Foot returned to parliament in 1960 at a by-election in Ebbw Vale in Monmouthshire, left vacant by Bevan's death.
Harold Wilson - the subject of an enthusiastic campaign biography by Foot published by Robert Maxwell's Pergamon Press in 1964 - offered Foot a place in his first government, but Foot turned it down, instead becoming the leader of Labour's left opposition from the back benches.