The following is the text of the Headmaster’s address to the school in Assembly on Monday March 8, 2010.

I want to talk about the forthcoming election and participation in the democratic process – but not today. Today I want to talk about Michael Foot, who died last week at the age of 96. Plenty of parents and staff may be wondering why on earth I am choosing to talk about him – after all, had his party been elected in 1983, whilst he was leader, schools like this one might well have been abolished altogether. But in fact Michael Foot is a figure whom I much admire – not for his political views, particularly, but for other qualities which we would do well to emulate.

He was born in the South West - in Plymouth in fact, in 1913, and went on to read PPE (Politics, Philosophy and Economics) at Oxford, where he became President of the Oxford Union – the university’s debating society. He was to gain a life-long reputation as an exceptional public speaker and debater.

On graduating in 1934, he took a job as a shipping clerk in Liverpool, where he was profoundly influenced by the poverty and unemployment that he witnessed – this, remember, was during the Great Depression. A Liberal up to this time, Foot was converted to socialism and he joined the Labour Party, where he stood for Parliament in the 1935 General Election, whilst still only 22 years of age. He then became a journalist – and a brilliant one at that. At the outbreak of the Second World War, he volunteered for military service, but was rejected due to his chronic asthma. By the age of 28, Foot had become Editor of the Evening Standard.

Foot successfully fought the Plymouth Devonport constituency in the epochal General Election of 1945. Regularly turning down offers to join the government as a Minister, Foot preferred to lead the left-wing of the party from the back benches, whilst dazzling the Commons with his wonderful speech-making. When, in 1974, Labour returned to office under Harold Wilson, Foot finally accepted a role in government, as Secretary of State for Employment. Following Labour's 1979 general election defeat by Margaret Thatcher, Foot was elected Labour leader. By this time, Foot was already 67 and frail – and almost immediately after his election as leader he was faced with a serious crisis when the right wing of the Labour Party broke away to form the Social Democratic Party. This split the opposition to Thatcher’s Conservative Government, dealing Labour’s chances of electoral victory a mortal blow.

Foot was a thinker, a speaker, a true intellectual – but he certainly wasn’t image-conscious. If Blair is famous (or infamous) as the archetypal media-friendly modern politician, Foot was the antithesis of that.

Famously ridiculed for his appearance, of which he was I suspect largely unaware, this was a man of ideas, a man of thought, a man of principle. He was attacked for wearing what was described as a "donkey jacket" at a wreath-laying ceremony at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Day and I remember giggling as a schoolboy at newspaper pictures of him in his NHS specs which were being visibly held together by sellotape. The media savaged him for it, of course.

The 1983 Labour manifesto was strongly socialist in tone – Foot was a left-winger and with the SDP grabbing the middle ground, Labour policies lurched dramatically – and, as it turned out, disastrously – to the left, advocating unilateral nuclear disarmament , higher personal taxation, the abolition of the House of Lords, withdrawal from the European Community and the nationalisation of the banks (ironically the Credit Crunch has triggered much the same thing twenty-five years later!). As a vote-winning platform, the 1983 Labour Party manifesto was later described by Gerald Kaufman, Foot’s colleague in the shadow cabinet, as “the longest suicide note in history”. Certainly, it was hardly a platform on which to win over the undecided, centrist voters whose decisions traditionally determine the outcome of UK General Elections.

Predictably, Foot's Labour Party was annihilated at the polls and Thatcher’s position was reinforced with a massively increased majority. Foot resigned and, as befitting a man of honour, took all the blame for the disastrous election defeat. He returned to the back benches, remaining in the House of Commons until the age of 79. A staunch republican (though actually well-liked by the Royal Family on a personal level), Foot repeatedly rejected offers of knighthoods and peerages: his principles and integrity came before private interests or personal advantage. Instead he devoted himself with flair and distinction to his causes and to his writing.

In a poll of Labour party activists, Michael Foot was recently voted the worst post-war Labour party leader – and that judgement of his leadership is probably correct, even including the current incumbent. It is almost certainly a good thing that he was never elected, but then his manifesto saw to that very effectively. But Foot was an outstanding Parliamentarian, a hugely gifted speaker, journalist and writer, and a man of principle. He said what he thought, and thought what he said. Whenever he could, he delivered on his promises, and he told the truth. In an era in which politics and principle go together all too infrequently, Foot is to be admired for his integrity and his commitment to his beliefs. His leadership and political views were disastrously unpopular, but his conduct offers a fine example of values which may be dismissed as old-fashioned but which are in fact both lasting and honourable. Michael Foot, rest in peace.