21.07.2004

Thinking differently

Paul Foot remembered - by Marcus Strom, Peter Tatchell, Dave Craig, Will McMahon, Dave Osler and Mick Hall

Paul Foot was a tireless investigative journalist. He was an inspiration to activists and for many a paragon of journalistic virtue. His friend and colleague, John Pilger, described him as the greatest British journalist of his time. The establishment never stopped attempting to separate Paul’s exposés of injustice from his commitment to radical socialism. They failed - comrade Foot did not arrive at socialism through his journalism: the fire and passion that drove his writing forward came from within and from his commitment to the working class.

As a boy Paul Foot was sent to Shrewsbury school, where he met the future founders of Private Eye magazine, Christopher Booker and Willie Rushton. It was at Shrewsbury that Foot recognised that the relationships taught in the English public schools system was founded on discipline, violence and hierarchy. He recalled the main characteristic of the school was barbarism. It was expensive; and, he told Socialist Worker in 1989, parents sent their children to such schools to equip them to be rulers. To be a good ruler of empire it was necessary to know what it was to be bullied. Otherwise how would you know how to bully yourself?

As a member of the Socialist Alliance executive committee and an activist in London, I heard comrade Foot speak many times. Though I did not always agree with his take on particular subjects, his command of the podium and natural empathy with his audience never failed to win my attention. His speeches were not only fired with passion and drive: they were filled with humour.

Paul was a dedicated humanist and this, along with his progressive romanticism, was reflected in his love for Percy Bysshe Shelley. It was through Paul Foot that I, and many of my generation and class, discovered the Red Shelley.

Paul Foot was genuinely liked by just about everyone who met him or had dealings with him. He was gentle and passionate. Through his involvement with the SWP, he remained committed to the ending of capitalism and saw the need for a collective weapon of the class to achieve that. Yet, viewed through this prism, his commitment was flawed. Standing on the ‘soft right’ of the SWP, he seemed happiest when the SWP shifted closer to social democratic politics.

In one of his last columns for The Guardian (June 23), comrade Foot took up the question of Europe, putting forward the case for a ‘no’ vote on the constitution, while eschewing the little Englandism of the Tory right wing. He correctly condemned the undemocratic proposals from the electoral commission to recognise just one ‘yes’ and one ‘no’ campaign. He wrote: “If the commission sticks to its rigid position, I’d argue for sticking two fingers up to their money and campaigning separately from the chosen organisation for a social democratic and a green Europe.” In much of his journalism for The Guardian, his language easily slipped to the right, while never for a minute abandoning his passionate defence of the poor and oppressed.

Yet this is not the defining point of his politics. He remained committed to the SWP throughout the 1980s - the depths of the SWP’s isolation. He was a staunch believer in Cliff and his dynamism, and remained loyal even after the 1977 Hodge Hill by-election, where Paul was the SWP candidate. He comments on this in his last ever column for The Guardian with his usual irrepressible humour:
“Twenty-seven years ago, in 1977, a Birmingham Labour MP, Roy Jenkins, scuttled off to a well-paid job in Europe, and resigned his seat. The Labour candidate who lost the subsequent by-election was Terry Davies. He later won the seat but is now scuttling off to a well-paid job in Europe, causing another by-election ... I was the Socialist Workers Party candidate in that 1977 by-election, and came bottom of the poll with 0.8% of the vote. My friend, John Rees, who is standing there now for the Respect coalition, promises me he will do better” (June 23).

And indeed comrade Rees did much better, taking more than 6% of the vote - albeit not as an SWP candidate, but on a somewhat less principled basis.

Comrade Foot coined the derogatory term ‘Nana’ to describe the “non-aligned, non-activist” left which eschewed partyism. For this he was criticised in much the same way as the CPGB has been for referring to elements of the non-organised left as “flotsam and jetsam”. However, what sort of party is required? While comrade Foot was a tireless fighter against state oppression and bourgeois hypocrisy and injustice, he remained mute on the anti-democratic culture and bureaucratic centralism of his political home.

In this sense, Paul must be judged as an inconsistent democrat. After all, as Rosa Luxembourg said, “Freedom for only the supporters of the government, however many there may be, is not freedom. Real freedom is freedom for those who think differently.” The culture of the SWP is to hound out “those who think differently”; Paul Foot never took up their cause. For all his commitment to the SWP and his vision of a revolutionary party, Paul’s loyalty to Cliff and the organisation he created meant he could never escape the sect approach bequeathed to it by its founder.

