Paul Foot 1937- 2004 obituaries and appreciations
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Tuesday July 27, 2004 18:06
by SWP member
Obituaries and appreciations of Paul Foot
Paul Foot, who died last weekend, was one of the greatest socialist writers and orators of his generation, who inspired thousands of activists from the time he became a socialist in the early 1960s until the last week of his life. He was also a celebrated campaigning journalist, who supported workers in struggle and took up cases of wrongful imprisonment, bringing about the resignation of a Tory home secretary and helping to free many innocent people from jail.
Here are a few links to obituaries and appreciations of Paul.
http://www.istendency.net/node/view/18?storyID=19
Comments (30 of 30)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30RIP paul foot. I knew him only as a guardian columnist, and not a British SWP big-wig, and enjoyed his writing.
While on another thread (about the RESPECT coalition) I noticed that the respect website said that foot "Believed" in socialism. To the best of my knowledge, socialism is not a belief system. Am I , or RESPECT seriously wrong here? I found it really cheapening to the man and his politics.
Also : whats the word on RESPECT from the Irish SWP ? Sugar candy socialism, or another bold step from our thoughtful british comrades?
if you are working class socialism is what you struggle for: better wage, less work, better life, emancipate your class. if, like paul foot and most swp leaders, you come from the middle and upper classes socialism is in fact an abstract belief. usually it is associated with personal thirst for power: that's why upper class *socialists* love lenin. like lenin, they don't want to *join* the working class, they want to lead it.
You are an insolent pup.
It is all about belief systems now.
Bow down to Ladbrokes , SORRY Mecca!
How do you join the working class? Where can I get a membership card? Who do I speak to?
Answer
I'm sorry you cannot join the working class you either are part of it or you aren't. Different people have contrary views of what the working class comprises of but it is generally agreed that anyone who earns a wage is working class.
A recent study by UCD with 2nd level students has shown that despite the students identifying their parents as working class, they did not see themselves as so.
Anyway, sad to see Paul Foot pass away. The man was gifted in writing hard hitting journalism and had a gra for plain english often missing on the left.
If I was to be critical, I would say his one fault was that he didn't stand up for dissidents within the SWP as he always did for the working class. But no ones perfect..........
Thank you Paul Foot for the Lifetime you gave t the struggle for worker rights and the fight for a more just world.
The four comments posted afterwards are a disgrace and show yet again why this site is of dubious value as long as it is infested with sectarian shit .Personally I will never again visit this site if this is the standard of comments that a decent, humane and committed socialist gets after his death.
Shame on you all.
See ya
what's next? we shouldn't criticise stalin because he is dead!?
if you don't like indymedia do something about it. get involved or launch a better website. harmchair socialists who always complain about indymedia and post messages saying this is the last time they visit this site are boring. stop complaining, do something about it.
DON'T MOURN, ORGANISE!
How was my comment sectarian?
Paul Foot was a fighter for the working class. He was one of the few 'haves' who sided with the 'have not's'. I respect him for that.
That does not mean that I will place a halo around his head, he was human and had his faults.
If you think thats being sectarian, well thats your problem
So long, you won't be missed
is the man in Heaven, Hell or some other state such as Limbo or Purgatory?
or has the level of debate sunk so low in Irish "so called intellectual circles" that Dante's cosmogeny only means a 2euro Italian coin to ye?
From todays Mirror:
MOURNERS FAREWELL TO 'INSPIRING' PAUL FOOT Jul 28 2004
By David Seymour
ALMOST 3,000 turned out yesterday to say their farewells to the campaigning journalist Paul Foot. A unique tribute to a unique man.
We were told Paul wouldn't want us to be miserable - but no one there could help it.
The mourners spilled out from the crematorium chapel in Golders Green, North London.
His wicker coffin stood covered with the Red Flag on which was draped a Plymouth Argyle scarf and a West Indies rosette, representing his three great loves - socialism, football and cricket.
Jim Nichol, who knew him for 43 years, said: "Paul was a socialist who was proud of his kids.
"He had optimism, he had enthusiasm. He was an inspiration."
But very occasionally politics took second place, Jim added. Paul once made an excuse to leave a SWP meeting early - only to be spotted on TV watching his hero Ian Botham batting for England at Lord's.
