tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36841665.post1163009989786206036..comments2023-12-31T13:47:05.758+00:00Comments on Fat Man on a Keyboard: Intimations of mortalityThe Plumphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09244528534476387323noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36841665.post-26704107398976351322010-03-05T05:53:56.601+00:002010-03-05T05:53:56.601+00:00I agree with you Peter about Foot's 'famed...I agree with you Peter about Foot's 'famed oratory' which I felt somewhat mannered and over rated in effectiveness. He simply did not see like many others (excluding Gaitskell) that one consequence of socialism is that most people become better off and expect a bit more than comradeship and of internationalism, not much at all, unless you mean Spanish package holidays for the workers. It was necessary to change the Party and Foot was unable to do this (for reasons you mention) and Kinnock only so far. Without Blair it really would have been curtains.<br /><br />It is hardly necessary to remind you and others who come here of the baleful influence of Rupert Murdoch at that time. I quite realise Murdoch had, thanks to the likes of myself and other Benn supporters (I now confess), an open goal at which to shoot but the Dirty Digger never missed and there were lots and lots of opportunities.<br /><br />Foot suddenly looked out of touch in the 80s – cruelly mocked for using a stick with which to walk – and his patrician ways were seen as dated; personally, I found Thatcher's much more so – positively ration book. Still, a man to remember with fondness.Anton Dequehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07076828639042541217noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36841665.post-4646494808111716822010-03-04T10:08:44.884+00:002010-03-04T10:08:44.884+00:00Met Michael Foot at a book launch and at a Bevan s...Met Michael Foot at a book launch and at a Bevan seminar in 1997-8 and found him even more endearingly scruffy and eccentric in real life than he appeared on TV.<br /><br />Two things that struck me was that firstly he addressed both meetings as if he was orating to the Labour Party conference and secondly that at the seminar be had his dog Dizzy with him who growled menacingly whenever anyone else (mostly rival Bevan biographer John Campbell and Edmund Dell IIRC) said anything even mildly critical of Bevan - a rather beautiful example of canine empathy. <br /><br />Not sure about his writing: he was indeed a brilliant journalist and essayist but his full-length books tend to the prolix - and as he only wrote at length about people and causes he loved his complete lack of objectivity can get a bit wearing (did Jonathan Swift really end the War of Spanish Succession with a couple of well-timed satirical essays?, is Wells's deep-seated and profound racism and elitism really just a minor character flaw?) <br /><br />The Bevan biography for instance is hugely improved by Brian Brivati's one volume abridgement which eliminates the many longuers and over-elaborate justifications, but still leaves Michael's voice intact. <br /><br />Can't help but thinking that he chose a good time to leave - watching a possible Labour rout and the probable destruction of what's left of Attlee and Bevan's legacy would have been a cruel fate.Roger McCarthyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00741665797773605921noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36841665.post-63000152372382548702010-03-03T20:22:13.413+00:002010-03-03T20:22:13.413+00:00I seem to recall that his father ( a noted bibliop...I seem to recall that his father ( a noted bibliophile) was non too pleased at Michael's turn towards socialism. When Michael attributed his conversion to reading Hazlitt his father acquiesced.<br /><br />Having said all that, his principles did not stand in the way of taking £5000 a year from Beaverbrook to write for the Express during the war, nor from writing a very sympathetic biography of the old tyrant.<br /><br />Still, de mortuis nihil nisi bonum...Overtired and emotionalnoreply@blogger.com