm: Tam Dalyell, the former Labour MP and father of the Commons - and a smashing necrology bard for the Independent - has released this tribute, that includes a good version that I had not heard.
Michael Foot would have been a first-class Prime Minister, given he was a smart chooser of people and an talented delegator of colleagues.
When I was inaugurated to Parliament in Jun 1962, I was told by colleagues "You will never see Michael Foot again". He had had a awful car collision from that they did not design him ever to recover. The perfect aplomb of that man entrance behind is astonishing.
Ironically, the collision enlarged his hold up - it stopped him chain-smoking.
2.53pm: Alastair Campbell, who knew Foot well - Foot was a unequivocally old crony of the relatives of Fiona Millar, Campbell"s partner - has created a reverence to him on his blog. The total thing is value reading, but here"s a essence of it.
On the Old-New Labour-ometer, satisfactory to contend that Michael competence be placed closer to the old than the new. But he was a unusual support. He took as infancy honour in the 3 choosing wins underneath Tony Blair as any one and was gay to applaud his 90th birthday in 2003 at a celebration in Downing Street grassed area surrounded by family and friends from opposite the domestic spectrum. And at your convenience we were underneath the cosh, Michael would continually be on with a word of support, recommendation or encouragement.
The last time he came to the residence for lunch, he was hardly means to walk. Yet he sat and gave his views on all the big issues of the day, with pictures by charming tales of the past. "Was there unequivocally as infancy multiplication in the Wilson Cabinets as the books suggest?" I asked him. "Oh far more," he said.
2.57pm: John Prescott has paid reverence on Twitter.
So unhappy to attend to about Michael Foot. A good man has died. He was the heart of the movement
2.59pm: Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, has pronounced this:
Michael Foot was a good parliamentarian, a good egghead and a good idealist. He continually stood up for what he believed in, even if that meant mouth-watering unpopularity at times. His egghead firmness is an e.g. to everybody in politics.
3.01pm: Here are a small of the things people have pronounced in the comments section. This is from sarflondon (or Ed Davie, judging by the approach he"s sealed off):
I lerned as a contributor at the South Wales Argus with a vegetable patch that enclosed Foot"s former subdivision in Ebbw Vale. As a outcome I interviewed him at his residence in Hampstead where he was fascinating, charming, scold and generous. He gave me a duplicate of his book on Nye Bevan that he painstakingly (given his bad eyesight) stamped with a allude to from Hazlitt. He additionally invited me to his 90th birthday celebration at the Gay Hussar - where else? - that had the infancy heterogeneous pick up of guest I"d ever seen. He told me afterwards that he wouldn"t die until his dear Plymouth Argyle done it to the Premiership - sadly he did not see that day. Foot has been a good impulse to me journalistically and politically and notwithstanding his good age will be longed for - Ed Davie
This is from elsbaer:
I used to see Michael Foot continually at Home Park. He was old and frail, with a zimmer support and someone to assistance him along, but he had a kind word for everyone.
I"m as well immature to recollect him as a politician, but he was positively insane about the Argyle.
The total city of Plymouth will be in anguish today.
This is from PatriciaGrumbling:
I remember, years and years ago, whilst fishing on Hampstead Heath, he would continually contend Good Morning as he walked by and scrutinise as to how the fishing was going.
3.09pm: This is from Lord Mandelson:
There will be a outrageous dolour opposite the celebration and opposite governing body at this news.
I initial met Michael in the early 1980s when I worked for Albert Booth, who additionally sadly upheld afar recently. No-one was closer to Michael than Albert on the Labour frontbench and it is was there that I initial detected the stresses and strains that tumble on any one heading Labour, generally at that time in the 1980s.
Michael was one of Labour"s budding sons and his name will be perpetually synonymous with the equates to of amicable justice. An historian, writer, open public orator and parliamentarian of the initial rank, Michael was one of the giants on whose shoulders today"s epoch of Labour politicians stand.
3.12pm: Daniel Hannan, the Tory MEP - and the Labour party"s villain-of-choice for infancy of 2009 - has created a poetic reverence to Foot on his blog. Seriously. It"s superb - one of the majority suitable pieces I"ve review about Foot all afternoon. Foot, of course, was a Eurosceptic. But he was additionally a bookish, romantic, intellectual, English parliamentarian. Hannan probably feels they had a lot in common.
I was propitious enough, as an undergraduate, to attend to one of Michael Foot"s last good orations, when he spoke to a spell-bound Oxford Union about the iniquities of the EU. True successor to the English in advance tradition, he had small time for "-isms" of any sort, and was one of the integrate of Lefties of his epoch never to have flirted with possibly Mussolini or Stalin. Although he was wrong about infancy things – his mercantile process would have busted us each bit as comprehensively as Gordon Brown"s prodigal clottishness – he got the big issues right, eschewing fascism, Communism and Euro-integrationism as alone un-English doctrines.
