'Dear Michael, I'm Tony Blair'

The recipient of the 22-page handwritten letter recently unearthed in the Labour party's archives has long been a public figure. Famous as an orator, a radical journalist and political rebel, and more recently as de facto deputy prime minister, he is Michael Foot, the Labour leader.

The 29-year-old author of the admiring "Dear Michael" epistle, extracts from which appear in this week's New Statesman, is virtually unknown when he writes from his chambers on July 28 1982. He has written a few articles for the New Statesman (and some for the rival Spectator) and has been rejected in his plans to become a councillor in Hackney, east London. Recently he has fought a hopeless byelection in Beaconsfield, only to see Labour pushed into third place by a combination of the "Falklands factor" and Labour's schism with the breakaway SDP.

His name is Tony Blair and his political luck is about to turn. Within a year he will become Labour MP for a safe seat, but his ideas for reshaping the leftwing Labour programme he defended in Beaconsfield are already visible in this letter ...

Dear Michael

Read this in a quiet moment if you have any nowadays. And don't, for goodness sake, bother to reply! I was very hesitant in writing; you might consider it either and impertinence or sycophancy. It isn't meant to be either.

On Thatcherism

Look at Thatcher and Tebbit and how they almost take pride in the rigid populism of their political thought. There is a new and profoundly unpleasant Tory abroad - the Tory party is now increasingly given over to the worst of petty bourgeois sentiments, the thought that there is something clever in cynicism; realistic in selfishness; and the granting of legitimacy to the barbaric idea of the survival of the fittest.

On Marxism

Even in our own party ( though to a much lesser degree) there is a tendency against letting the mind roam free. In this I can't help feeling the continuing association of Marxism with Socialism is in part to blame. I actually did trouble to read Marx first-hand. I found it illuminating in so many ways; in particular, my perception of the relationship between people and the society in which they live was irreversibly altered. But ultimately it was stifling because it sought to embrace in its philosophy every facet of existence. That, of course, is its attraction to many."

On Tony Benn

In one sense he is quite right in saying that the right wing of the party is politically bankrupt. Socialism ultimately must appeal to the better minds of the people. You cannot do that if you are tainted overmuch with a pragmatic period in power. The phrases that rouse us, or should rouse us, are bound to seem stale in the mouth of anyone who has been too closely intertwined with the Establishment. It may not be fair, but it is true.

Our left is in danger of falling prey to its perennial fault: introspection. There are many of us who were highly critical of the last Labour government [1974-79], who are now tired of retracing incessantly that same old ground. There is an arrogance and self-righteousness about many of the groups on the far left which is deeply unattractive to the ordinary would-be member and a truly absurd gulf between the subject matter and language of the legion of pamphlets they write and the people for whom the pamphlets are supposed to be written. There is too much mixing only with people with whom they would agree.

On his own approach to politics

I am at my happiest addressing people who don't necessarily agree, but are willing to listen. That's important inside and outside the party. Democracy isn't just about the right to express your views, but the right to have them listened to. It's not just as if there were not still great causes to fight: poverty, sickness, ignorance, poor housing - they are far from being part of history. And in nuclear war we face a greater threat than any of our ancestors.

On expelling the Militant Tendency

No one has an inalienable right, irrespective of their political views or actions, to belong to the Labour party. We have a constitution and firm principles ... [which] are the achievement of socialism ... by the party through parliament. There should not be a party within a party.

On Foot's strategy

Partly because of the battle over Militant and partly to allay the fears of the legitimate left that you are a "prisoner of the right" (etc) I would indicate firmly that you believe the party needs radical socialist policies; that the scale of the problems we face as a nation in 1982 means a different approach to previous years.

The job of reconstruction, particularly against a background that includes new technology and a USA in the grip of the same economic madness Mrs Thatcher visits upon us, is mammoth. Profound problems require profound remedies.