David Pryce-Jones, National ReviewMichael Foot, the veteran Socialist trounced in a general election by Mrs. Thatcher, has died at the venerable age of 96. Perhaps it is only right and proper that the obituaries contain nothing but compliments to his oratory, his energy, his wide reading, his idealism, and all the rest of it. About his truculent assumption of moral and intellectual superiority there is no hint. To me, he represented the very worst features of the 1930s in which period his character was formed and became stuck....
...For him, it was much better to be Red than Dead. I always used to imagine what role he would have played in the event of a Soviet invasion and take-over. Probably he would have refined the argument that we should all cooperate with the Soviets in order to mitigate what they would do if we opposed them. And perhaps they would have shot him because he'd given evidence of being ready for treason.
And then along came Oleg Gordievsky, the most senior KGB officer ever to defect. Among other startling evidence, he informed us that Foot had taken money from the Soviets to subsidize Tribune, the hard Left socialist publication. Confronted with this, Foot said he couldn't remember. ... The obituaries that I have seen are silent about this, but that was when dread of what the man stood for turned into contempt for him. Couldn't remember a commitment like that?