Foot, Michael

Autor: Foot, Michael
Rok: 1913-2010
Oblast působnosti: politici, novináři, spisovatelé

Biogr./Hist. údaje: Britský politik, publicista a spisovatel. Autor prací z oblasti politiky a biografií Jonathana Swifta a Aneurina Bevana.
Zdroj: Autoritní databáze Národní knihovny ČR

Michael Mackintosh Foot FRSL (23 July 1913 – 3 March 2010) was a British Labour Party politician and man of letters who 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 the Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition from 1980 to 1983. As leader, his nickname was "Worzel Gummidge".Associated with the left of the Labour Party for most of his career, Foot was an ardent supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and British withdrawal from the European Economic Community. He was appointed to the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Employment under Harold Wilson in 1974, and he later served as Leader of the House of Commons under James Callaghan. A passionate orator, he led Labour through the 1983 general election, when the party obtained its lowest share of the vote at a general election since 1918 and the fewest parliamentary seats it had had at any time since before 1945.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.