Some of those who Paul had done so much for were in the congregation - Colin Wallace, the MI5 officer falsely jailed; Vincent Hickey, wrongly imprisoned; and Jim Swire, leader of the Lockerbie relatives.
Richard Ingrams, a schoolmate who worked with him on Private Eye, said: "He would listen for hours to people who had been dismissed by others as nutcases. Because to him they had been failed by the system."
Paul's sons John Matt and Tom spoke movingly, Matt finding the epitaph: "He never lost his passion for socialism or for life."
After singing the Internationale, they walked out led by Paul's uncle Michael Foot, and Tony Benn.
He would have loved it.
I dont think my comment was disrespectful in any way. For a start, this thread is unlikely to be read by foots family and friends.
I diddnt sully his name in any way, but asked some questions of the Irish SWP and RESPECT. Of course those who rather personal rants to a bit of open discourse on this site(among them the SWP), this is seen as downright rude.
Socialism is not a belief system - so why say it is? it reduces Foots lifelong politics (and many of ours) to the level of the religious right - or dare I say it Blair and new Labour ,who "believe" in everything from war on Iraq to the power of the market.
Also: Whats the Irish SWP position on RESPECT ? Have you embraced Religion as unquestioningly as your British comrades? Will you all be heading down the local Church / Mosque / synagogue / new-spiritual-hocum centre after the next cover group meeting?
Thought it's not really appropriate to the discussion of Paul Foot, the response to Conor's query re: the Respect coalition is that they strike me as a little unprincipled to say the least. Take a look at this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/3891111.stm
Hopefully the clip is still there. It's Lyndsey German of said coalition saying why religious support for rape and the oppression of women and homosexuals has to be "put in context". I find it hard to see what context might justify it, but no doubt someone on this site will enlighten me.
Respect grew out of the anti-war movement and therefore doesn't want to go annoying any potential Muslim fundamentalist supporters by saying anything too contraversial about human rights. This strikes me as being a little cowardly for a left-wing party, but then there have been plenty of unlikely political bedfellows in the past few years.
Paul Foot was consistent and willbe chiefly remembered for the good he did. However his politics were by no means perfect.
In the late 1980s he wrote and published a pamplet on Ireland that bemoaned all sides as 'tribes' and categorised republicans as terrorists. He called for a military UN interventation (an odd position for a Marxist to take!). It was like something a concerned British Labour Party type might write. His politics on Ireland read like those of a colonial type. Patronising and out of touch.
Apart from that I'll remember him as a fighter for ordinary people who are rarely heard in the corporate media. As least Foot gave them an occasional voice in the British national press.
Paul Foot brought out a book titled 'Why you should be a socialist' in 1977.
Then along came a group called the Communist Workers Movement who brought out a booklet called 'Why Paul Foot should be a socialist'.
Classic stuff
I am absolutely enraged.
In the midst of an obituary the usual smear and gunk seeps out about Respect and the new found religious fervour amoung Irish SWP members.
Socialists are almost exclusively materialists in their philosophical beliefs, this does not exclude them from working with others of altenative belief systems, particularly given the current climate of Islamophobic hysteria.
I think all fundementalism is inherently dangerous, dogmatic political belief systems included, but is nothing sacred?
A tribute thread to Paul Foot, a leading socialist figure of considerable integrity is not the time or place for red baiting.
Its miserably depressing, and the high incidence of this sort of behaviour is creating an unsavoury atmosphere on indymedia, a forum I try hard to support, but am consistently uneasy about the company I am sometimes forced to keep on various discussion threads.
Paul Foot came from a middle class background and so his work and opinions have no validity.
I agree with Ms. Lux - there are times when this can be quite an unpleasant place. I contribute at times as an editor, but I'm not sure what editorial guideline could deal with lack of respect... that should really be part of the culture.
Paul Foot seems to have spent much of his 67 years writing and working to try and effect social change. For this he is to be admired. In September, Private Eye the magazine he covered so many stories for is bringing out a dedicated edition. Many of those who's campaigns he worked on and wrote about have spoken of him, regardless of their opinions of his politics. His party has published on him in the journal he used edit, as have others from his milieue.
Reading all of this closed or commercial or controlled media - the same media that Paul Foot spent much of his life working on and using for his version of the greater good (which was not a bad one) - you constantly see the meaning of respect.
