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p18
 Paul
Foot has been described by Geoffrey Goodman, editor of the British Journalism Review, as
'one of the outstanding reporters of his generation'. This is due to 'his fearless
honesty, intellectual courage, exceptional persistence and integrity in pursuit of social
justice and the fight for decency in our society'. Whew. So why does a man possessing all
those high-minded virtues want to be Mayor of Hackney?
Issues such as the bin collection, unpaid council tax, parking zones, hit squads in
schools, library closures and the animals in Clissold Park hardly seem the stuff of heroic
principle, although some might say that he would need all his qualities and a few more
besides if he won the top post. His columns in the Guardian and Private Eye don't pull any
punches. Fat cats, Blairites, privatisers, tax evaders, right-wing trade unionists, arms
traders and assorted dodgy dealers in business and government regularly get a good
thumping from a man who rejected his privileged background to use his journalistic skills
to promote what he believes to be the interests of those at the bottom of the pile.
So it was with a twinge of trepidation that I pressed the buzzer on his entryphone. If I
revealed that I was a member of the Labour Party, would I be on the receiving end of a
stern lecture about its leadership's betrayal of the workers? Was his bright red front
door a political statement in itself? I needn't have worried; a man in casual clothes,
moving rather slowly, greeted me warmly and asked if I knew that a person with the same
name as myself had written a biography of Shelley, his favourite poet? I didn't. We moved
into his cluttered kitchen and tried to find some space on the table which was piled high
with newspapers. A black cat jumped around and a child's replica Arsenal shirt hung from
the back of a chair.
Paul Foot spent his early years in Jamaica where his father Sir Hugh Foot was Governor.
His education in Britain was expensive; he attended Ludgrove, the exclusive prep school
where Prince Harry was groomed for the royal merry-go-round. At Shrewsbury public school,
he met Richard Ingrams, Willie Rushton and Christopher Booker, with whom he worked on
Private Eye some years later. The King's Shropshire Light Infantry was the local regiment
for his national service and as a well-bred young man he was sent to Officer Cadet School
where, far from seeing himself as a future military leader, he was, in his own words,
'completely useless'. However, in the fine tradition of the British Army, incompetence was
no barrier to becoming an officer and he was posted to the Jamaica Regiment on the island
where his father still represented Britain's imperial interests.
 At Oxford he was
President of the Liberal Club. He then became 'a sort of socialist'. There was no blinding
conversion but he says he was 'instinctively a Red' when he worked for the Daily Record in
Glasgow from 1961. He became involved with the Labour Party Young Socialists when that
part of Scotland was a ferment of left-wing debate. The two main strands were those
supporting the Communist Party with Jimmy Reid and Jimmy Airlie, who were the leaders of
the Clyde Shipbuilders occupation, and the Trotskyist tendency which claimed people like
Gus (now Lord) MacDonald amongst its adherents. Foot sided with the latter. He couldn't
entirely escape his background - his uncle is Michael Foot - and he was twice offered the
candidacy of seats for the Labour Party but rejected the proposals.
He finally left the party in 1967, after canvassing for Ben Whitaker, the successful
Labour parliamentary candidate in Hampstead. He recalls knocking on doors for the
subsequent GLC election to be told by the same voters that Labour had let them down. Foot
believes Blair's lack of firmly-rooted principles and control freakery has worsened the
situation and this is reflected in the rapidly falling party membership and voting
figures. He says 'people want to be represented, not managed'.
His journalistic career took various twists and turns. He worked for a very short time on
the Daily Herald which became the pre-Murdoch
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