Obituary
讣告
Michael Foot
迈克尔•富特
Michael Foot, politician and man of letters, died on March 3rd, aged 96
政治家、作家迈克尔•富特于本月3日仙逝，享年96岁
Mar 4th 2010 | From The Economist print edition
HE DIED a much-loved Englishman, renowed for his untidy shock of white hair, his shambling wanderings on Hampstead Heath with his dog Dizzy, his devotion to literature, and the modesty that allowed him, when leader of the Labour Party, to stand in his anorak waiting at the bus stop. Deep into old age, half-blind, he never failed to keep up with the latest works on his great loves, Shelley and Byron, and to hold forth over breakfast—several eggs running all over his plate—about the latest troubles of his beloved party, and its prospects for the future.
他，名叫迈克尔•富特（Michael Foot），一位备受爱戴的英吉利人——带着他引人注目的一头蓬乱的白发、带着他在普斯泰德西斯公园牵着小狗迪齐蹒跚闲行的身影、带着他对文学的挚爱、还带着他任工党党魁时，身着风帽夹克在站台候车所赢得的谦逊美名——离开了人间。进入高龄后，他几近失明，雪莱和拜伦的作品，乃其至爱，一俟新评问世，他必关注；而且，在早餐（那早餐是几枚在餐盘中来回滚动的鸡蛋）时侃侃而谈，谈论他所爱戴的工党的困境和未来。
He was not always so popular. As a left-wing journalist working for the right-wing proprietor Max Beaverbrook before, during and after the war, the vituperative scorn of his prose injured those who did not realise that it masked a complete lack of personal malice. But age and familiarity smoothed the sharp edges. “Sweet man, Michael,” remarked Anthony Crosland, a revisionist socialist who, in the 1970s, had spent most of his time fighting him.
迈克尔•富特并不总是备受爱戴。在二战前、中、后的一段时间，他作为一名左翼记者在右翼领袖东马克斯•弗布鲁克旗下工作，他那充满责骂鄙视的文章伤害了一些人的自尊——这些人实际上没有意识到他的文章完全不带有对个人的蓄意伤害。但时间和世故人情消融了他的锐气。“好人，迈克尔”，安东尼•克罗斯兰如是说——20世纪70年代，修正社会主义者安东尼•克罗斯兰在与迈克尔•富特的论战中度过了大部分时光。
The leadership of the Labour Party was not a job which—for most of his life—he sought. When Jim Callaghan stood down as leader in 1980, the two men most likely to succeed him were Denis Healey on the right and Peter Shore on the left. But Mr Foot, by then 67, had developed a certain fond vanity which was worked on by a Machiavellian trade-union leader, Clive Jenkins, to persuade him to stand. The result was the worst disaster that could have befallen Mr Foot. He won.
出任工党党魁不是富特一生中大部分时间里所寻求的事业。1981年，吉姆•卡拉汉作为[工党]党魁下台时，最有可能接替他的两个人是[党内]右翼派系的丹尼斯•希利和左翼派系的彼得•肖尔。 那时的富特已经67岁，心里开始滋生出几分骄傲自满，一位狡猾的工会领袖正是利用这一点，劝说他挺身参选，而最终的结果则是他最不愿意看到的—-他赢了。
The Labour Party then was a veritable Bermuda triangle, containing both ardent followers of the left-wing policies advocated by Tony Benn, and a right-wing group, led by Roy Jenkins, which was threatening to start a new centre party. Mr Foot’s appeal was that, being of the left but not of the far left, he could hold this combustible mixture together.
是时，工党[内]是一个名副其实的百慕大三角架构，其中既有托尼•本主张的左翼政策的追随者，也有罗伊•詹金斯领导的右翼团体，后者威胁要创建一个新政党。富特的左，但又左得不太远的主张，可以将这两种易燃物揉合在一起。
To a degree, he did. The breakaway was contained. Mr Foot accepted most of the policies of the left, including unilateral nuclear disarmament which he had always agreed with, and many others that he hadn’t. This was just enough to preserve his party broadly intact. Unfortunately, it also made it unelectable. In the 1983 general election, fought on a manifesto described by one shadow minister as “the longest suicide note in history”, the party started badly and finished worse.
在一定程度上，富特做到了这一点。党内分裂得到控制。富特接受了左派的大部分政策，包括他一直主张的单方面核裁军以及他过去不曾赞同的其他一些政策。他的这些举措仅可大体上保持党内团结。遗憾的是，这些举措未能确保他成功连任。1983年大选期间，由于富特发表了被一位影子大臣形容为“历史上篇幅最长的遗书”的竞选政纲，致使工党开局不顺，结果更糟。
Even before the election, Mr Foot was not an effective leader. He dithered terribly. At one point, he insisted in the Commons that Peter Tatchell, a left-winger, would never be a Labour candidate while he was leader. A little later, he decided that he could be. Most voters could not conceive of him as a plausible prime minister. He seemed to come from another age, perhaps the 19th century, a West Country radical in his family’s best tradition. He could not get the hang of television, and horrified the country by appearing at the Cenotaph one Remembrance Day in a short, scruffy coat. By the time he stepped down gratefully after his defeat, he seemed a tragi-comic figure.