Reading this open media, here and on the Joe Cahill thread, you see the problems with open media. Since you introduced it Conor, show some. Read back as if you were a family member.
Paul Foot R.I.P.
In a sudden focus pulling moment of near beatific clarity while reading Seedot's posting it suddenly occured to me that the remedy for all this sectarian unpleasantness is actually RESPECT! for one another, not to sound like a fuzzy brained dribbling hippy but it is sorely lacking on this forum.
What you end up with at the lower end of the intellectual food chain is nasty sectarian personalised slander that would make one want to run right out and join the establishment rather than remain stranded in the quagmire of marganalised, bitter naval gazing rant world.
We, collectively, are better than that people. And just for the record people like Paul Foot who participated in conventional media do so with a clear agenda of reaching the ill informed masses in an effort to counter much of the force fed establishment propaganda and are to be admired and respected for doing so.
Standing outside the building screaming or endlessly preaching to the converted serves little purpose other than to make one feel smug and superior. In the long run it exhausts and demoralises us.
Also in answer to 'dissident republican's' one line post on the middle classes I would like state I consider myself to be utterly classless, in fact I would expect to be laughed at if I tried passing myself off as anything but from a solidly declasse background, utterly classless, and clever and free!
Stick that in your pipe bomb and smoke it.
And now, if you'll excuse me, I shall retire in my cashmere kaftan to my boudoir of soft satin and silk and drift off to the soothing tones of Satie.
This is an open newswire, who decides what is and isn't respectful? People (lot's of them) read and contribute to indymedia because it is not comformist, because it's lively, because there are different opinions.
I can tell you that most swp members, out of sheer political and intellectual deprivation, spend a lot of time reading indymedia. Paul Foot was a memebr of the SWP and that alone proves that his politic was not perfect.
First of all; I did not disrespect Paul Foot – I paid my respects online, and then asked questions of the perverse "tribute" in the equally perverse "respect" website - that seemed to liken his politics to religion. look at my first Post.
The justifications Ive heard from SWP members regarding their role in a religious-socialist (a dichotomy if ever) political party/coalition have been as theoretically, and intellectually decrepit as ive come to expect from that party.
I have no doubt there is a large amount of "Islamophopia" out there, but only the SWP could propose that a coalition with Reactionaries, Religious, and psuedo Socialist cretin no1 George Galloway represent a way forward for a progressive movement.
People have the right to believe in whatever bullshit they want, Socialists and Libertarians may justify campaigning with religious groups where there are clear examples of rights being violated, but crossing over and embracing a group that sees homosexuality as "a sexual perversion" is not the stuff of Revolutionary Socialism.
Many Christians/Muslims/Jews/etc feel dispossessed in various states, and are in a minority, should Marxists Trotskyites Anarchists and Bolsheviks demand their right to freedom of religious expression on a libertarian basis? yes - or at least that is debateable, Should they join and stand for election with them and ignore the nasty side to their social outlook that is informed by their belief in supernatural entities? NO. Certainly not.
RESPECT is not the way forward for the left. My question to the SWP – why not attempt coalitions with progressives and other Socialists, instead of joining the reactionaries and charlatans in an frothy, purposeless unbridled grasp for power and office?
This seems like cover groups gone to a puerile half baked extreme. I suspect that beneath all the usual SWP horseshit, it is mearly another attempt to recruit, and sell papers to the dispossesed youth - in this case the dispossed Muslim youth. As a comrade remarked yesterday, any dispossessed Muslims in Britain, wont be worshipping, or in the MAB, or for that matter in the SWP.
It’s a nice end to the "socialist" party of Protz . About as Socialist as NewLabour, and just as opportunistic too.
As ive asked 8 times on this site so far - Whats the Irish SWPs position on RESPECT ?
Death of Paul Foot
He was, according to The Guardian, "the most seductive revolutionary socialist of his generation" and with the death of Paul Foot on 18 July, aged 66, the cause of Irish freedom has lost an articulate, passionate and consistent friend.
Although the product of a privileged English background, Foot, having committed himself, never wavered in his belief in socialism, a conviction which he channelled through investigative journalism and campaigning on a number of high profile miscarriages of justice. He is probably best remembered for his role in overturning the convictions of the Bridgewater Three and the Birmingham Six and his tireless campaigning on the case of James Hanratty.
