BBC ON THIS DAY | 26 | 1981: 'Gang of four' launches new party About This Site | Text Only 1981: 'Gang of four' launches new party The Social Democrats have launched their new political party pledging to "reconcile the nation" and "heal divisions between classes". At a crowded press conference in London, signalling the start of a massive media campaign to recruit supporters, the party outlined its hopes of breaking the political mould and of making significant gains at the next General Election. The Gang of Four, the nick-name of the four Labour defectors who set up the SDP, outlined their hopes of winning, with the Liberals, a majority in the Commons. Roy Jenkins, former Labour cabinet minister, David Owen, William Rodgers and Shirley Williams published a 12-point document covering elections, education and international co-operation. We are going to be free David Owen The party's proposals included calls to reform the political system, environmentally friendly policies, equality of opportunity for women and ethnic minorities, and a fairer distribution of wealth. Mr Jenkins said formulating an incomes policy would be "one of the most difficult things we have to do".

The Gang of Four describe themselves as a left-of-centre party and is the first to be run in Britain with a one-member one-vote system for policies and selection. Dr Owen said the party offered Britain a fresh start and he said recruits were coming from other parties all the time. "We are going to be free: we will make decisions... But they will be your decisions," he told potential members. He accused the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of having divided the country between the North, Scotland, Wales, and the still "relatively prosperous" South East. The four left Labour citing major differences over European and defence policies as the party has taken a sharp turn to the left under leader Michael Foot. The opposition leader has insisted they will win no support. But with call centres waiting to hear from future supporters and an estimated �170,000 spent on regional journeys and advertising, the SDP is determined to win over MPs and then voters.

How Lib Dems got where they are today | Politics | The Guardian The Observer How Lib Dems got where they are today The Liberal movement's victories, setbacks and transformations from the turn of the last century to the present day The original 'gang of four': Bill Rodgers, David Owen, Roy Jenkins and Shirley Williams, holding the Observer newspaper. Photograph: PA/PA Archive/Press Association Ima Saturday 13 March 2010 19.06 EST First published on Saturday 13 March 2010 19.06 EST Share on Messenger Close 1906 The Liberal party wins a general election landslide built on a call for free trade and an anti-Conservative pact with the new Labour party. 1916 David Lloyd George heads a Conservative-Liberal coalition in the 1918 postwar election, with Labour becoming the official opposition over the Independent Liberals of Herbert Asquith. 1922 The Conservatives break away from Lloyd George's wartime coalition, leaving the split Liberal and New Liberal parties floundering, with many Liberal MPs (including Winston Churchill) defecting to the new Conservative government or Labour opposition.

1945 The postwar election is a disaster for the Liberals, who take only 12 rural seats, wiping out the party leadership and its urban representation and leading to decades in the wilderness. 1976 Newly elected Liberal leader David Steel enters into an electoral pact with Jim Callaghan's Labour government, giving Callaghan a much-needed parliamentary majority that had been lost in byelection defeats. The pact broke down before Labour's defeat in the 1979 election. 1981 Moderate Labour MPs Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Shirley Williams and Bill Rodgers (the Gang of Four) break away to form the Social Democratic party (SDP), taking a ignificant number of Labour MPs with them. The SDP forms an alliance with the Liberal party, jointly winning nearly 25% of the vote (yet only 23 parliamentary seats) in the 1983 election. 1988 Following Margaret Thatcher's victory in the 1987 election, the SDP and Liberals merge, despite loud opposition from members on both sides, becoming the Social and Liberal Democrats .

1997 Under the leadership of Royal Marine-turned-MP Paddy Ashdown, the Liberal Democrats record their best result since 1935 in the 1992 election, then more than double their number of MPs five years later by reacting to New Labour's move to the centre with a campaign to raise income tax to fund education reforms. 2005 Charles Kennedy's Lib Dems win 62 seats with 22% of the vote, benefiting from widespread anger over the Iraq war. 2010 Nick Clegg narrowly won the leadership in 2007 and is preparing for a general election, declaring that the his party will have four demands before lending any minority administration its support: reform of the tax system, more spending on education for poorer children, a switch to a greener economy and political reform in Westminster. The fight for Labour’s soul – what the party’s brutal 1981 split means today | Politics | The Guardian Labour The fight for Labour’s soul – what the party’s brutal 1981 split means today Labour is in crisis. The bitter divide across the party echoes the acrimony that drove the ‘gang of four’ to form the breakaway SDP.

