Michael Foot for his rumpled appearance. A centrist faction of the party broke away in 1981 to form the SDP. Foot led Labour into the 1983 general election, when the party obtained its lowest share of the vote since the 1918 general election and the fewest parliamentary seats it had had at any time since before 1945. He resigned after the election, and was succeeded as leader by Neil Kinnock. Among the books he authored are "Guilty Men" (1940); "The Pen and the Sword" (1957), a biography of Jonathan Swift; and a biography of Aneurin Bevan. Foot was born in Lipson Terrace,
History of the Labour Party (UK) MacDonald was vehemently denounced by the Labour Party as a "traitor" and a "rat" for what they saw as his betrayal. Arthur Henderson, who had been elected in 1931 as Labour leader to succeed MacDonald, lost his seat in the 1931 General Election. The only former Labour cabinet member who survived the landslide was the pacifist George Lansbury, who accordingly became party leader. The party experienced a further split in 1932 when the Independent Labour Party, which for some years had been increasingly at odds with the Labour leadership, opted to disaffiliate from the Labour Party. The ILP embarked on