Michael Foot and the Labour Leadership

Michael Foot and the Labour Leadership PDF Author: Andrew Scott Crines
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781443831598
Category : Great Britain
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Michael Footâ (TM)s political career can simplistically be characterised by cataclysmic failures within the period between 1979 and 1983, culminating in Labourâ (TM)s substantial electoral defeat. Developments within political discourse have since sought to perpetuate this characterisation by utilising the defeat as a justification for the subsequent modernisations. However, this analysis does not entirely appreciate the significance of Footâ (TM)s leadership. This book argues that far from being a disaster, Footâ (TM)s leadership in fact contributed to the survival of the Labour Party. Footâ (TM)s political education, political evolution, and experiences between him joining the Party in 1935 and the end of his ministerial career in 1979 enabled him to emerge as the unity candidate in opposition to the divisive potential of a Denis Healey or Tony Benn leadership. Footâ (TM)s support base included moderate social democrats and moderate left-wing MPâ (TM)s as well as centrists who opposed radicals from both sides. This subverts the orthodox assumption of Footâ (TM)s election being indicative of a sudden and simplistic left-wing domination after 1979. This book will be of particular interest to those seeking to develop their knowledge of Michael Foot, the Labour Party and their ideological diversity.

Michael Foot

Michael Foot PDF Author: Kenneth O. Morgan
Publisher: HarperPerennial
ISBN: 9780007178278
Category : Great Britain
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
The authorised - but not uncritical - life of one of the great parliamentarians and orators of our times, the former Labour Party leader, now in his nineties, who is also an eminent man of letters.

Michael Foot and the Labour Leadership

Michael Foot and the Labour Leadership PDF Author: Andrew Scott Crines
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443832391
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 210

Get Book Here

Book Description
Michael Foot’s political career can simplistically be characterised by cataclysmic failures within the period between 1979 and 1983, culminating in Labour’s substantial electoral defeat. Developments within political discourse have since sought to perpetuate this characterisation by utilising the defeat as a justification for the subsequent modernisations. However, this analysis does not entirely appreciate the significance of Foot’s leadership. This book argues that far from being a disaster, Foot’s leadership in fact contributed to the survival of the Labour Party. Foot’s political education, political evolution, and experiences between him joining the Party in 1935 and the end of his ministerial career in 1979 enabled him to emerge as the unity candidate in opposition to the divisive potential of a Denis Healey or Tony Benn leadership. Foot’s support base included moderate social democrats and moderate left-wing MP’s as well as centrists who opposed radicals from both sides. This subverts the orthodox assumption of Foot’s election being indicative of a sudden and simplistic left-wing domination after 1979. This book will be of particular interest to those seeking to develop their knowledge of Michael Foot, the Labour Party and their ideological diversity.

Aneurin Bevan: A Biography

Aneurin Bevan: A Biography PDF Author: Michael Foot
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571280854
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 488

Get Book Here

Book Description
Michael Foot's two-volume biography of Aneurin 'Nye' Bevan (1897-1960) - arguably Britain's greatest socialist, indelibly associated with the founding of the National Health Service - is one of the major political biographies of the last century. It is the life of an inspirational politician, written by one who knew and unabashedly admired him. Volume II, first published in 1973, begins with Bevan's role in the founding of a comprehensive National Health Service - this while he was also tasked with addressing the country's severe post-war housing shortage. It takes in his 1951 resignation from the cabinet in protest at the introduction of prescription charges, and his subsequent leadership of a 'Bevanite' Labour left; his publication in 1952 of In Place of Fear; his service as Shadow Foreign Secretary during the Suez crisis in 1956; his controversial reversal of opposition to nuclear weapons in 1957; and his death from cancer in 1960.

Peter Shore

Peter Shore PDF Author: Kevin Hickson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781785904738
Category : Great Britain
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
The first academic biography of one of the leading thinkers of the Labour Party, Peter Shore.

The Benn Diaries

The Benn Diaries PDF Author: Tony Benn
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1446493733
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 714

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Benn Diaries, embracing the years 1940-1990, are already established as a uniquely authoritative, fascinating and readable record of political life. The selected highlights that form this single-volume edition include the most notable events, arguments and personal reflections throughout Benn's long and remarkable career as a leading politician. The narrative starts with Benn as a schoolboy and takes the reader through his youthful wartime experiences as a trainee pilot, his nervous excitement as a new MP during Clement Atlee's premiership and the tribulations of Labour in the 1950s, when the Conservatives were in firm control. It ends with the Tories again in power, but on the eve of Margaret Thatcher's fall, while Tony Benn is on a mission to Baghdad before the impending Gulf War. Over the span of fifty years, the public and private turmoil in British and world politics is recorded as Benn himself moves from wartime service to become the baby of the House, Cabinet Minister, and finally the Commons' most senior Labour Member.