即使在选举前，富特先生也算不上是一个卓有成效的领导人。他相当地优柔寡断。有一次，当时他还是工党领导人时，他在下院坚持说左翼成员彼得•塔契尔永远不能成为工党的候选人。过了一会儿，他又断定他会是[候选人]。多数选民无法想象他真的成为首相。他似乎来自另一个时代——或许就是来自19世纪吧，他是一位那个世纪英国西南部的、带着所在团队优良传统的激进分子。他不懂如何在电视机上秀形象，而令举国震惊的是，他于荣军纪念日在和平纪念碑出席纪念活动时，身着短裤、衣冠不整。他在竞选落败后，却带着感激引退的行为，令人感觉他是一位悲喜剧式的人物。
Flying with Hazlitt
与黑兹利特[注1]齐飞
His political judgment was dodgy from the beginning. In 1974-75, when he first went into government as employment secretary, he was responsible for relations with the trade unions. In the words of one cabinet member of the time, “The relationship was one of give-and-take. The government gave and they took.” Industrial subsidies, housing subsidies, even food subsidies flowed out in an effort to buy low pay settlements. All were enthusiastically supported by Mr Foot. None made a jot of difference to escalating wage agreements.
富特的政治辨别力自始就不怎么样。 1974至75年期间，他第一次进入政府内阁，出任劳工部大臣，在处理与工会的关系上，他是应受指责的。用当时一位政府内阁成员的话说：“这种相互妥协的关系变成一边倒。政府给，他们取”。工业补贴、住房补贴、甚至食物补贴大量花掉，以求与工会达成低工资协议。所有这一切都得到了富特先生满腔热忱的支持。但在免于形成高工资协议上毫无效果。
Mr Foot was slow to realise this. But once he had, he entered perhaps the most effective period of his political life. In an extraordinary speech to his party’s conference in 1976, he quoted Joseph Conrad: “Always facing it, Captain MacWhir. That’s the way to get through. Always facing it—that’s the way we’ve got to solve this problem.” By 1978 the economy was back on an even keel and Labour was neck-and-neck in the polls.
富特意识到这一点是缓慢的。但是，一旦他意识到了，就进入了也许是他政治生涯中最卓有成效的时期。在1976年工党年会上的一次特别演讲中，他引用约瑟夫•康拉德的话：“麦克惠尔船长，总得面对现实，这才是到达目的地的办法。总得面对现实——这才是我们不得不解决此麻烦的办法”。到1978年时，经济又回复平稳，且工党在民调中的支持率也与经济的转好同步上升。
But Mr Foot, by then the leader of the House of Commons, convinced himself that his party would lose an election that October. More important, he convinced the prime minister. The election was postponed to the spring of 1979. The “winter of discontent”, with widespread strikes, intervened.This was the first of two elections which Mr Foot delivered to Margaret Thatcher on a plate.
不过，时任下议院领袖的富特自我确认，他所在的工党将会在10月的大选中落马。尤其是，他也使首相[即当时由工党出任的首相詹姆斯•卡拉汉—译者注]认识到这一点。因伴之以大罢工的“不满的冬天”事件的影响，10月份的选举被推迟到1979年的春天。这次选举是富特两次轻易将胜选权让渡给撒切尔夫人中的第一次。
He could seem unworldly. As a minister, he once boarded a plane to a Socialist International conference in Europe without a penny in foreign currency, carrying only a leather-bound volume of Hazlitt. Yet in one sense, he was entirely worldly. He had an instinctive understanding of people. He wrote beautifully and, after overcoming a stammer, was a wonderful orator: humorous, self-deprecating, empathetic. He could be a hater—anyone who failed to perceive the genius of his hero Aneurin Bevan, whose biography he wrote, had best look out—but he was incapable of sustained malevolence.
富特似乎天生不谙世故。作为一位大臣，他曾经在没有一分外币的情况下，仅携带一本黑兹利特的皮面装订书籍，就登上一架飞机，去欧洲出席一个“国际社会主义者”会议。但在某种意义上说，他又老于世故。他对民众悲喜如天才般洞若观火。他文笔优美，而且在克服口吃后成了优秀的演说家，他幽默诙谐、自嘲自谦、善解人意。他本当是一个怀有恨意的人——任何不能感知贝文•安奈林（富特所写传记中的主人公）的才能的人，最易得此判断——但让他持久对某人怀有恨意，他又做不到。
Over the last few years of his life, Mr Foot contemplated writing a serious work of socialist philosophy. Instead, he embarked on a biography of an eccentric literary genius, H.G. Wells. In the end, that seemed to suit him better.
在富特生命的最后几年，他打算写一部关于社会主义思想体系的严肃著作。相反，他却写起了一部关于一位超乎寻常的文学天才HG威尔斯的传记来。也许，后者于他更适合。
注1：Hazlitt——黑兹利特 (1778-1830)，英国小品作家和文学评论家
译者：微言大义
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