The Hand of Foot

Readers heard a new tone in the voice of London's Socialist Tribune. In its "declaration of war" which charted its course for the new year there was a more rhetorical and more commanding note. Tribune promised to devote the year to "lambasting the Tories, exposing humbug, discrediting frauds. . . . We do not propose to be hustled into a new authoritarianism by the shrieks of the Communists."

This voice identified itself last week as Michael Foot, 34, a wiry, wily Labor M.P. whose last editorial command was acting editor of Lord Beaverbrook's Evening Standard. He has been a Tribune director since 1945. An ice-cold logician and red-hot debater, Foot is one of a minority of parliamentary Laborites who know what they mean when they call themselves Socialists.

Shortly after Dunkirk, as a bright Beaverboy of 27, Mike Foot helped write Guilty Men, an indictment of the Chamberlain government (TIME, Sept. 30, 1940). The Beaver pretended not to notice. But when Foot gave the Tories the other barrel in The Trial of Mussolini, Beaverbrook dropped him as editor. Since mid-1944, Foot has done his sharpshooting from his column in the Laborite Daily Herald. ("The central problem of Toryism remains the same: how to get the poor to vote for the rich man's cause.")

Tribune needed Foot. The weekly, spokesman for a highly placed Socialist group, boasted the best ministerial connections. But Fleet Street had long gossiped that Tribune's position was the weakest of the "big five" weekend papers.* Sir Stafford Cripps, co-founder of Tribune in 1937, had long since stopped backing it. It had dipped into the red, and barely held its 18,000 circulation. The next six months might settle Tribune's fate.

Mike Foot, who replaced Managing Editor Jon Kimche, hopes to settle it favorably. As "joint editor" with Mrs. Evelyn Anderson, a veteran Tribune wheelhorse, Foot hopes to spice up the critical columns, open up the pages to more young hopefuls. He also wants to build up Tribune's lively, intelligent, often acidulous handling of U.S. affairs. And he is anxious to lift what he calls the iron curtain between the U.S. and British labor movements.

*The others: Economist, New Statesman, Time & Tide, Spectator.

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