Guilty Men

Guilty Men PDF Author: Cato
Publisher: Penguin Uk
ISBN: 9780141180984
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 123

Get Book Here

Book Description
A polemic against Chamberlain, MacDonald, and Baldwin whom the author Cato, a pseudonym for Michael Foot, Frank Owen, and Peter Howard, regarded as having brought the country to the brink of disaster through their policy of appeasement. First published in 1940

One Party After Another

One Party After Another PDF Author: Michael Crick
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1471192318
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 470

Get Book Here

Book Description
'Enormously readable...excellent' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times 'A superb piece of thorough journalism' David Aaronovitch, The Times Nigel Farage is arguably one of the most influential British politicians of the 21st century. His campaign to take the UK out of the EU began as a minority and extreme point of view, but in June 2016 it became the official policy of the nation after a divisive referendum. In Michael Crick's brilliant new biography, One Party After Another, we find out how he did it, despite never once managing to get elected to Parliament. Farage left public school at the age of 16 to go and work in the City, but in the 1990s he was drawn into politics, joining UKIP. Ironically, it was the electoral system for the European Parliament that gave him access to a platform, and he was elected an MEP in 1999. His everyman persona, combined with a natural ability as a maverick and outspoken performer on TV, ensured that he garnered plenty of media attention. His message resonated in ways that rattled the major parties - especially the Conservatives - and suddenly the UK's membership of the EU was up for debate. Controversy was never far away, with accusations of racism against the party and various scandals. But, having helped secure the referendum, Farage was largely sidelined by the successful official Brexit campaign. When Parliament struggled to find a way to leave, Farage created the Brexit Party to ensure Britain did eventually leave the EU early in 2020. Crick's compelling new study takes the reader into the heart of Farage's story, assessing his methods, uncovering remarkable hidden details and builds to an unmissable portrait of one of the most controversial characters in modern British politics.

The Modernisation of the Labour Party, 1979-97

The Modernisation of the Labour Party, 1979-97 PDF Author: Christopher Massey
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781526144423
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book presents new, cross-disciplinary research on leprosy in medieval Europe, focusing on questions of identity. It reveals complex responses to the disease, challenging earlier views that medieval sufferers were uniformly stigmatised. The social, religious and cultural impacts are explored, as are post-medieval perspectives.

Debts of Honour

Debts of Honour PDF Author: Michael Foot
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 9780571270194
Category : England
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book Here

Book Description
Debts of Honour is Michael Foot's most famous collection of essays. Adept at the longer distance though he was, one only has to remember The Pen and the Sword and his Aneurin Bevan biography, the essay very often saw his writing at its sharpest and most eloquent. He has been compared to Arnold Bennett and J. B. Priestley, but there is no exaggeration in extending that to A. J. P. Taylor. Of this volume, Kenneth Morgan has written,' But it is still an enchanting volume, revealing of Foot's style and of his friends and heroes past and present. His heroes are literary and political, though it is clear that for Foot the categories merge into one common stream of aspiration.' There are fourteen essays. It is instructive to list the subjects: Isaac Foot (his father), William Hazlitt, Benjamin Disraeli, Beaverbrook, Bonar Thompson (Hyde Park Sceptic); Bertrand Russell; H. N. Brailsford; Ignazio Silone; Vicky (the cartoonist); Randolph Churchill; Thomas Paine; Daniel Defoe; Sarah, The Duchess of Marlborough, and Jonathan Swift. The range is impressively wide, something that struck a fledgling politician. In July 1982 Tony Blair wrote with depressing truth, 'The first thing that struck me about Debts of Honour was the prison if ignorance which my generation has constructed for itself.' Having mentioned Hazlitt, Paine and Brailsford and doubting they are still read, he ends with this exhortation, 'We need to recover the searching radicalism of these people.' Stirring words even if they might embarrass the author now! 'Michael Foot is an accomplished politician, a trenchant orator and a devoted Socialsit - all good things to be. But the Michael Foot I like best is the enthusiastic essayist, using his command of words to praise his Radical heroes past and present. Here are fourteen of them in all theiri variety. Some were politicians, one was philosopher, some were journalists, one was a woman . . . some were Socialsits; some strongly anti-Socialist. But all, including Michael himself, had one thing in common: a proud individualism and a rejection of conventional ways . . . The book is packed with delights from the first page to the last.' A. J. P. Taylor, Evening Standard 'He pays theses Debts of Honour to a variety of incongruous people from Right as well as Left of the political spectrum. No narrow bigot could acknowledge as heroes both Hazlitt and Disraeli, both Bertrand Russell and Lord Beaverbrook. Only a determined eclectic could pay homage both to Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, and to Jonathan Swift, both to Vicky and to Randolph Churchill . . . Michael Foot is open-mindedly one-sided.' The Times 'He is one of the best literary and political journalsits and essaysits of our time: he is far, far more than an unusually literate politician. Mr Foot is a worthy companion of all those he writes about. Such a thoroughly enjoyable book!' Bernard Crick, The Guardian

Michael Foot

Michael Foot PDF Author: Mervyn Jones
Publisher: Victor Gollancz
ISBN: 9780575051973
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 570

Get Book Here

Book Description