On 10 November 1980, Michael Foot was elected leader of the Labour Party, securing a narrow victory over his main rival, Denis Healey, in the final ballot of Labour MPs. Foot succeeded James Callaghan who had resigned earlier in the year, 18 months after the party’s 1979 general election defeat.

Healey, who served as chancellor of the exchequer from 1974 to 1979, was widely viewed as Callaghan’s likely heir, representing the social democratic right of the party. Possible rivals Roy Jenkins and Anthony Crosland were no longer in contention for the role. Jenkins had left parliament to serve as president of the European Commission in January 1977. Crosland died on 19 February 1977, aged 58.

Foot, first elected alongside Callaghan as part of Labour’s post-war landslide in 1945, was firmly identified with the party left. In the 1940s and 50s, the former Evening Standard editor emerged as a leading figure on the ‘Bevanite’ wing of the Labour Party.

But Foot, aged 67, was well-liked by Labour MPs and seen as capable of uniting the party. A non-tribal, conciliatory figure, he served loyally in both Harold Wilson and Callaghan’s cabinets – including as deputy leader since 1976.

Foot placed a strong second in the 1976 Labour leadership contest, securing the support of 139 MPs in the second and final ballot. He secured a plurality of votes on the first ballot (90), before Callaghan edged him out.

He was also regarded as a forceful orator. His abilities were on full display when he closed the ‘no-confidence’ debate that ultimately precipitated the 1979 general election.

Announcing his candidacy for the 1980 contest, Foot declared: “I would certainly be glad to be leader of the party when the present government is removed at the next election.”

He added: “I am in favour of peace in the Labour Party”.

Foot had been persuaded to stand by allies in the party, having previously stated it was “most improbable” that he would run.

Callaghan had already asked Foot, his deputy, to stand in for him at prime minister’s questions.

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The 1980 leadership election came as a schism widened within Labour between an insurgent, increasingly influential grassroots movement, often associated with Tony Benn, and the social democratic tradition associated with Callaghan and Healey.

Benn, who also stood in the 1976 leadership election, criticised those taking part in the contest. He argued that no election should take place until the party had agreed on a new method for choosing its leader. Delegates at Labour’s recent autumn conference called for a special gathering to agree these procedures.

Ideologically, Foot was a leading figure in the Tribune group of Labour MPs – which combined MPs on both the ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ lefts. The white-haired socialist elder statesman emerged as a compromise candidate.

Healey, on the other hand, was seen as a more combative figure; he is said to have alienated natural supporters on the party right by taking them for granted. He warned the right of the Labour Party, represented by the Manifesto Group, that they had “nowhere else to go”.

The first ballot, held on 4 November, showed Healey to be the clear frontrunner, securing 112 votes (42.3%) compared to Foot’s 83 votes (31.3%).

The outcome of the second ballot was a surprise to many political commentators. Foot won by 139 votes to 129 – a margin of 10 votes.

It came after the other two candidates, John Silkin (38 votes in the first ballot) and Peter Shore (32 votes), were eliminated. Shore, the shadow foreign secretary, emphasised his euroscepticism during the campaign, declaring that the “common market yoke must be lifted from the necks of the British people.”

It was later alleged that at least four Labour MPs who were planning to form a new party deliberately voted for Foot. Their aim was to maximise the political space available for an emerging centrist party.

Healey was subsequently elected unopposed to the post of deputy Labour leader.

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Upon his election as Labour leader, Foot told a press conference that the party would “unite on the matters of supreme importance to us – economic policy, domestic policy – to attack the outrages and infamies which this government is inflicting on our people”.

He insisted that he was as “strong in my socialist convictions as I have ever been”.

Foot explained that he first “joined the Labour party in Liverpool because of what I saw of the poverty, the unemployment, and the endless infamies committed on the inhabitants of the back-streets of that city.”

He added: “I am horrified that the threat of unemployment and economic misery is now being deployed against the same kind of people once again.”

Foot, a founding member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), told reporters that unilateralism was “essential to the salvation of the world”.

The Labour leader said: “The Labour Party will sound the alarm about the arms race, the most dangerous arms race we have seen in world history.”

During the campaign, Foot had expressed opposition to the idea of stationing US missiles in Britain, declaring that he would “send them back” as prime minister.

