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Paul Foot: A Life in Politics
A portrait of one of the most vital, and brilliant, journalists and writers of his generationPaul Foot was one of the most powerful and influential investigative reporters of his generation. For nearly 50 years he was the scourge of corrupt politicians and dodgy businessmen, and the champion of the causes of working people, the under-represented and the underprivileged.In this, the first biography of Paul Foot, the writer and journalist Margaret Renn traces Foot's personal, political and professional trajectory, placing his life and works within the historical narrative of postwar Britain and beyond.Drawing on extensive interviews with those who worked knew him and worked alongside him, along with an unparalleled knowledge of his prodigious output, the book brings the many different faces of Paul Foot together and shows him as one of the most vital, and brilliant, journalists and writers of his generation.A prolific writer for Daily Mirror, Guardian, London Review of Books among many others, his investigations broke some of the major stories of postwar Britain, from the sinking of the Belgrano during the Falklands war, the Tory Government’s assault on the coal miners in the 1984/5 strike, and the Labour Government’s catastrophic use of the Private Finance Initiative.But, equally, he told small stories about ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events, those like Colin Wallace, drummed out of army intelligence in Northern Ireland, or policeman Ron Smith, whose daughter Helen died in suspicious circumstances in Saudi Arabia.
384 pages, Hardcover
Published September 3, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 30, 2024
Superb. Ought to be read by every aspiring journalist and activist who hopes to change the world, expose corruption, injustice and lies.
April 4, 2026
There were two intertwined threads in the campaigning life of Paul Foot: his career as a brilliant investigative journalist, and his political activism as an advocate of “socialism from below”. Both of these are thoroughly covered in this excellent biography by Margaret Renn, who was Foot’s colleague and comrade.
Foot’s investigative pieces were mainly published in Private Eye, the Daily Mirror, and Socialist Worker. He was tireless in his efforts to expose miscarriages of justice and corruption in high places. His journalistic campaigning included his work on the Poulson corruption scandal, the Carl Bridgewater murder case, the Birmingham Six, and the Colin Wallace affair.
Incidentally, it is ironic, and a tribute to his investigative journalistic skills, that Foot was for a few years given a weekly column in a paper like the Daily Mirror.
As for his politics, Paul Foot was a firm believer in Marx’s dictum that the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself. Socialism cannot be handed down from above; and it certainly cannot be forced onto the majority against their wishes. A revolution is a mass movement, not a coup. Democracy and socialism are inseparable.
For Foot, the USSR and the other so-called “communist” states were actually bureaucratic state capitalist tyrannies. The person who first fully developed the theory of state capitalism was Tony Cliff. And Cliff, who was the founder of the group which became the Socialist Workers’ Party (Britain), was one of the key people who won Foot over to “socialism from below”. Foot then stayed loyal to those politics - as carried in Socialist Worker - for the rest of his life.
I saw and heard Paul Foot many times when he spoke at meetings. He was a brilliant, and very funny, speaker. But I spoke to him face-to-face only once, in the 1970s. He had impressed me at a meeting he had just addressed, but in the pub afterwards I asked him a question that worried me. I was convinced by his argument that socialism could only come through a democratic mass movement of workers. But I asked him what guarantee there was that a revolution would not lead to a new Stalin coming to power as a dictator.
His response was that the only guarantee against Stalinism was that workers would be running society through democratic workers’ councils, and that they would not LET anyone usurp power. This answer fits in perfectly with what Marx said was his model of a workers’ state: the Paris Commune. In the (sadly short-lived) Commune all officials were elected, subject to recall at any time and paid the average worker’s wage.
Foot’s views are also based on Marx’s argument that there are two reasons that a revolution is necessary. Firstly, because the control that the ruling class have over the economy and the state machine means that a mass revolution is necessary to overcome their power. Secondly, because "The ideas of the ruling class are in every age the ruling ideas." The capitalist class owns or controls most of the mass media. But workers’ ideas can change on a mass scale when they get involved in strikes and other protests. Then they learn the value of collective action and begin to see through the lies of the media.
This is what Marx meant when he wrote that “…revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.”
Paul Foot came from a privileged background, and he could have had an easy life. Instead, he dedicated his life to the cause of the working class and to fighting against injustice. I strongly recommend this biography. It is not just a book for “old Bolshies” like me. It will hopefully also help to inspire a new generation of investigative journalists and socialist activists.
Foot’s investigative pieces were mainly published in Private Eye, the Daily Mirror, and Socialist Worker. He was tireless in his efforts to expose miscarriages of justice and corruption in high places. His journalistic campaigning included his work on the Poulson corruption scandal, the Carl Bridgewater murder case, the Birmingham Six, and the Colin Wallace affair.
Incidentally, it is ironic, and a tribute to his investigative journalistic skills, that Foot was for a few years given a weekly column in a paper like the Daily Mirror.
As for his politics, Paul Foot was a firm believer in Marx’s dictum that the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself. Socialism cannot be handed down from above; and it certainly cannot be forced onto the majority against their wishes. A revolution is a mass movement, not a coup. Democracy and socialism are inseparable.
For Foot, the USSR and the other so-called “communist” states were actually bureaucratic state capitalist tyrannies. The person who first fully developed the theory of state capitalism was Tony Cliff. And Cliff, who was the founder of the group which became the Socialist Workers’ Party (Britain), was one of the key people who won Foot over to “socialism from below”. Foot then stayed loyal to those politics - as carried in Socialist Worker - for the rest of his life.
I saw and heard Paul Foot many times when he spoke at meetings. He was a brilliant, and very funny, speaker. But I spoke to him face-to-face only once, in the 1970s. He had impressed me at a meeting he had just addressed, but in the pub afterwards I asked him a question that worried me. I was convinced by his argument that socialism could only come through a democratic mass movement of workers. But I asked him what guarantee there was that a revolution would not lead to a new Stalin coming to power as a dictator.
His response was that the only guarantee against Stalinism was that workers would be running society through democratic workers’ councils, and that they would not LET anyone usurp power. This answer fits in perfectly with what Marx said was his model of a workers’ state: the Paris Commune. In the (sadly short-lived) Commune all officials were elected, subject to recall at any time and paid the average worker’s wage.
Foot’s views are also based on Marx’s argument that there are two reasons that a revolution is necessary. Firstly, because the control that the ruling class have over the economy and the state machine means that a mass revolution is necessary to overcome their power. Secondly, because "The ideas of the ruling class are in every age the ruling ideas." The capitalist class owns or controls most of the mass media. But workers’ ideas can change on a mass scale when they get involved in strikes and other protests. Then they learn the value of collective action and begin to see through the lies of the media.
This is what Marx meant when he wrote that “…revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.”
Paul Foot came from a privileged background, and he could have had an easy life. Instead, he dedicated his life to the cause of the working class and to fighting against injustice. I strongly recommend this biography. It is not just a book for “old Bolshies” like me. It will hopefully also help to inspire a new generation of investigative journalists and socialist activists.
December 31, 2024
As the title suggests, this book has a significant focus on Paul Foot’s involvement with various left-wing movements and the evolution of his political views. There’s still a lot in here about his journalism - the Bridgewater and Mirror chapters are highlights - but this is far from a how-to manual for journalists wanting to study his methods. Nor is it an in-depth account of his life away from journalism and politics. His affairs and failed marriages are acknowledged but not explored, for example. Margaret Renn has written a clear and authoritative account of Foot’s professional and political life. For further detail, she has included a very thorough bibliography of his own writings.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews