The death of Michael Foot was announced shortly after 12pm today. I'll be reporting on the tributes to one of the giants of Labour postwar politics as they come in.

1.04pm: Michael Foot is now remembered principally for his short and ill-fated period as Labour leader in the early 1980s, but he was a leading figure in Labour politics throughout the postwar period and one of the outstanding orators of his time. Today politicians from all parties are paying tribute to him.

1.23pm: This is from Peter Hain, the Welsh Secretary. Foot wasn't a Welshman, but he was MP for Ebbw Vale, which made him an honorary Welshman.

Michael was perhaps Wales's most brilliant adopted son. A good friend, he gave me much personal support over 40 years, from the Anti-Apartheid Movement to our work together on the Tribune newspaper. He will be sorely missed. Never again will we see such soaring oratory, socialist passion and wit. Wales and Welsh Labour are in mourning.

1.27pm: Gordon Brown has described Foot as "a man of deep principle and passionate idealism".

1.28pm: This is from Ken Livingstone on Sky News.

He was the nicest person I ever met at a senior level in politics. He had time for everybody. It is amazing that someone that nice gets to the top of the Labour Party but perhaps not too surprising that someone that nice didn't win the election.

1.29pm: This is from Ray Collins, the Labour's party's general secretary.



Michael Foot's passing is very sad news for the Labour Party and the wider movement. As leader of our party, a Labour Minister, a writer and a man he was a tireless campaigner for social justice, whose intelligence, charm and courage will be remembered for years to come. As Michael Foot himself said, government by consent is the most sacred cause of all. As a young man I was fortunate to see at first hand Michael's own skill in government, when as Secretary of State for Employment, with Jack Jones of the T&G, he forged the Health and Safety at Work Act which protected millions of working people from injury and illness. It is a mark of Michael Foot's quality as a man and th e scale of his contribution to public life over almost seven decades that it is hard to summarise in a single sentence. He was possibly one of the few writers who could. As well as pivotal biographies, Labour Party members will remember the clarity and passion of his writing against the appeasement of the 1930s, nuclear weapons, or Apartheid and in support of social justice. Michael Foot will be missed by many but most of all by those who knew him best, his family and friends, and my thoughts and condolences are with them today.

1.32pm: I've now got the full text of Gordon Brown's tribute. It's long, but I'll post the whole thing because I can't find it on the web. (The Labour website hasn't got a word about Foot yet.) It's also heartfelt, as you can tell. Like Brown, Foot was an intellectual, a historian, a writer, a tribal Labour loyalist - and a football fan.

Michael Foot was a man of deep principle and passionate idealism and one of the most eloquent speakers Britain has ever heard. He was an indomitable figure who always stood up for his beliefs and whether people agreed with him or not they admired his character and his steadfastness. The respect he earned over a long life of service means that across our country today people, no matter their political views, will mourn the passing of a great and compassionate man. All his life, Michael campaigned and fought for the ideals he believed in. I remember fondly my time with him and Jill Craigie, the love of his life - they both inspired me with their passion and kindness. They leave behind so many people whose grief overwhelms us today. While Michael was a brilliant thinker – a first rate journalist and a celebrated biographer – he always knew that for the people and causes he had entered politics to represent, the Commons was not simply a forum for debate but the theatre of change. As Leader of the Labour Party in the most difficult circumstances he was a respected and unifying figure who sought to steer it through turbulent times. And his record as a Labour minister and champion of working men and women will always be a tribute to his convictions and a source of pride - leading through Parliament the Health and Safety at Work Act. He served the communities of Plymouth and Ebbw Vale with distinction. But Michael wasn't just a great parliamentarian - a historian, a journalist and an author, he showed the same skill as one of the youngest editors of a national newspaper in his twenties as he did when writing articles and books well into his nineties. A founder member of CND, he is often remembered for being a self-proclaimed "inveterate peace-monger" although his determination to break the rise of Fascism in Europe in the 1940s was demonstrated in his hugely influential book, "Guilty Men". A lifelong Plymouth Argyle fan who continued attending Home Park well into his 90s, his love of his football club mirrored his love of the Labour Party: sticking by the Pilgrims through thick and thin, no one could ever doubt his loyalty and determination to see them reach the summit of success. We will never forget his good humour, his passion and above all his enduring values and determination to fight for them - as, one of his favourite poets, Shelley proclaims "Ye are many — they are few". Michael Foot was a genuine British radical - one who possessed a powerful sense of community, a pride in our progressive past and faith in our country's potential for a radical future.

1.40pm: John Reid, the former cabinet minister who was a Labour official in the 1980s, is on BBC News recalling trying to make a television broadcast with Michael Foot. He says it took him and Helen Liddell all day because it was hard to get Foot to adjust to the medium.

He was a studious type of man in an age of slick soundbites. He was a master orator in an age of the television interview.

1.43pm: Lord Steel has just been on BBC News too. He was the Liberal leader at the time of the Lib-Lab pact. Steel said:

He was without question the master, spell-binding orator in the House of Commons in my day. When his name came up on the ticker-tape, people would come to hear him. He had this capacity for immense passion laced with humour.

Steel was being generous. He did not mention the fact that Foot's humour was sometimes turned against Steel himself. In one Commons speech (at the end of the no confidence debate in 1979, I think), Foot famously described Steel as someone "who passed from rising hope to elder statesman without any intervening period".

1.50pm: Hilary Benn, the environment secretary, has just been on BBC News. Rather tackily, I thought, he he tried to make an anti-Cameron point while he was paying tribute to Foot.

A lot of people will mourn his passing today ... If we have a choice between appearance and substance, I think a lot of people will give us substance every time, because ultimately that is what politics [is about] ... If we can have more focus on the substance, the real choices that we've got, and less on the appearance - if you like, the choice between an airbrushed politics and a real politics - I think we could do with that.

1.57pm: Brown is giving an interview outside Downing Street. He says Foot is mourned as someone who was good and compassionate.

Asked if Foot held the Labour party together, Brown says he was a "great unifier". Foot is held in great respect "for the conviction with which he put his views", Brown says. Foot was "a good man and a very compassionate man".

2.01pm: If anyone has any personal memories of Michael Foot they want to share, please write about them in the comments section below.

2.03pm: Thanks to DavidSt for posting, in the comments section below, this extract from a speech Foot gave in the Commons in 1980. Jack Straw mentioned it in the Commons about 90 minutes ago. Straw was opening a debate on the Bribery Bill and he started with a tribute to Foot and a reference to this speech. Straw tried to tell the magician joke, although his version wasn't half as good as the orginal.

In my youth, quite a time ago, when I lived in Plymouth, every Saturday night I used to go to the Palace theatre. My favourite act was a magician-conjuror who used to have sitting at the back of the audience a man dressed as a prominent alderman. The magician-conjuror used to say that he wanted a beautiful watch from a member of the audience. He would go up to the alderman and eventually take from him a marvellous gold watch. He would bring it back to the stage, enfold it in a beautiful red handkerchief, place it on the table in front of us, take out his mallet, hit the watch and smash it to smithereens. Then on his countenance would come exactly the puzzled look of the Secretary of State for Industry. He would step to the front of the stage and say "I am very sorry. I have forgotten the rest of the trick." That is the situation of the Government. They have forgotten the rest of the trick. It does not work. Lest any objector should suggest that the act at the Palace theatre was only a trick, I should assure the House that the magician-conjuror used to come along at the end and say "I am sorry. I have still forgotten the trick."

The joke works even better if you know that the trade secretary at the time was Keith Joseph.

2.10pm

I've been trying to find some footage of Foot on YouTube and I've found this. It's from a speech Foot delivered in 1942, when he was acting editor of the Evening Standard and the government was threatening to censor the Daily Mirror. It's wonderful - richly comic, but passionate and serious at the same time.

2.18pm: This is from David Blunkett.

In the 47 years that I have been a member of the Labour Party, I have rarely come across anyone as gracious, thoughtful and intellectually sharp as Michael Foot.

It was a privilege to have known him and to have learned from him – not simply as a politician, but as that rare breed: an intellectual and a thinker. Everybody recognises that he was the greatest parliamentarian of his generation. In many ways, his time as leader of the Labour Party allowed his opponents to diminish the enormous stature which his life-long contribution to the well-being of his fellow man enabled him to achieve.

2.20pm: And this is from the TUC general secretary Brendan Barber.



Everyone will be saddened by the death of Michael Foot – a man who personified decency and integrity in politics. Simply to mention his name is to be taken back to an era when every politician needed to be an orator and command an audience. But we remember him as well as a great employment secretary at a time when the economy was under real pressure.

