Social Democratic Party UK: Encyclopedia II - Social Democratic Party UK - History

Social Democratic Party UK - History

Social Democratic Party UK - Origins

The origin of the party lies in the 1979 Dimbleby Lecture given by Roy Jenkins as he neared the end of his presidency of the European Commission. Jenkins argued the necessity for a realignment in British politics, and discussed whether this could be brought about from within the existing Liberal Party, or from a new group driven by European principals of social democracy.

There were long-running claims of corruption and administrative decay within Labour at local level (the North East of England was to become a cause celibré), and concerns that experienced and able Labour MPs could be deselected (i.e., lose the Labour Party nomination) by those wanting to put into a safe seat their friends, family or members of their own Labour faction. In particular, the Militant Tendency were held to be systematically targeting weak local party branches in safe seat areas in order to have their own candidates selected, and thus become MPs.

Eddie Milne at Blyth (Northumberland) and Dick Taverne in Lincoln were both victims of such intrigues during the 1970s, but in both cases there was enough of a local outcry by party members - and the electorate - for them to fight and win their seats as independent candidates against the official Labour candidates.

Social Democratic Party UK - The March 1973 Lincoln by-election

In Taverne's case, he resigned his seat to force a by-election to highlight the issue of infiltration and intimidation by Militant. He won the seat as a Democratic Labour candidate when he was deselected in favour of a Militant-supported one. He founded the short lived Campaign for Social Democracy thereafter, and wrote a book about events surrounding the by-election called The Future of the Left - Lincoln and After (1972). But the CFSD failed to gain nationwide support, and Taverne lost the seat at the October 1974 General Election. Some independent Social Democrats contested the October 1974 and 1979 General Elections, but none were elected.

Taverne's Lincoln by-election campaign was also helped to a lesser degree by problems with the Conservative candidate, Monday Club chairman Jonathan Guinness. His suggestion during the by-election that murderers should have razor blades left in their cells so they could decently commit suicide resulted in him being nicknamed "Old Razor Blades" during the campaign. This, combined with considerable Conservative grassroots disquiet over the Club's links to the National Front, persuaded some Conservative voters to switch to Taverne in protest as much as tactically to ensure Labour suffered an embarrassing loss. (Guinness had been elected as Chairman specifically to eradicate such links.)

Social Democratic Party UK - The Manifesto Group and the split from Labour

Many original members of the future Social Democratic Party had been members of the Manifesto Group within the Labour Party. This group opposed the leftward shift in Labour policy, the increasing prominence within the party of Michael Foot and Tony Benn, and the involvement of trade unions in choosing the leader of the Labour Party. They argued that a new type of political force was needed to challenge the Conservative Party. Further, they argued that the leader of that party should be elected by its entire membership, rather than the electoral college in use in the Labour party that was largely dominated by the block votes of the Trade Unions. They were also vehemently opposed to Labour's pledge to nuclear disarmament at a time of extreme "Cold War" tensions between the USA and the Soviet Union.

The final straw for the Manifesto Group was the behaviour of former Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey at a meeting with them during the Labour leadership campaign to replace Jim Callaghan. He bluntly told the assembled to vote for him "because you haven't really got any choice, have you?" - they had to back him simply as the only one with a chance of stopping the left-wing supported Michael Foot from winning. (Healey had in fact formerly been a member of the Communist Party). Healey's arrogance convinced many that their days as members of the Labour Party were now over. Healey later claimed in his memoirs that future SDP defectors voted for Foot so as to make the breach easier. Newspapers of the period reported that the announcement of the new party came as a complete shock to MPs from all sides of the Commons, including members of the Manifesto Group, as "The Gang of Four" had kept their preparations a closely guarded secret.

One notable Manifesto Group exception was future Shadow Scottish Secretary George Robertson, who openly refused to join the new party because he feared he would not be able to keep his Lanarkshire seat at a general election. This earned him the nickname of "Chicken George" thereafter for putting his career above principles. Scottish Nationalists were the most merciless in using this nickname in the years to come.