At around that time, he was accused, outrageously, of carrying collaborated with the KGB. I remember, even as a student, apropos indignant on his behalf: was there ever a statesman less expected to misuse his country?
Men of energy have not time to read; nonetheless the men who do not review are non-professional for power," pronounced the good man, and it was truer than he knew. Foot"s key to the Penguin book of Gulliver"s Travels is, for me, one of the excellent essays ever created about Swift, and will be remembered enlarged after Foot"s domestic career is forgotten. Yet he was unsuitable to the politician"s trade. Cerebral, impeccably honest and curiously innocent, he represented a eminent and prominent convention on the British Left. How small his successors crop up by comparison.
3.34pm: David Miliband has posted a integrate of tributes to Foot on Twitter. First he sent this:
Michael Foot led a conspicuous life. I recollect assembly him on the Tube in the 80s; for a important open orator he unequivocally listened.
And afterwards he followed it with this:
Ironic to attend to headlines of Michael Foot"s genocide whilst welcoming south african president. He hated apartheid with a vengeance.
(Actually, being pedantic, ironic"s not utterly the right word, is it? But we know what he meant.)
3.41pm: Alastair Campbell is on Sky now.
[Foot] was means to have an evidence but ever creation it personal.
Campbell says Foot would have prime to have been remembered as a writer, as someone who was ardent about governing body and as someone who believed in big causes.
3.44pm: Foot was a humanist, and the British Humanist Association has usually released this tribute.
We recollect Michael and applaud his hold up not usually as the hold up of an smart and scrupulous statesman but as a good British Humanist. A good hold up for all is a humanist aspiration, and Michael was one humanist who worked tough to have that a being for each man and woman. His indifferent loyalty to humanist and on-going ideals of freedom, peace, amicable probity was pursued in a hold up of both thought and movement – an additional humanist ideal.
3.46pm: Peter Tatchell, who fought and lost a byelection for Labour in Bermondsey in 1983 after being comparison opposite Foot"s wishes, has released this statement.
Michael Foot was wrong to reject my advocacy of extra-parliamentary protests and to primarily retard my publicity as parliamentary claimant for Bermondsey. But this blunder of judgment, underneath vigour from SDP turncoats, does not lessen his status as one of the infancy superb British socialists and democrats of the twentieth century.
He had the beauty to after apologize to me - an reparation that I accepted. I have never waivered in my perspective that Michael Foot was a good humanist and humanitarian, and a loyal hold up of amicable probity and human rights.
Sadly, Michael became Labour personality as well late in life. He was at his climb in the 1940s and 1950s, and would have been an even improved Labour Prime Minister than Clement Attlee. A shining orator, who was equalled by integrate of alternative politicians anywhere in the world, his speeches were enchanting and inspirational.
3.51pm: As John Rentoul has removed on his blog, one of Foot"s achievements was to assistance Tony Blair get in to parliament. Foot wrote a nominal minute about Blair after Blair stood unsuccessfully for Labour in Beaconsfield that helped him to get comparison in Sedgefield.
3.56pm: George Galloway has paid a Twitter reverence too.
Farewell Michael Foot: Great orator, editor and thinker - the infancy decent personality Labour ever had #fb
3.58pm: Alex Salmond, Scotland"s initial minister, has released this statement:
Michael Foot was a man of outrageous principle, with a domestic career founded on a passion and joining to the celebration and causes he loved. He was a conspicuous and dedicated man, hold in the top courtesy opposite the domestic spectrum over a duration of infancy decades.
Michael Foot was in the House of Commons after my election, in the 1987-92 Parliament, and was a smashing open orator to attend to - a illusory old-style debater. My thoughts are with his infancy friends, colleagues and family. Michael Foot will be severely missed, and his mental recall appreciated by his celebration and the country.
4.01pm: There are a integrate of alternative blogs stating the tributes to Foot. Here they are:
BBC website
LabourList
4.10pm: Lady Thatcher"s bureau has usually released this reverence to Foot from the former budding minister:
I was unequivocally contemptible to attend to the news. He was a good parliamentarian and a man of his priniciples.
4.31pm: This is from Tony Lloyd, the authority of the Parliamentary Labour Party:
Michael Foot flitting afar signals the finish of a good hold up and an epoch in governing body but his mental recall will live on in the work of those desirous by him and in those who will review his writings.
Michael was at the heart of the Labour Party and was desirous by the values of approved socialism; in turn, he desirous those around him to work to foster those ideals.
He will be longed for by his infancy friends and admirers from all walks of life.
