Michael Foot
Michael Mackintosh Foot, FRSL, PC (23 July 1913 – 3 March 2010) was a British Labour Party politician and man of letters. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1945 to 1955 and from 1960 until 1992. He was deputy leader of the Labour Party from 1976 to 1980, and later became the Leader of the Opposition from 1980 to 1983.
Associated with the Labour left for most of his career, Foot was a supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and British withdrawal from the European Economic Community. His first Cabinet appointment was as Employment secretary under Harold Wilson in 1974, and later served as Leader of the House of Commons under James Callaghan. A passionate orator, he was Labour leader at the 1983 general election when the party obtained its lowest share of the vote since 1918.
Foot's parallel career as a journalist included appointments as editor of Tribune, on several occasions, and the Evening Standard newspaper. Among the books he authored are Guilty Men (an attack on Neville Chamberlain and others for the policy of appeasement), a biography of Jonathan Swift (The Pen and the Sword, 1957) and a biography of Aneurin Bevan.
Read more about Michael Foot: Family, Early Life, Journalism, Member of Parliament, Labour Leadership, Backbenches and Retirement, Plymouth Argyle, Personal Life, Health, Death, Fictional Depiction
Famous quotes containing the words michael and/or foot:
“I have always believed helping your fellow man is profitable in every sense, personally and bottom line.”
—Mario Puzo, U.S. author, screenwriter, and Francis Ford Coppola, U.S. director, screenwriter. Michael Corleone (Al Pacino)
“The foot of the heavenly ladder, which we have got to mount in order to reach the higher regions, has to be fixed firmly in every-day life, so that everybody may be able to climb up it along with us. When people then find that they have got climbed up higher and higher into a marvelous, magical world, they will feel that that realm, too, belongs to their ordinary, every-day life, and is, merely, the wonderful and most glorious part thereof.”
—E.T.A.W. (Ernst Theodor Amadeus Wilhelm)