2.22pm: Neil Kinnock has written a tribute to Foot for Comment is Free. Here's the opening:

Michael Foot, who has died aged 96, was a supreme parliamentary democrat who used his great gifts as an inspiring speaker and writer to urge peace, security, prosperity and opportunity for humanity and punishment for bigots and bullies of every kind. His bravery and generosity were unsurpassed. He used both to ensure that the Labour party survived as a political force when self-indulgent factionalism could have doomed it to irrelevance.

2.47pm: Kate Hudson, the chairman of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, has issued this statement.



Michael Foot's principled position on nuclear disarmament has long been used to explain Labour's defeat in 1983, and justify pro-nuclear policies from the Labour Party leadership. But the 1983 election was not an endorsement of Mrs Thatcher's nuclear policy. We deplore the dirty tricks campaign carried out at that time against Michael, designed to undermine his campaign. Opinion polls show that his views on nuclear disarmament are today shared by the majority of the British electorate across the political spectrum - a fact that our politicians would do well to recognise as they head into a general election.

2.49pm: Tam Dalyell, the former Labour MP and father of the Commons - and a wonderful obituary writer for the Independent - has issued this tribute, which includes a nice anecdote that I had not heard.

Michael Foot would have been a first-class Prime Minister, because he was a shrewd chooser of people and an imaginative delegator of colleagues. When I was elected to Parliament in June 1962, I was told by colleagues 'You will never see Michael Foot again'. He had had a dreadful car accident from which they did not expect him ever to recover. The sheer courage of that man coming back is astonishing. Ironically, the accident prolonged his life - it stopped him chain-smoking.

2.53pm: Alastair Campbell, who knew Foot well - Foot was a very old friend of the parents of Fiona Millar, Campbell's partner - has written a tribute to him on his blog. The whole thing is worth reading, but here's a flavour of it.

On the Old-New Labour-ometer, fair to say that Michael might be placed closer to the old than the new. But he was a phenomenal support. He took as much pride in the three election wins under Tony Blair as anyone and was delighted to celebrate his 90th birthday in 2003 at a party in Downing Street garden surrounded by family and friends from across the political spectrum. And whenever we were under the cosh, Michael would always be on with a word of support, advice or encouragement. The last time he came to our house for lunch, he was barely able to walk. Yet he sat and gave his views on all the big issues of the day, illustrated by colourful tales of the past. 'Was there really as much division in the Wilson Cabinets as the books suggest?' I asked him. 'Oh far more,' he said.

2.57pm: John Prescott has paid tribute on Twitter.

So sad to hear about Michael Foot. A great man has died. He was the heart of our movement

2.59pm: Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, has said this:

Michael Foot was a great parliamentarian, a great intellectual and a great idealist. He always stood up for what he believed in, even if that meant inviting unpopularity at times. His intellectual integrity is an example to everyone in politics.

3.01pm: Here are some of the things people have said in the comments section. This is from sarflondon (or Ed Davie, judging by the way he's signed off):



I trained as a reporter at the South Wales Argus with a patch that included Foot's former constituency in Ebbw Vale. As a result I interviewed him at his house in Hampstead where he was fascinating, charming, wise and generous. He gave me a copy of his book on Nye Bevan which he painstakingly (given his poor eyesight) inscribed with a quote from Hazlitt. He also invited me to his 90th birthday party at the Gay Hussar - where else? - which had the most eclectic collection of guests I'd ever seen. He told me then that he wouldn't die until his beloved Plymouth Argyle made it to the Premiership - sadly he did not see that day. Foot has been a great inspiration to me journalistically and politically and despite his great age will be missed - Ed Davie

This is from elsbaer:

I used to see Michael Foot regularly at Home Park. He was old and frail, with a zimmer frame and someone to help him along, but he had a kind word for everyone. I'm too young to remember him as a politician, but he was absolutely mad about the Argyle. The whole city of Plymouth will be in mourning today.

This is from PatriciaGrumbling:

I remember, years and years ago, while fishing on Hampstead Heath, he would always say Good Morning as he walked by and inquire as to how the fishing was going.

3.09pm: This is from Lord Mandelson:

There will be a huge sadness across our party and across politics at this news. I first met Michael in the early 1980s when I worked for Albert Booth, who also sadly passed away recently. No-one was closer to Michael than Albert on the Labour frontbench and it is was there that I first discovered the stresses and strains that fall on anyone leading Labour, especially at that time in the 1980s. Michael was one of Labour's favourite sons and his name will be forever synonymous with the cause of social justice. An historian, writer, orator and parliamentarian of the first rank, Michael was one of the giants on whose shoulders today's generation of Labour politicians stand.