4.35pm: Here are a small some-more memories of Foot from the comments territory below.
This is from Zoonie:
The last time we both saw Michael Foot was at Joan Lestor"s funeral. Joan was an additional good hold up of fairness. Another anti-fascist supporter who stood shoulder to shoulder with her good crony Barbara Castle but has someway not been recognized in story so much. This was in 1998 and Michael was already physically frail. He stood, delicately but well and after a sincerely vacant domestic waffle of a discuss by John Prescott, Michael Foot delivered a clever acknowledgment to his crony in crude tones, as his condition allowed. But nobody cared. We would have stayed all afternoon to listen. Everyone in the room desired him, you see.
With his death, those good domestic soldier names from the 20th century penetrate serve from view. They were energised by the quarrel opposite strident misery and fascism, and they usually don"t have them similar to that anymore.
This is from smackhead:
used to see him on foot his dog on Hampstead Heath, he used to get the twenty-four train down to Westminster and have use of his OAP pass
This is from Pyrrhic:
My late uncle, a some-more aged polite servant, very, unequivocally frequency spoke about politicians or politics. The usually time I ever listened him criticism on a statesman was to do with Michael and you could discuss it that he was honestly in astonishment of the man and severely reputable his intellect.
A unhappy loss to Britain and a contrition that we will probably never see an additional man of his firmness as a personality of a vital gracious celebration in this country.
4.49pm: I"ve usually been seeking at the comments on Mike White"s story about Foot"s death. There"s a poetic story there from David Warnes.
My budding mental recall of Michael is a correlation of him chasing down the road, at high speed for a man of his age, given we had been arguing over the scold spelling of the word "fricassee". The main bone of row was the suitable series of esses. We could determine on the last stand in "e". Demanding to know what was right, rather than indispensably infer himself right (of march he was right as it incited out). We hurtled (again, relatively) towards the nearest bookshop in poke of a dictionary, debating the pourquois and wherefores of french orthography, utterly preoccupied to the stately crowds by that we done the way. A unflinchingly charming, learned and decent man.
4.53pm: David Cameron has right afar released a full tribute.
My initial thoughts are for those he leaves behind, the friends and the family. He was a conspicuous man and in infancy ways, roughly the last couple to a some-more drastic age in politics. You think of him in the 1930"s fighting right-wing dictatorship and Hitler to one side Winston Churchill and the good giants of that age.
I additionally unequivocally infancy dignified his good counterclaim of the parliamentary democracy and the House of Commons that he positively loved, patently we come from unequivocally opposite domestic persuasions but additionally his idealism, there was never any disbelief that he was in governing body given he desired his country, he believed in open service, he longed for to have it a improved place.
I think he"ll be remembered as a good speaker, a illusory orator, a pleasing writer. A unequivocally ardent man who was piece of this some-more drastic age of governing body where we were fighting right-wing dictatorship and the climb of right-wing dictatorship in Europe and he was on the right side of that evidence and wrote such a shining book.
Obviously he knew both feat and improved and patently people will recollect the improved as Labour leader, but on top of all he was an idealist, someone who was in governing body for the right reasons and someone who wrote and spoke beautifully.
5.04pm: Plymouth Argyle have paid reverence to Foot. Argyle authority Sir Roy Gardner pronounced this:
It is with good dolour that the bar learnt of the genocide of Michael Foot.
Michael was a rarely valued executive of the club, assisting to pave the approach for the success that Argyle has enjoyed given 2001.
Much some-more than that, he was a much-loved piece of of the Green Army, who stood on the terraces in the days of legends similar to Sammy Black and Jack Leslie, and was ardent about swelling the Green gospel.
5.06pm: Tony Blair still hasn"t released a tribute. His bureau says he"s on a plane. He"ll issue something when he lands, in the subsequent hour or so.
5.12pm: It"s time to call it a day. There will be some-more in the Guardian tomorrow, but after an afternoon celebration of the mass tributes to Foot I find myself usually wishing that YouTube had been around in the 1950s and 1960s. It would be good to be means to attend to some-more of his oratory. But air wave broadcasts from the House of Commons did not begin until the late 1970s and so infancy of his majority suitable speeches are not accessible in audio form at all. What a distressing loss.
Thanks for the comments.
8pm Update: I"ve right afar seen the reverence from Tony Blair. Here it is:
Michael Foot was a hulk of the Labour movement, a man of passion, element and superb joining to the infancy causes he fought for. He took over the care at the infancy formidable time in Labour"s story and conducted himself with outrageous dignity. I will continually recollect his personal affability to me from the time of Beaconsfield byelection onwards. Even when he disagreed with me, he was immensely understanding and kind. His book Debts of Honour is still one of my favourites. We shall severely miss him and continually worship his memory.
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