Will history repeat itself? (From left) Roy Jenkins, David Owen, William Rodgers and Shirley Williams launch the SDP in March 1981. Photograph: David Gaywood/Rex/Shutterstock Tuesday 19 July 2016 10.18 EDT Last modified on Wednesday 28 September 2016 08.13 EDT Share on Messenger Close On a mild winter Sunday morning 35 years ago, political reporters were instructed to go to a riverside house in east London, and to wait outside for an important announcement. Inside were four former Labour ministers, all well-known national figures: Shirley Williams , David Owen , Bill Rodgers and Roy Jenkins . Over the previous year and a half, they had met with growing frequency, and written articles and given interviews that suggested a common disenchantment with Labour. They had become known by an increasingly expectant media as the gang of four . In 1981, as now, British politics was in a state of rare flux. Margaret Thatcher was an inexperienced prime minister. Her austere economic and public-spending policies seemed disastrous.

Meanwhile, the Labour opposition was being ineffectually led by Michael Foot , like Jeremy Corbyn a faintly otherworldly leftwinger in his late 60s. Under Foot, as under Corbyn, the party was becoming an unmanageable cauldron of leftwing and centrist factions, of London social liberals and northern social conservatives, of working-class trade unionists and middle-class constituency activists, of party loyalists and “entryists” – infiltrators from other, more confrontational leftwing groups such as Militant . Scenes from the battle for the soul of the Labour party | Letters from Margaret Beckett MP, Simon Rose, Professor Diane Reay, Peter McKenna, Rachel Ester and Ian Sinclair Read more “The four of us were very different from each other,” remembers Rodgers of his fellow rebels against this apparently fragile status quo. “We had no organisation. But we worked closely together. And we moved very quickly.” On 24 January 1981, the gang of four went to their final Labour event: an acrimonious one-day conference that voted to drastically reduce the influence of MPs over the party’s choice of leader and deputy leader.

Again, there is a seemingly precise parallel with Labour’s current internal struggles over whether Corbyn’s fate as leader should be decided by activists or the parliamentary party. As MPs or former MPs, and longstanding champions of the Labour right, the gang of four saw the conference vote as an intolerable strengthening of the left’s power. Owen spent much of the day pointedly sitting on the stairs of the hall, away from the other delegates, his expression one of photogenic fury. The following day, the gang of four summoned the journalists to the east London house, which was Owen’s elegant family home. For several hours, while the reporters waited in the street, the politicians discussed and drafted a short manifesto – pausing for a lunch of wine, cheese and salad – that they titled the Limehouse declaration . At teatime, after 18 drafts, with the deadlines for the next day’s papers fast approaching, the document was handed out to the reporters. It announced the founding of a “council for social democracy”, which would “reverse Britain’s economic decline”, “eliminate poverty”, “create an open … more equal society”, and counter “the drift towards extremism in the Labour party”.

Over the next few weeks, this council haphazardly but quickly crystallised into a new political party. There were newspaper ads appealing for donations and other support, signed by centre-left notables such as Lord Young , the author of Labour’s famously successful 1945 general election manifesto. There were excited debates about what the party’s name should be: Progressive Labour, Democratic Labour and New Labour were all suggested. In March 1981, with the media already in the habit of describing them as “social democrats”, the gang of four settled on the Social Democratic party, or SDP. Eighty thousand people joined in its first year. During 1981 and 1982, 28 Labour MPs joined, too – the largest parliamentary defection since 1886, when the Liberals had split over Ireland. The Liberals had subsequently been out of power for almost 20 years. Pinterest David Owen (left) and David Steel, leaders of the SDP-Liberal Alliance, at the launch of the 1987 Alliance election campaign. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images Yet in the SDP’s hugely optimistic early days , few dwelled on such precedents.