Paul Foot was undoubtedly the ‘darling’ of the SWP: he seemed to stand above the inner-party difficulties and was a natural ambassador for the organisation. Through his commitment he won many to a vision of a society where humanity could truly flourish. But his death comes at a pivotal time for the SWP - a question mark hangs over its future, as it pursues its ever more opportunist path.
Marcus Ström

Passion and wit

On December 1975 Paul Foot visited the Committee of Consumption, Sebutal, an industrial suburb of Portugal. A democratic revolution was in full progress. Paul recounts with admiration the efforts of this organisation, thrown up by the working people of that area, to bring farmers and working class residents into what would now be called a supply chain. The middlemen were kicked out and the price of cabbages and cauliflowers was cut by two thirds.

Paul saw in this the living proof that the market could be replaced by the self-organisation of working people. This was in many ways the essence of his socialism - the power of the rank and file and self-activity of the masses. In Portugal he saw for himself “a tremendous explosion of popular power. Workers’ commissions in industry, residents’ commissions in the estates and worker control of several newspapers and cooperative occupation committees in the farms sprung up all over the country.”

Being English, without a modern revolution of our own, it was probably the nearest he got to involvement in a real revolution. Perhaps this inspired him to inspire us. He was a very rank and file socialist. It permeated his ideas and speeches. In my mid-20s he was the IS/SWP’s best and most inspirational speaker. He could light up an audience with passion, indignation and wit. There was nobody better at savaging the ruling class and exposing their hypocrisy. Through his campaigning journalism, he seemed to get inside the belly of the beast and tell us what was going on.

I read his pamphlet Why you should be a socialist - the case for the Socialist Workers Party, published in 1977 to launch the party. It seemed the perfect answer. But time and experience made me realise that he had captured both the strengths and weaknesses of SWP politics. The inspiration of mass spontaneity was matched by the emptiness of a party without programme or real democratic culture.

The party was seen as a collecting point for like-minded socialists, waiting to follow the spontaneous movement of the masses. It was not an instrument of political struggle, fighting for its programme on the basis of a revolutionary strategy. Libertarianism, not van-guardism, was the inspiration. The flip side of this was his unrecognised attachment to Labour. He came to IS from the Labour Party and that umbilical cord was never fully severed.

In the early hours, as I was dozing, I thought I heard someone on the radio say he had died. I must have misheard it. It couldn’t be true. But when I woke in the morning and put the radio on, I found it was true. It was a real shock. For me, Paul Foot always seemed young in body, mind and spirit. Even with his illness, I still see him as he was 20 years ago. He was just too young to die.
I can only offer my condolences to his family, friends and all who loved him. It was a sad day for me personally and a great loss to the left. But perhaps he is up there with the angels, inspiring them to form their first ever soviet and go on strike.
Dave Craig
RDG

Loss for all socialists

Paul Foot was a inspiration and encouragement to many leftwing journalists. His 1980s columns in the Daily Mirror remain to this day an object lesson in how to get socialist ideas over to a mass audience. I still have many of the clippings.

I am fortunate enough to have gotten to know him a little in his final years, and to have talked him into writing a foreword for my first book. I only hope my adolescent-style hero-worship for the man was not too embarrassingly apparent when I was in his company.

His death is a loss for socialists of all stripes. Condolences to Clare and their daughter.
Dave Osler 

Invigorating support

Paul came from a different class background than myself, but never once faltered in his solidarity with working class people such as me and mine. He not only respected us, but rejoiced in our small victories, when we were able to gain better wages or conditions, and felt heartily sick when we suffered defeats. I can think of few others from his class background who supported with such confidence working class people in struggle.

Paul in his writing and politics never belittled, insulted or degraded workers. On the contrary, his every word invigorated us, gave us support and encouraged us to believe that ordinary working class people could play a major role in building a just nation, based on equality.
Mick Hall

Comradely legacy

I campaigned alongside Paul Foot for just three years when he was a local council and mayoral candidate in Hackney, as well as the editor of the Hackney Socialist Alliance newspaper.

Paul led the line for our class against theirs. As editor of our fledgling publication he showed how an enormously experienced Marxist can work collectively with others, new hands and old, on the basis of friendship, equality and honesty. The gap left for Respect in Hackney by Paul’s untimely death is huge, but one of Paul’s legacies is the confidence he showed in those whom he worked alongside.
It is with this confidence, and with the memory of Paul’s fighting spirit, that I - and I know many others in Hackney - will continue to carry forward the socialist cause that he exemplified, both in his campaigns and comradely relations with all of us.
Will McMahon