In Ireland, however, and particularly in republican circles, Paul Foot was particularly highly regarded for the work he did in exposing Britain's dirty war in the Six Counties. His book, Why Britain Should Get Out of Ireland, made the case for a united Ireland in his characteristically logical but trenchant and entertaining style.
But it was his book Who Framed Colin Wallace? that formed a crucial part of the exposure of the British Government's conduct in Ireland. The Tory government under Margaret Thatcher, and much of the British press, had consistently denounced Wallace as a "Walter Mitty" character after he was sacked by the MoD for refusing to take part in political dirty tricks. When he began to talk and write his previous involvement in what was known as "psyops" and the scandal of the Kincora Boys Home, he was framed for the murder of his friend and imprisoned.
In 1990, however, the government was forced, via an announcement by the Armed Forces Minister in Parliament in front of a squirming Mrs Thatcher, to admit that the key allegations made by Wallace were in fact the case. It took further six years of work by his supporters, including Paul Foot, to have his conviction for murder overturned.
Paul Foot regularly used the platforms he had, latterly in The Guardian, to campaign on Ireland almost until the end. On Christmas Eve last year he berated Tony Blair about the British Government's failure to track down the Dublin and Monaghan bombers and the failure to act on the Barron Report. "It seems that the government is committed to the war on terror" he said,"but not so committed when the British Army, Intelligence or police might be involved in the terror."
Paul Foot just like Mary Lou McDonald is middleclass. The right to fight for the working class belongs to the working class. There are many working class English people who could do what Paul Foot done but were not given the chance. They were kept down just so that a priveliged person like Foot could reap the rewards. In the same way, Sinn Fein has put the middle class Mary Lou in Europe where she will enjoy a big salary. There are many working class Dubliners who could do this job just as well as Mary Lou and who need the money a lot more. This shows how the Provos S.F. under Gerry Adams are no longer real Irish republican revolutionaries.
What is this nonsense from Ms Lux (Dave Lordon) about 'red baiting'? This seems to be the SWP's stock response these days to any criticism from the LEFT.
Grow up SWP.
Paul Foot will be missed.
R.I.P.
RIP
you Sir passed your torch.
exactly where and to whom I've no idea, because when I was young you led the British Labour Party, which arguably was still then a "movement".
Sadly that party doesn't exist anymore, and the movement sort of got forgotten about when that nasty woman Thatcher abolished society.
I have to admit i liked you, but you would never have made it in the XXI century you weren't pretty enough for TV which is why Tony Blair got to kill your party. Tony is pretty and looks good on TV with his cheery boyish smile and twinkling eyes, pity about his drug habit though.
anyway, you will be missed. You were missed. and eh You did ahem, miss.
we all did.
I am at this stage alarmed at the regularity of my postings being mistaken for those of Dave Lordan (aka Red Satan)
Ive even been referred to on occasion as 'clonakilty pudding'.
I am, alas, unmistakeably female, as reading certain prevoius postings would make obvious.
Its amusing to me that many here subconsciously assume themselves to be in exclusively male company.
In relation to Lordan, I've met the boy on occasion, and while he seems perfectly fine his politics are not those I would align myself with.
I personally, am extremely vocal in my criticisms of Respect as I think there are serious questions that need addressing in relation to Socialist elements aligning themselves alongside Islamic fundamentalists of highly questionable and at times extremely dangerous belief systems.
Many of Conor's questions and criticisms are justified, but not appropriate on an obituary thread, that, was the point.
Pain in my plump pert ass having to explain everything endlessly, think I'll fuck off to ebay, see if I cant bag me a pair of Westwood stilletos.
This is indeed an obituary thread, but my posts refered to the respect websites "tribute" to foot, which I considered as Disgusting as RESPECT.
Would anyone from the Irish SWP (9th time) care to say what they think about RESPECT?
One of the aims of socialism is a classless society. Your belief that those from a certain background should be excluded from the quest for such a society would indicate that you are not a socialist but rather an idiot.
All respect to the departed.
But perhaps someone should tell merrovinginvanjan aka ipsiphi that PAUL Foot was never leader of the Labour Party ..... that was his uncle MICHAEL Foot .......
So farewell then wealthy socialist
you and friends want to take money from all of us through higher taxes,
to give to the few.
in other words
yourselves
Doh! Doh! Doh!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Foot
doh! doh! doh!
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