Paul Foot

This article is about the journalist and campaigner. For the comedian, see Paul Foot (comedian).

Paul Mackintosh Foot (November 8, 1937 - July 18, 2004) was a British radical investigative journalist and long time member of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). He was educated at University College, Oxford. He first joined the International Socialists, organisational forerunner of the SWP, when he was a cub reporter in Glasgow in the early 1960s. He wrote for the Socialist Worker from 1972 to 1980 when he moved to the Daily Mirror. He left the Mirror in 1993 when the paper refused to print articles critical of their management. Latterly he returned to Private Eye; he also wrote for The Guardian.

He fought the Birmingham Ladywood by-election in 1977 for the SWP and was a Socialist Alliance candidate for several offices from 2001 onwards. In the Hackney mayoral election in 2002 he came third, beating the Liberal Democrat candidate into fourth. He stood in the London region for the RESPECT coalition at the 2004 European elections. He was 4th on the party's list of 9 (none of which were elected).

Paul Foot was son of Hugh Foot, later Lord Caradon, who was governor of Cyprus during the independence battle with Britain in the 1950s, and later represented the United Kingdom at the United Nations from 1964-1970 and was the nephew of former leader of the Labour Party Michael Foot.

He was Journalist of the Year in the What The Papers Say Awards in 1972 and 1989, Campaigning Journalist of the Year in the 1980 British Press Awards and won the George Orwell Prize for Journalism in 1994.

His best known work was in the form of campaign journalism, including his exposure of corrupt architect John Poulson and most notably, his crusade to overturn the convictions of the Bridgewater Four, which succeeded in 1997.

He was also worked tirelessly, though without success, on gaining a posthumous pardon for A6 killer James Hanratty, who was hanged in 1962.

Paul Foot

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