“We were amazed by the scale of the reaction,” Williams says. “We were not completely prepared for it.” Owen told me in 2012 that Jenkins in particular “geared himself to think that if he became SDP leader”, which he soon did, “he could almost become PM” at the next general election. The SDP formed an alliance with the Liberals, who were also surging in popularity. In December 1981, a poll by Gallup put the alliance at 50.5%, a heady 27% ahead of both Labour and the Tories. At the Liberal party conference that autumn, their usually judicious leader, David Steel , told delegates: “Go back to your constituencies and prepare for government.” In recent weeks – in fact, ever since it became clear last summer that Corbyn was going to be elected leader, and that many of his MPs were never going to accept that – it has seemed increasingly possible that Labour will split again, and that this time the divisions could be even worse.

In 1981-2, only a tenth of Labour MPs deserted to the new party; last month, three-quarters of them backed a motion of no confidence in Corbyn , despite his huge electoral mandate from party members. Labour has always been a potentially explosive coalition of idealists and pragmatists, of different interest groups and ideological tendencies: both a loose “Labour movement” and to varying degrees a disciplined party. Some of those aghast at the present in-fighting seem to have forgotten that even the party’s relatively stable periods have been marked by intimidation and intolerance, such as the malicious briefing and crushing of dissent practised by New Labour’s spin doctors. Yet the current turmoil feels as nasty as any since the early 80s, with threats of violence alleged by both sides, and all constituency meetings suspended until the leadership contest is decided in September in an attempt to reduce the acrimony (some local parties are meeting regardless). Last month, while Corbyn was being castigated by much of the parliamentary party in a room in Westminster, thousands of his supporters were massing and chanting his name in Parliament Square, directly outside. Labour already looked and sounded like two parties.

“The moderates now are pretty close to feeling the despair we did,” says one of the first Labour defectors to the SDP in 1981, who is still active in Westminster and asks not to be named. “It is a tragic situation,” Rodgers says. For all its excitement, the 1981 SDP breakaway also “caused pain to me and those who left the party. My friends and neighbours were divided. My three daughters stayed in the Labour party.” Rodgers continues: “Even a week ago, I would have said that somehow the Labour party will scrabble along [intact]. I think now it is a possibility there will be a split.” Williams, revealingly, calls such a scenario “a crack-up”. The 1981 defector says: “I have a feeling these [anti-Corbyn] guys will declare themselves to be a parliamentary party. If they’re really disciplined, they will have more MPs than Corbyn, and become the opposition to the government.” Pinterest David Owen, Shirley Williams and Bill Rodgers recreate their 1981 meeting at David Owen’s house in 2006.

Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian Last weekend, the Mail on Sunday reported that “more than 150 Labour MPs are plotting to form a breakaway party codenamed Continuity Labour”, if Corbyn wins the September leadership ballot. David Winnick was first elected as an MP in 1966. He did not leave Labour for the SDP. “The crisis today is much more serious than in 1981,” he says. “The SDP had limited influence among party members. Very few constituency Labour parties crumbled. The defectors were seen as rightwingers, and their alliance with the Liberals demonstrated that. The party was left intact.” Frank Field , another long-serving MP who stuck with Labour in 1981, remembers the split differently. “The people who were going to leave – I was just so anxious that they stay.

Owen was a legitimate part of the Labour party.” But he agrees with Winnick that Labour in the 80s had a durability it may lack now: “The loyalty of the Labour vote then was strong.” The 1981 crisis blew up much more gradually than Labour’s current one, which has been accelerated by social media, the faster modern news cycle and by a feverishness in British politics that has seen two referendums, a shock general election result, and five major parties changing their leaders, all in less than two years. The Labour-SDP split, by contrast, developed over almost a decade. In 1972, Dick Taverne , a former Labour minister, resigned from the party after a bitter dispute with leftwing Labour activists in his constituency, and the following year set up a sort of prototype SDP, the Campaign for Social Democracy . It failed to attract much support and was wound up in 1975. But the same year saw the formation of another SDP-ish group, the Social Democratic Alliance. Its main preoccupation was the infiltration of the Labour party by Militant and other hard-left organisations.

