Michael Foot: Trending quotes (page 2)

“How long will it be before the cry goes up: "Let's kill all the judges?"”

Michael Foot

Attacking the National Industrial Relations Court and its President, Sir John Donaldson, in a speech at the Scottish Miners' Gala in Edinburgh (3 June 1972)
1970s

Cry

“It's impossible to write the history of freedom in this country without telling how trade unions have contributed to it.”

Michael Foot

Source: On the ITV's Weekend World (4 April 1976)

History , Freedom , Country

“Since the matter has been raised, may I say that the individual concerned is not an endorsed member of the Labour Party, and, so far as I am concerned, never will be endorsed? [Interruption. ] May I add that, as the Labour Party has played the leading part in the establishment and sustenance of parliamentary democracy, we do not need any instructions on the matter from skin-deep democrats on the Conservative Benches or defectors on this side?”

Michael Foot

Remark http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1981/dec/03/engagements-1 in the House of Commons (3 December 1981), referring to Peter Tatchell. Foot subsequently corrected "endorsed member" to "endorsed candidate".
1980s

Democracy , Parting

“I certainly think that a Labour Government will have to have effective powers to control the outflow of capital.”

Michael Foot

Source: On Election Call (21 February 1974)

Thinking

“Disraeli was my favourite Tory. He was an adventurer pure and simple, or impure and complex. I'm glad to say Gladstone got the better of him.”

Michael Foot

March 1975
1970s

“The members of our secret service have apparently spent so much time under the bed looking for communists that they haven't had the time to look in the bed.”

Michael Foot

on the Profumo Scandal, 1963
1960s

Secret , Time

“The rights and the circumstances of the people in the Falkland Islands must be uppermost in our minds. There is no question in the Falkland Islands of any colonial dependence or anything of the sort. It is a question of people who wish to be associated with this country and who have built their whole lives on the basis of association with this country. We have a moral duty, a political duty and every other kind of duty to ensure that that is sustained. The people of the Falkland Islands have the absolute right to look to us at this moment of their desperate plight, just as they have looked to us over the past 150 years. They are faced with an act of naked, unqualified aggression, carried out in the most shameful and disreputable circumstances. Any guarantee from this invading force is utterly worthless—as worthless as any of the guarantees that are given by this same Argentine junta to its own people.”

Michael Foot

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1982/apr/03/falkland-islands in the House of Commons (3 April 1982) after Argentina's invasion of the Falkland Islands.
1980s

People , Question , Past , Dependency

“Some fool or some trigger happy judicial finger.”

Michael Foot

On the NIRC Judge Sir John Donaldson (Hansard, 7 May 1974, Col. 239)
1970s

Fools , Happiness

“We had not the armour, the strength, the quickness in manoeuvre, yes, the leadership”

Michael Foot

explaining Labour's 1983 election defeat when he was leader in his book Another Heart And Other Pulses, 1984.
1980s

“Most liberties have been won by people who broke the law”

Michael Foot

interview, 1980
1980s

People , Law

“No rising hope on the political scene who offered his services to Labour when I happened to be its leader can be dismissed as an opportunist.”

Michael Foot

On Tony Blair, 1995
1990s

Hope

“[There are] judges who stretch the law…to suit reactionary attitudes.”

Michael Foot

On ITV's People and Politics (9 May 1974)
1970s

Law

“The right hon. Member for Heseltine—[Laughter. ]—well, that is what he is; he sticks to that principle more than he does to Henley.”

Michael Foot

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1991/mar/26/community-charges-general-reduction-bill in the House of Commons (26 March 1991), referring to Michael Heseltine. MPs are referred to in the House by the constituency they represent rather than by their name, so Mr Heseltine would be "Rt. Hon. Member for Henley". Whether by accident or intent, Foot mixed this up in a way which clearly amused other MPs.
1990s

Laughter

“Is the Labour Party to remain a democratic party in which the right of free criticism and free debate is not merely tolerated but encouraged? Or are the rank and file of the party to be bludgeoned or cowed into an uncritical subservience towards the leadership?”

Michael Foot

Tribune, 1954.
1950s

“Think of it! A second Chamber selected by the Whips. A seraglio of eunuchs.”

Michael Foot

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1969/feb/03/parliament-no-2-bill in the House of Commons (3 February 1969)
1960s

Thinking

“We are paramountly concerned, like, I am sure, the bulk of the House—I am sure that the country is also concerned—about what we can do to protect those who rightly and naturally look to us for protection. So far, they have been betrayed. The responsibility for the betrayal rests with the Government. The Government must now prove by deeds—they will never be able to do it by words—that they are not responsible for the betrayal and cannot be faced with that charge. That is the charge, I believe, that lies against them. Even though the position and the circumstances of the people who live in the Falkland Islands are uppermost in our minds—it would be outrageous if that were not the case—there is the longer-term interest to ensure that foul and brutal aggression does not succeed in our world. If it does, there will be a danger not merely to the Falkland Islands, but to people all over this dangerous planet.”

Michael Foot

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1982/apr/03/falkland-islands in the House of Commons (3 April 1982) after Argentina's invasion of the Falkland Islands.
1980s

People , World , Nature , Betrayal

“Men of power have not time to read; yet men who do not read are unfit for power”

Michael Foot

On Benjamin Disraeli, in his own book, 'Debts of Honour
1980s

Men , Time , Reading

“It is all the more necessary that we should prevent an extension of the powers of the European Assembly, however it may be elected. I have been opposed to the extension of those powers, and I remain so. … We must preserve every precious part of the power that we retain in the House.”

Michael Foot

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1986/jun/26/extended-meaning-of-the-treaties-and-the#S6CV0100P0_19860626_HOC_324 in the House of Commons (26 June 1986) against the Single European Act
1980s

Housing , Parting

“I am asking this movement to exert itself as it has never done before, to show the qualities which we have, the socialist imagination that exists in our movement, the readiness to reforge the alliance, stronger than ever, between the government and the trade unions, and above all to show the supreme quality in politics, the red flame of socialist courage.”

Michael Foot

Source: Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool (29 September 1975), quoted in Kenneth O. Morgan, Michael Foot (Harper Perennial, 2008), p. 319

Courage , Imagination

“In the Labour movement they said they would have no truck with coalition, but if Britain stayed in the EEC then for decades to come they would be enmeshed in various forms of coalition government than ever before. That was the most important issue of all. If in Britain the people did not like a government they could vote it out of office, but they had no similar recourse in the case of the institutions of the EEC, which had supreme powers and which were undemocratic.”

Michael Foot

Speech to the Labour Party conference on Britain's membership of the EEC (26 April 1975), quoted in The Times (28 April 1975), p. 4
1970s

People