[Michael Foot has been selected by the Parliamentary…]
Woman Worker1980 1980-11-01Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 1 →
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Michael Foot has been selected by the Parliamentary Labour Party as the 'man most likely"
They see him as best equipped to stem a forward movement of workers that threatens to oust the Thatcher government and return a Labour government under stormy conditions.
Despite his ageing and tattered left' imagelaboriously refurbished by the Tory press in recent weeks-Foot has for years been a loyal servant of the Callaghan gang.
During the lifetime of the last Labour government Foot as a Cabinet minister lent his support to four phases of wage controls, to huge public spending cuts, mass unemployment, cash handouts to private industry, and intensified repression of the Irish people.
Since the election of the Tory government Foot has devoted his main energies to forestalling moves towards Labour Party democracy and bolstering the discredited Callaghan leadership.
Like Callaghan, Foot stands resolutely opposed to mass action to bring down the Tories. But his methods of argument for a perspective of seeking to pressurise Thatcher into a change of policy are more subtle and flexible than those of his main rival for the Party leadership, Dennis Healey.
While Healey bluntly and arrogantly argues the need for capitalist policies-wage cuts, public spending cuts and unemployment-to resolve the capitalist crisis, Foot seeks more tactfully to dress up the same policies as a variety of socialism.
It is on this basis that Foot has clearly won substantial support from the right wing dominated PLP, who recognise that they now face a battle to retain control of the Labour Party in the face of rising rank and file militancy.
Sooner than further antagonise the new left wing within the Party, the PLP have chosen Foot-whose flights of windy rhetoric will, they hope bamboozle them and defuse their struggle.
The fight for a principled socialist leadership in the labour movement must now proceed against Foot as it did against Callaghan. With the extreme right wing's chosen leader defeated, the battle will now be further out in the open in the run-up to the Special Conference in January.
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