Social Democratic Party UK - The Limehouse Declaration and the birth of the SDP

The founding members or "Gang of Four" were Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Bill Rodgers and Shirley Williams, all leading figures on the Labour "Right". They announced the new party at a press conference, and outlined their policies in what became known as the Limehouse Declaration.

Twenty-eight Labour MPs eventually joined the new party, along with one member of the Conservative Party, Christopher Brocklebank-Fowler. Williams and Jenkins were not at the time MPs, but were elected to the Commons in by-elections at Crosby and Glasgow Hillhead respectively.

The party enjoyed a considerable honeymoon period with the press, who made considerable joke mileage out of their quirk for proffering Claret at their functions. Claret is an "agreeable" wine, and a metaphor for the party's harmonious internal relations compared to those of the strife-torn Labour Party of the period.

Jenkins unsuccessfully contested a by-election at Warrington in March 1982. In the Glasgow Hillhead by-election, another candidate named Roy Jenkins was nominated by Labour Party activists to contest the seat in order to confuse voters and split his potential vote. SDP polling agents were given special dispensation by the Returning Officer to have placards outside of polling stations to state which one on the ballot papers was the 'real Roy'.

Social Democratic Party UK - The Alliance

The SDP formed the SDP-Liberal Alliance with the Liberal Party late in 1981, under the joint leadership of Roy Jenkins (SDP) and Liberal leader David Steel. The Liberal Party, and in particular its leader, David Steel, had applauded the formation of the SDP from the sidelines from the very start. Senior Liberal MP for Rochdale Cyril Smith caused some embarrassment, however, by publicly stating that the SDP "should be strangled at birth". During an era of public disillusionment with the two main parties - Labour and the Conservative - and widescale unemployment, the Alliance achieved considerable success in parliamentary by-elections. At one point, the party had an opinion poll rating of over 50%. By 1981, David Steel was able to address the Liberal Party conference with the phrase "Go back to your constituencies, and prepare for government!"

In early 1982, after public disagreements over who could fight which seats in the forthcoming election, the poll rating dipped, but the party was still well ahead of the Conservatives, and far ahead of Labour. Labour embarrassingly lost one of their ten safest seats in a by-election in early 1983 to Liberal-SDP candidate Simon Hughes. The local Labour MP, Robert Mellish, had resigned over similar circumstances to that of Dick Taverne in Lincoln, and his agent stood in the bitterly contested by-election as an Independent Labour candidate against the Militant-supported Peter Tatchell. Bermondsey has remained a Alliance/Liberal Democrat constituency ever since.

Following victory in the Falklands War of April to June 1982, the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher soared from third place in the public opinion polls. The standing of the Alliance and Labour declined.

The Alliance did well in the 1983 general election, winning 25% of the national vote, close behind Labour's 28%. Because of the British "first-past-the-post" electoral system, only 23 Alliance MPs were elected, six of whom were members of the SDP. In the 1987 general election, with the SDP under the leadership of David Owen, the Alliance's share of the vote fell slightly, and the SDP's parlimentary party was reduced from eight members to five. Roy Jenkins was amongst those who lost their seats. (Mike Hancock had won a by-election at Portsmouth South in 1985, and Rosie Barnes had won a bitterly contested by-election in 1987 at Greenwich. On both occasions, these were former Labour seats where the local party had been taken over by the Militant Tendency. Neither victory could disguise the fact that the electorate's "love affair" with the Alliance was beginning to cool: local government election results proved disappointing even after the Portsmouth result.

From the outset, the formation of the Alliance had raised questions as to whether it would lead to a merged party, or the two parties were destined to compete with each other. This in turn led to grassroots tensions in some areas between Liberal and SDP branches that impaired their ability to mount joint campaigns successfully. Such cross-party feuding was part of the reason for Jenkins losing his Hillhead seat to pro-Militant Labour candidate George Galloway in 1987.

