I was at work walking through Portcullis House on the way to the Chamber when I saw Michael Foot. They had just unveiled a portrait of him there. There was nobody around him, so I couldn’t resist the opportunity to go and say hello to this man who I had never actually met, yet someone who had had such a big impact on my life.

His handshake was warm and welcoming and he wanted to know about Gloucester and how long I’d been its MP. I wanted to express my admiration at how he had kept his dignity in the 1980s, when I watched him on television being lampooned by the media and trying to lead a Party that did not want to be led.

For a man in his mid nineties Michael Foot was incredibly lucid and lively.

Michael died earlier this week aged 96. It was an extraordinary life. Many of the ideals and ideas of the 1983 Labour Party Manifesto, which was dubbed the longest suicide note in history, were heartfelt and passionate pleas for a better world and fairer world, even though they were rejected by Britain in favour of Thatcherism. In some ways Michael Foot was ahead of his time.

The Labour Party nearly imploded in the 1980s, and yet Michael managed to hold it together, sometimes against the odds. He reminded the Parliamentary Labour Party when he addressed us a couple of years ago that throughout history our values of a fairer and more equal society have bound us together and always will.

My abiding memory of him is that of a good and decent man. The harsh lessons of how we do politics in the modern media world would never have been learned by the Labour Party if Michael Foot had never led us.

Up and down the country and here in Gloucester Labour Party members will recall the words of an old socialist poet who said, ‘Mourn the dead. But then fight like hell for the living.’

Michael, that’s what we will do in the coming weeks – you wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Parmjit Dhanda MP

Member of Parliament for Gloucester