Book brings memories of an old adversary

Just as in those rowdy meetings more than four decades ago, I can accept very little of the arguments Foot passionately puts forward in The Vote. He reveals only one moment of doubt, one dark evening in 1975 when the convulsions of the early part of the decade, which had brought real hope of his glorious revolution, had once again proved false shadows.

He was cheered by the words of a fellow journalist on the Socialist Worker. "If the revolution doesn't come there is nothing much we can do about that. Whether it comes or not there is nothing for us to do but what we are doing now, fight for it, fight for the workers and the poor."

Which is what Foot continued to do to the bitter end.

With the book read and time on my hands, I paid a courtesy visit to his grave in Highgate Cemetery in London. On the headstone is an inscription from a poem by Shelly.

Rise like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number
Shake your chains from earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you
Ye are many – they are few

Trudging away into the gathering gloom, I noticed his grave was just a few metres from that of Karl Marx.