Conservative MP Kenneth Baker welcomed Foot’s succession in 1980 with the remark: “Labour was led by Dixon of Dock Green under Jim Callaghan. Now it is led by Worzel Gummidge.”

Margaret Thatcher congratulated Foot on his election, saying she hoped he would “genuinely and truly enjoy” his time as opposition leader.

She added: “From time to time prime ministers and leaders of the opposition have to hold consultations. I know that those consultations will be pursued as amicably as they were with his distinguished predecessor [Callaghan]”.

In his first session of prime minister’s questions as Labour, Foot spoke of concern “about the scale and pace of the arms race throughout the world”.

He asked: “Is it not a crime and a folly that her minister’s statements show no recognition of that great fact?”

Thatcher responded: “The people of Britain would be far more worried, and would have occasion to be far more worried, if they did not have a proper and full defence policy to protect their liberties.”

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One Labour MP commented after Foot’s election: “A lot of us voted for Michael because we thought he was the most likely peacemaker. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to work.

“I fear that there’s still a good deal of bloodletting ahead.”

Indeed, Foot ultimately proved unable to foster true unity across the Labour Party.

Grassroots pressure for procedural change culminated at the dramatic Wembley conference in January 1981. The leadership election procedure agreed by delegates apportioned the vote between the trade unions/affiliates (40%), the constituency parties (30%), and the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) (30%).

This vote represented the final impetus for the creation of the Social Democratic Party (SDP). The famous ‘Limehouse Declaration’ (January 1981) was issued as an immediate reaction to the rule changes agreed at Labour’s Wembley conference.

“The calamitous outcome of the Labour Party Wembley conference demands a new start in British politics”, the declaration began. Over the course of 1981, 28 Labour MPs defected to the SDP – which now threatened to ‘break the mould’ of British politics.

In 1981, Tony Benn challenged Healey for the deputy leadership under the party’s new procedures.

Benn secured an overwhelming majority of the constituency party vote (81.1%). Healey, however, won a commanding majority of the PLP (65.9%) and the heavily weighted trade union/affiliated bloc (62.5%).

Overall, Healey prevailed by just 50.4% to 49.6% in the second ballot. It has been widely argued that a Benn victory would have strengthened the SDP’s case for a fundamental political realignment.

In November 1981, Foot announced he would not vote for Tony Benn in the shadow cabinet elections, stating he could not trust him to uphold collective responsibility. The electorate for the shadow cabinet was, at the time, confined to the PLP.

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Foot’s tenure as leader was defined by the struggle to construct a credible alternative to Margaret Thatcher’s government, the SDP schism and continued ideological division.

Foot resigned as leader following Labour’s defeat in the June 1983 general election. The party’s manifesto – which featured commitments on unilateral nuclear disarmament, withdrawal from the European Economic Community (EEC), the abolition of the House of Lords, higher personal taxation for the rich, and a sweeping nationalisation programme – was famously branded “the longest suicide note in history”.

Labour was reduced to just 209 seats (down 60), the party’s worst result since 1935. Its share of the vote – just 27.6% – was the lowest since 1918

The SDP, meanwhile, won 25.4%.

Benn lost his Bristol East seat at the 1983 general election, ruling him out of the leadership contest that followed.

On 2 October 1983, Neil Kinnock, a Foot protégé and fellow Tribunite, was elected leader of the Labour Party in a first-round landslide at the party’s conference in Brighton.

Foot reflected on his leadership of the Labour Party in an article for BBC News in 2000.

He wrote: “When it left office after Margaret Thatcher’s general election victory in 1979, more people – men and women – were in work than at any other period of our history. It was for reasons such as this that I urged and pleaded with James Callaghan to stay on as the party leader.

“He always had a very special appeal to the electorate, something that he was much better at than me…

“When Callaghan said that he was determined to go, I was asked to stand and take over as leader.

“A number of people asked me to stand and they came to my house and said that they believed that I had a better chance of holding the party together than many of the others.”

In her memoirs, The Downing Street Years, published 1993, Thatcher wrote that “Michael Foot is a highly principled and cultivated man, invariably courteous in our dealings. In debate and on the platform he has a kind of genius.”

Foot died on 3 March 2010, aged 96.