Paul Foot became one the most best known champions of the underdog. From victims of injustice who were falsely imprisoned accused of crimes they did not do, to those who exposed government crimes and lies, to striking workers. He was also a brilliantly eloquent advocate for socialism, something he did for decade after decade, in newspapers, magazines, pamphlets and, most brilliantly, in meetings. Many comrades, in and out of the SWP, have their favourite Paul Foot talk - from the Peasants' Revolt, to Toussaint L'ouverture. His columns in national newspapers, particularly the Daily Mirror, were avidly read and enjoyed by tens of thousands and, no doubt, helped keep the flame of resistance flying during the dark days of the 1980s.
Foot's life might have been radically different. He came from a wealthy, establishment background. His father, Sir Hugh Foot, was a senior diplomat, including playing a central role in the Britain's governship of Palestine. Foot's family included Michael Foot, and Paul could likely have had a long and important career in Parliament had he been prepared to take that step.
But Foot did not take that path. Renn explores that early, formative period, at university. It is very clear that despite the conservative nature of those around him, Foot was able to find a layer of people whose liberal politics and desire to poke fun at the Establishment began to take him down a path toward radical ideas and politics. It is common, when discussing Foot's politics, to show the importance of these relationships to his development. Several of the people Foot met at Oxford became crucial to his life - including key figures at Private Eye. Encountering socialists and revolutionaries outside of this milleau also began to change his ideas - two of these, Harry McShane and Tony Cliff, were crucial in developing Foot's own Marxism.
But it is also clear that there is another factor. After leaving Oxford University, his early work as a journalist put him in touch with working people, and engagement that would shape his life. Foot began his journalism, and his engagement with revolutionary politics in the early 1960s. It was, however, the struggles of working people that capatured Foot's imagination. Foot, Renn tells, once told an audience about how reading Karl Marx's Civil War in France, "smashed all my exciting parliamentary ambitions". But these ideas only made sense when they came into contact with the struggles of workers, and through his involvement in the International Socialists, Foot saw those ideas become concrete. By the 1970s Foot had been involved in mass struggles - strikes by workers, anti-war protests, anti-nuclear movements and so on. Throughout his life he never forgot the lessons he learnt in this period. In particular, he celebrated the self-organisation and collective power through his work.
Had Foot only been an armchair socialist, reading and writing, he would likely have produced a number of important and interesting works. But it was the way he placed himself at the heart of struggles - both collective and individual, that drove his political life. Indeed, as Renn points out, it was these experiences that made his work so powerful. When writing about racism, Foot was able to,
draw on his experience of a strike at Courtauld's Red Scar plant in Preston, in the mid 1960s. The plant employed thousands of workers, including hundreds of Asian and Caribbean workers... The local union branch of the TGWU negotiated a 50 per cent increase in workload for a meagre 3 per cent increase in wages. All the workers rejected the deal. But on 24 May 1865, amangement of the section where the Asian and Caribbean workers were concenrtared announced the introduction of the speed-up. In response, the workers downed tools.
But the union leaders in the "white" sections of the factory refused to call out their members in solidarity. One union official described the strike as "racial". When the black workers were defeated, management introduced the speed up to all workers. Racism had divided the workers, and the failure of the white workers to unite, had led to their collective defeat.
Such lessons, and much more successful strikes, inspired Foot throughout his life. Renn shows how he was never happier than when engaged with such action. As a result, workers loved him, were inspired by him, and became activists and socialists themselves. There's no doubt that Foot was central to the growth of the SWP and its development as an organisation that could punch far above the weight implied by its few thousand members.
That said I was surprised that Tony Cliff's life and role wasn't give a larger importance by Renn. Foot finished his introduction to Cliff's autobiography by noting "there are quite a few of us socialists in Britain over the past 40 years or so who thank our lucky stars that we had the chance to stand on his shoulders." While Renn tells us of some of the disagreements between the two, I would have liked more on how they developed political ideas together, how they organised and how they discussed. Likewise, other key socialists in the SWP have only passing mentions - Chris Harman and Duncan Hallas, for instance.
These individuals were important to Foot. But it is clear that Foot's politics arose in a dialectical engagement with working class action. The struggles of the 1960s, 70s and 80s, shaped Foot. Without them he would have been a very different person. But he was not just a passive recipient celebrating workers in some abstract way. He did everything he could to develop the confidence and combativity of the working class movement. Leftists often celebrate Foot's ability to popularise and recover forgotten radical figures such as the revolutoinary poet Shelley. But it is also true that he was central to making sure that anti-racist and pro-immigrant politics were part of the left's furniture - not something that was at all automatic. His fights against injustice, the Carl Bridgewater case, the injustice suffered by Colin Wallace, the case of James Hanratty, the Guildford 4 and Birmingham Six, are well known. They were part of his struggle for a better world.
Of course Foot was more than a socialist and journalist. Margaret Renn also tells the story of his personal and family life. Some readers will find this aspect to the biography more interesting than others. But what comes across is a the story of a man who enjoyed life, and dedicated himself to trying to make sure that ordinary people got the best of the world. Today, the world cries out for justice and an end to capitalism. The arguments made by Paul Foot, with eloquence and passion in books like Why you Should be a Socialist still resonate and hold true today. So Margaret Renn's book celebrates his amazing life, and deserves to be read by a new generation of activists. Partly this is in the hope that a new generation of investigative journalists, bloggers and podcasters will learn from Foot the sort of persistence and politics that is needed to win. But the main reason is the hope that new generations engage with the type of socialism that Paul Foot spent his life struggling for: ideas that sees the working class as the revolutionary power that can emancipate humanity.
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