Mark Stuart: The peacemonger who left Labour at war

In fact, Foot did not wear a donkey jacket, but rather a new, dark

green coat, purchased from Harrods. After the ceremony, the Queen Mother even complimented him on his attire. "What a nice coat, Mr Foot," she said.

The Conservative tabloids, however, interpreted the story differently,

and the legend of the donkey jacket was born.

In subsequent years, Foot acquired many more donkey jackets, sent by people through the post. That incident had a wholly negative effect on Foot's image with the British electorate. From then on, they viewed him as little more than an unkempt, dotty old scarecrow, waving his stick in the air.

At the time of Foot's famous faux pas, the Cold War had turned very cold indeed after the dtente of the 1970s, and a huge battle was being waged between Conservative and Labour (and within the Labour movement as well) about Britain's proper response to the perceived Soviet threat.

After several visits to Russia, the Labour leader was cruelly depicted by sections of the Tory press as an innocent abroad. But Foot was no Soviet sympathiser. He got his own back, winning a libel case against the Sunday Times, over its claim that he had been a KGB agent. He bought a new kitchen with the damages, and delighted in describing it as the "Murdoch kitchen".

Foot paid a heavy penalty for being a lifelong pacifist and supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). Whether it was his opposition to American involvement in Vietnam in the late 1960s, or his passionate speech in London against the war in Iraq in February 2003, he was a consistent advocate for peace. As he once said: "I am a peacemonger, an inveterate incurable peacemonger."

As Labour leader from 1980 to 1983, Foot tried valiantly to play the role of unifier, but he took over the Labour leadership at a time when no one could have prevented a civil war from occurring between left and right. Few remember Foot's pivotal role in persuading many key right-of-centre Labour MPs to stay in the party at the time of the formation of the SDP in 1981.

Without his pleading, the Labour Party would have been finished. As it was, the so-called "Gang of Four" broke away, and terrible damage was done. Two years later, Foot went on to lead the party to its worst electoral defeat in a generation. Labour's 1983 manifesto promised to nationalise all major British companies, withdraw from the EEC and engage in unilateral nuclear disarmament, and was aptly described by Gerald Kaufman as "the longest suicide note in history".

If Foot was a failed party leader, he was nevertheless a great parliamentarian, hailing from a long list of Liberal dissenting figures from the West Country. One of his great heroes was Oliver Cromwell. His father, Sir Isaac Foot, who had been a Liberal MP, was an ardent Roundhead, and became president of the Cromwell Association. So wedded was Foot to the rights of backbenchers that when he became Leader of the House of Commons under James Callaghan, it pained him to introduce Government motions curtailing Commons debates (Such motions are now a matter of routine).

Foot was a gifted journalist in his own regard; for years, he edited Tribune, the magazine of the unreconstructed left. Above all, Foot loved books. His five-storey Hampstead home had books everywhere – in the sitting room, in the toilets, and in two libraries, one for him,

and one for his beloved wife, Jill Craigie.

There were many other endearing things about Michael Foot. He was a lifelong fan (and later director) of Plymouth Argyle, once dragging poor Gordon Brown, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, to an away match with Brentford. The match ended 0-0. I like to imagine the contrasting expressions on their faces at the final whistle.

Especially in his later years, Foot was loved within the Labour movement because he was never a splitter unlike, for example, David Owen and Roy Jenkins. He always tried to convert the Labour Party to his views, believing until his last breath that it was still the best instrument for achieving social justice.

Foot's main fault was also an endearing one. He was a romantic idealist. All too often he came unstuck when he tried to apply what he had read in his books to real life. Like his favourite Plymouth Argyle player, Sammy Black, Michael Foot was a marvellous left-winger – and stayed true to his core beliefs, even if they made political and electoral defeat inevitable.

Mark Stuart is a political historian from York who has written the biographies of John Smith and Douglas Hurd.