Matters were exacerbated by tensions between local Liberal and SDP branches over joint "Alliance" candidate adoptions. Liberal pride was damaged by the sustained lampooning of the Alliance by ITV’s Spitting Image puppet comedy programme portraying Steel as the craven lickspittle of Owen. Both Owen and Steel were to admit years later that Spitting Image did a lot of damage to the Alliance, which was heavily dependent on positive publicity to make up for the lack of activist numbers of the Conservatives and Labour.

One Spitting Image sketch had a Machiavellian Owen proposing to a simpering Steel that the parties merged under a new name: "and for our side we’ll take ‘Social Democratic’, and from your side, we’ll take ‘Party’", to which a hesitant Steel agreed.

Jenkins' critics believe that he saw the SDP as only a vehicle for siphoning off the right wing of the Labour Party into a new centrist party with the existing Liberals. This would provide a more pro-European and stable party of government within a Proportional Representation system of elections, avoiding the destructive policy swings from left to right caused by Labour and the Conservatives. Owen however saw the party as being a replacement for Labour altogether, of the same mould as the German Social Democrats which benefit from not being tied down by Trade Union control, and thus were seen as more approachable by business interests. It was Owen's vision that attracted to the SDP its main sponsor, the Sainsbury supermarket chain. Tony Blair, the Labour MP from Sedgefield, was a very vocal critic of this SDP-business link. Years later, he made its owner a Lord in return for his considerable patronage of "New Labour".

Social Democratic Party UK - One merger two splits

After the disappointment of 1987, Steel proposed a formal merger of the two parties. This had been what Jenkins and Steel had wanted all along, although Jenkins' interest had been muted whilst SDP leader. He was fiercely opposed by Owen, who argued that such a merger would not be accepted by the electorate, and would not reverse their declining share of the vote. Owen was quoted as saying that Jenkins should have been honest and joined the Liberals in 1981 with his closest supporters, including Dick Taverne, Tom Ellis, Tom Bradley and Neville Sandelson.

But the majority of the SDP's now demoralised membership (along with those of the Liberals) voted in favour of the union. Owen resigned as leader and was replaced by Robert Maclennan. Steel and Maclennan headed the new "Social and Liberal Democrat Party" (SLD) from March 3, 1988. An interim working name for the party, the "Democrats", was adopted by conference on 26th September 1988. This proved to be unpopular, and the party was re-named the Liberal Democrats in October 1989, as had been originally proposed at the September 1988 conference by the party's Tiverton branch.

Many SDP members, including SDP MP and future Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy, joined Maclennan in the merged party, but Owen remained defiantly at the head of a continuing SDP, along with two other MPs, John Cartwright and Rosie Barnes. There was also a continuing Liberal Party, led by Michael Meadowcroft and David Moorish, mainly based around Liverpool and West Country Liberals who feared a dilution by the former SDP members of the Liberal tradition within the merged party.

There was much rancour from the merged SLD at the continuing SDP. The low mark of this was a staged confrontation by Kennedy and Maclennan who turned up on the doorstep of Owen's home when he was hosting a birthday party for his young daughter. Accompanied by a TV news camera crew, they asked him why he had refused to accept the vote of the majority of SDP members. Both parties, however, had federal structures, which meant that individual branches of the SDP and Liberals could continue to carry on as before. The Greenwich branch of the SDP was one that chose to do so.

Some members simply dropped out of politics together out of disillusionment when the time came to renew their membership subscriptions. After a series of highly publicised expulsions, a now Militant-free Labour Party led by Neil Kinnock benefited from the feuding within the former Alliance that was supposed to see an end to "the politics of confrontation". The Liberal Democrats also lost to the continuing SDP its one major backer, Lord Sainsbury.

The subsequent election of a new leader, Paddy Ashdown, revived the new party's fortunes in time, and turned it into the most successful "third party" electorally in British politics since the days of Lloyd George.

(For information about the continuation of the SDP led by Dr. David Owen from 1988 to 1990, please see Social Democratic Party (UK, 1988), and about the subsequent continuation of the party after 1990, please see Social Democratic Party (UK, 1990).)

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "History", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki