Social Democratic Party

Social Democratic Party (SDP), United Kingdom political party avowing social democracy, prominent during the 1980s. The SDP originated on January 25, 1981, as the Council for Social Democracy, an organization led by four former members of the Labour Party, the so-called “Gang of Four”: Shirley Williams, David Owen, William Rodgers, and Roy Jenkins. They had become disillusioned with the leftwards drift of the Labour Party after its electoral defeat by the Conservative Party in 1979. The broad aims of the new party were set out in “Limehouse Declaration” of January 25, followed on March 26 by the setting up of the SDP as a separate political party. Its leading members expressed support for electoral reform through proportional representation, continued membership of the European Economic Community (now the European Union), multilateral disarmament and a reflationary economic strategy.

In September 1981 the SDP joined the Liberal Party to form the Alliance to fight the next general election, and to reach mutual agreement on the fighting of by-elections and local government elections. Party membership in October 1981 stood at 66,000. The first SDP Member of Parliament, Shirley Williams, was elected at the Crosby by-election in November 1981. Roy Jenkins won Glasgow Hillhead in 1982, and was subsequently elected leader of the party. In the 1983 general election the SDP campaigned in alliance with the Liberals, each fighting approximately half the total seats contested, but the total result was only six MPs. In June 1983 David Owen succeeded Roy Jenkins as leader. In 1986 serious rifts with the Liberal Party developed over defence policy, but the Alliance was relaunched early in 1987, and the SDP and Liberals campaigned under joint leadership in the subsequent general election. In June 1987 the party returned only 5 out of a total of 22 Alliance MPs, only David Owen of the “Gang of Four” being returned to parliament. Liberal calls for a merger in the wake of the election led to fierce controversy within the SDP, and there was a ballot of SDP members about opening merger talks with the Liberals. On August 6 a vote of 57 per cent in favour of merger talks led to David Owen's resignation as leader, and a major split within the SDP appeared imminent. Owen was succeeded as leader by Robert MacLennan. At the end of January 1988 the SDP voted in favour of a merger with the Liberals to form the Social and Liberal Democratic Party (later the Liberal Democrats), launched in March 1988. On March 8 a “continuing” SDP was relaunched, and elected Owen as its leader. The party gave up full-scale national campaigning in early 1989, as its membership had fallen to around 12,000. In June 1990 the party was wound up because of lack of support, though retaining three MPs in Parliament. Its continued existence following the merger was widely perceived as having temporarily reduced support for the centre as a whole. The Liberal Democrats were able to establish a stable basis as an alternative to the two major parties.

The SDP marked the most significant attempt to set up a new party in modern British politics. Its early success was soon affected by disagreements with the Liberals over sharing out seats and over policy. The revival of the popularity of Margaret Thatcher following the Falklands War of 1982 also eroded potential support from the right, while the Labour Party failed to disintegrate and provide heavyweight defectors to the Alliance. Above all, the British electoral system of simple majority voting meant that even with over a fifth of the vote in the polls of 1983 and 1987, the SDP and its Alliance partners, the Liberals, were unable to win more than a score or more of seats and were prevented from wielding decisive political influence. Hopes of “breaking the mould” of British politics (in a famous phrase of the time) were not to be realized during the existence of the SDP as an independent body.