3.12pm: Daniel Hannan, the Tory MEP - and the Labour party's villain-of-choice for much of 2009 - has written a lovely tribute to Foot on his blog. Seriously. It's terrific - one of the best pieces I've read about Foot all afternoon. Foot, of course, was a Eurosceptic. But he was also a bookish, romantic, intellectual, English parliamentarian. Hannan probably feels they had a lot in common.

I was lucky enough, as an undergraduate, to listen to one of Michael Foot's last great orations, when he spoke to a spell-bound Oxford Union about the iniquities of the EU. True heir to the English radical tradition, he had little time for "-isms" of any sort, and was one of the few Lefties of his generation never to have flirted with either Mussolini or Stalin. Although he was wrong about many things – his economic policy would have ruined us every bit as comprehensively as Gordon Brown's wastrel clottishness – he got the big issues right, eschewing fascism, Communism and Euro-integrationism as intrinsically un-English doctrines. At around that time, he was accused, outrageously, of having collaborated with the KGB. I remember, even as a student, becoming angry on his behalf: was there ever a politician less likely to betray his country? Men of power have not time to read; yet the men who do not read are unfit for power," said the great man, and it was truer than he knew. Foot's introduction to the Penguin edition of Gulliver's Travels is, for me, one of the finest essays ever written about Swift, and will be remembered long after Foot's political career is forgotten. Yet he was ill-suited to the politician's trade. Cerebral, incorruptible and curiously innocent, he represented a noble and exalted tradition on the British Left. How small his successors appear by comparison.

3.34pm: David Miliband has posted a couple of tributes to Foot on Twitter. First he sent this:

Michael Foot led a remarkable life. I remember meeting him on the Tube in the 80s; for a famous speaker he really listened.

And then he followed it with this:



Ironic to hear news of Michael Foot's death while welcoming south african president. He hated apartheid with a vengeance.

(Actually, being pedantic, ironic's not quite the right word, is it? But we know what he meant.)

3.41pm: Alastair Campbell is on Sky now.



[Foot] was able to have an argument without ever making it personal.

Campbell says Foot would have liked to have been remembered as a writer, as someone who was passionate about politics and as someone who believed in big causes.

3.44pm: Foot was a humanist, and the British Humanist Association has just issued this tribute.

We remember Michael and celebrate his life not just as the life of an intelligent and principled politician but as a great British Humanist. A good life for all is a humanist aspiration, and Michael was one humanist who worked hard to make that a reality for every man and woman. His steadfast dedication to humanist and progressive ideals of freedom, peace, social justice was pursued in a life of both thought and action – another humanist ideal.

3.46pm: Peter Tatchell, who fought and lost a byelection for Labour in Bermondsey in 1983 after being selected against Foot's wishes, has issued this statement.



Michael Foot was wrong to condemn my advocacy of extra-parliamentary protests and to initially block my endorsement as parliamentary candidate for Bermondsey. But this error of judgment, under pressure from SDP turncoats, does not diminish his stature as one of the most outstanding British socialists and democrats of the twentieth century. He had the grace to later apologise to me - an apology that I accepted. I have never waivered in my view that Michael Foot was a great humanist and humanitarian, and a true champion of social justice and human rights. Sadly, Michael became Labour leader too late in life. He was at his peak in the 1940s and 1950s, and would have been an even better Labour Prime Minister than Clement Attlee. A brilliant orator, who was equalled by few other politicians anywhere in the world, his speeches were magical and inspirational.

3.51pm: As John Rentoul has recalled on his blog, one of Foot's achievements was to help Tony Blair get into parliament. Foot wrote a complimentary letter about Blair after Blair stood unsuccessfully for Labour in Beaconsfield which helped him to get selected in Sedgefield.

3.56pm: George Galloway has paid a Twitter tribute too.



Farewell Michael Foot: Great orator, editor and thinker - the most decent leader Labour ever had #fb

3.58pm: Alex Salmond, Scotland's first minister, has issued this statement:

Michael Foot was a man of enormous principle, with a political career founded on a passion and commitment to the party and causes he loved. He was a remarkable and dedicated man, held in the highest regard across the political spectrum over a period of many decades. Michael Foot was in the House of Commons after my election, in the 1987-92 Parliament, and was a wonderful speaker to listen to - a fantastic old-style debater. My thoughts are with his many friends, colleagues and family. Michael Foot will be greatly missed, and his memory treasured by his party and the country.

4.01pm: There are a couple of other blogs reporting the tributes to Foot. Here they are:

BBC website

LabourList

4.10pm: Lady Thatcher's office has just issued this tribute to Foot from the former prime minister:



I was very sorry to hear the news. He was a great parliamentarian and a man of his priniciples.

4.31pm: This is from Tony Lloyd, the chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party:

Michael Foot passing away signals the end of a great life and an era in politics but his memory will live on in the work of those inspired by him and in those who will read his writings. Michael was at the heart of the Labour Party and was inspired by the values of democratic socialism; in turn, he inspired those around him to work to promote those ideals. He will be missed by his many friends and admirers from all walks of life.

4.35pm: Here are some more memories of Foot from the comments section below.

This is from Zoonie:

The last time we both saw Michael Foot was at Joan Lestor's funeral. Joan was another great champion of fairness. Another anti-fascist campaigner who stood shoulder to shoulder with her great friend Barbara Castle but has somehow not been recognised in history so much. This was in 1998 and Michael was already physically frail. He stood, carefully but well and after a fairly blank political waffle of a speech by John Prescott, Michael Foot delivered a strong eulogy to his friend in halting tones, as his condition allowed. But nobody cared. We would have stayed all afternoon to listen. Everyone in the room loved him, you see. With his death, those great political warrior names from the 20th century sink further from view. They were energised by the fight against acute poverty and fascism, and they just don't make them like that anymore.

This is from smackhead:

used to see him walking his dog on Hampstead Heath, he used to get the 24 bus down to Westminster and use his OAP pass

This is from Pyrrhic:

My late uncle, a senior civil servant, very, very rarely spoke about politicians or politics. The only time I ever heard him comment on a politician was to do with Michael and you could tell that he was genuinely in awe of the man and greatly respected his intellect. A sad loss to Britain and a shame that we will probably never see another man of his integrity as a leader of a major politic party in this country.

4.49pm: I've just been looking at the comments on Mike White's story about Foot's death. There's a lovely story there from David Warnes.

My favourite memory of Michael is a recollection of him chasing down the road, at high speed for a man of his age, because we had been arguing over the correct spelling of the word 'fricassee'. The main bone of contention was the appropriate number of esses. We could agree on the final double 'e'. Demanding to know what was right, rather than necessarily prove himself right (of course he was right as it turned out). We hurtled (again, relatively) towards the nearest bookshop in search of a dictionary, debating the pourquois and wherefores of french orthography, completely oblivious to the genteel crowds through which we made our way. A unflinchingly charming, erudite and decent man.

4.53pm: David Cameron has now issued a full tribute.

My first thoughts are for those he leaves behind, the friends and the family. He was a remarkable man and in many ways, almost the last link to a more heroic age in politics. You think of him in the 1930's fighting fascism and Hitler alongside Winston Churchill and the great giants of that age. I also very much admired his great defence of our parliamentary democracy and the House of Commons which he absolutely loved, obviously we come from very different political persuasions but also his idealism, there was never any doubt that he was in politics because he loved his country, he believed in public service, he wanted to make it a better place. I think he'll be remembered as a great speaker, a fantastic orator, a beautiful writer. A very passionate man who was part of this more heroic age of politics where we were fighting fascism and the rise of fascism in Europe and he was on the right side of that argument and wrote such a brilliant book. Obviously he knew both victory and defeat and obviously people will remember the defeat as Labour leader, but above all he was an idealist, someone who was in politics for the right reasons and someone who wrote and spoke beautifully.

5.04pm: Plymouth Argyle have paid tribute to Foot. Argyle chairman Sir Roy Gardner said this:



It is with great sadness that the club learnt of the death of Michael Foot. Michael was a highly valued director of the club, helping to pave the way for the success that Argyle has enjoyed since 2001. Much more than that, he was a much-loved member of the Green Army, who stood on the terraces in the days of legends like Sammy Black and Jack Leslie, and was passionate about spreading the Green gospel.

5.06pm: Tony Blair still hasn't issued a tribute. His office says he's on a plane. He'll issue something when he lands, in the next hour or so.

5.12pm: It's time to call it a day. There will be more in the Guardian tomorrow, but after an afternoon reading tributes to Foot I find myself just wishing that YouTube had been around in the 1950s and 1960s. It would be great to be able to hear more of his oratory. But radio broadcasts from the House of Commons did not start until the late 1970s and so many of his best speeches are not available in audio form at all. What a terrible loss.

Thanks for the comments.

8pm Update: I've now seen the tribute from Tony Blair. Here it is: