Michael Foot: My kind of democracy (part 2)
Part 1 . Off and on during these past two and a half years since Labour's electoral defeat of May 1979, Goldsmith's famous lines have floated incongruously through my mind: When lovely woman stoops to folly And finds too late that men betray What charm can soothe her melancholy, What art can wash her guilt away? And political parties subjected to such outrages are even more difficult to soothe. It may be a slight comfort to recall that the condition is not unprecedented. The same RH Tawney, quoted last week, was the leading expert on Labour's post-1931 condition: "British socialists," he wrote...