During the 70s, this “entryism” had become a significant phenomenon, as activists with non-Labour loyalties began to take control of some local Labour parties. Field’s constituency is in Merseyside, a focus for Militant in the 70s and 80s, and he experienced the sect’s methods at first hand. “Two things I learned are that you can have a level of intimidation in a group [setting] that stops people from saying things, and that the hard-left are wonderful liars. They always have a plausible person as their public representative. And when you say you’ve seen intimidatory behaviour, they always say, ‘We never saw that.’” Pinterest Derek Hatton (centre) and other members of Militant sing the Internationale outside Labour’s HQ after being expelled from the party in 1986. Photograph: Paul Fievez/Daily Mail/Rex However, in the early 80s, as now, the Labour right often did not draw a distinction between such sectarian activity and the increasingly leftwing tendencies of many genuine and unaggressive Labour members.

The latter, like many in the party now, and in the pro-Corbyn pressure group Momentum , had grown disillusioned with the cautious, compromising approach that the party had recently followed in government, and that had arguably caused it to lose power. As Owen himself conceded in the New Statesman in 2011 : “In the aftermath of electoral defeat [in the 1979 general election] … It was not unreasonable for those on the left to try to shift the balance of power in the party closer to their views.” Yet in the early 80s, he and the other founders of the SDP portrayed this leftward shift as a takeover of Labour by utterly foreign ideas. In his classic, recently republished history of Militant , the veteran political reporter Michael Crick points out that in 1981 the group had at most 2,500 members. Labour had a hundred times that; Militant’s influence over the party was smaller than defectors to the SDP often claimed. Since the 80s, Militant has renamed itself as the milder-sounding Socialist party . Its newspaper is generally supportive of Corbyn – sometimes referred to as Jeremy – and of Momentum.

Since his election as leader, it has been claimed more and more widely that Militant’s power inside Labour is on the rise again. Field says: “The same [Militant] people who we expelled from the party in the 80s are tormenting Angela Eagle.” Eagle faced a revolt in her Merseyside constituency after announcing her abortive leadership challenge against Corbyn. And yet, as Crick records in his book, “Corbyn was never anywhere near being a member of Militant”. That has not changed. Similarly, last December, Momentum declared : “We can’t allow Momentum to be used as a vehicle for other parties. So if you are a member of the Socialist Party … for instance, you cannot also be involved in decision-making within Momentum.” If the party does split again, what might happen to the two sides? Rodgers has a warning for anyone contemplating a SDP-style breakaway: “Members of parliament are not that strong – they’re not like soldiers. When it comes to the moment [to defect] they get rather shaky, they try to find a way to avoid it happening.” The 28 Labour defections to the SDP were fewer than the gang of four hoped for.

The 1981 defector who doesn’t want to be named says: “The anti-Corbyn side have moved too quickly against him. They never gave him a real chance to fail demonstrably. They’ve been seen off, for now. If he holds on in the leadership ballot this September, a lot of power will accrete to him. A coalition of the [mostly pro-Corbyn] trade unions and all the young people in Momentum would take a lot of Commons seats from any anti-Corbyn party [at a general election].” For that reason, it has been alleged, some on the Labour left are sanguine about the party splitting. Pinterest Shirley Williams in 1981. Photograph: Herbie Knott/Rex/Shutterstock Alternatively, the British electoral system, which is almost uniquely biased against all but the biggest parties – as Ukip learned to its cost when 3.9m votes at last year’s election earned it a single Commons seat – may crush both Labour offshoots. “The ultimate nightmare,” Winnick says, “is that neither survives electorally. The party must remain as one … even if under the present leader. Better a dismal result than splitting.” Williams disagrees.

“Splits are unavoidable, if the issues are big enough. I don’t think either Labour or the Conservatives can hold together. There are too many issues – such as Brexit – that cut across party boundaries.” She argues that a “loose coalition of parties of the left” would be much more effective than the current, dysfunctional Labour party. Dear Labour, split the party and you’ll regret it. Love from an SDP candidate | Polly Toynbee Read more But history is against her. In June 1983, two years after the SDP was founded, the SDP-Liberal alliance contested its first general election. It got 25% of the vote, exceptional for a new party but exactly half its giddy rating in the 1981 Gallup poll. Labour, despite still being led by the derided Foot, got 2% more. Labour also held on to 209 of its Commons seats. The SDP got six. The split in the left-of-centre vote kept Thatcher in office with crushing Commons majorities for seven more years. In 1990, after never quite regaining its initial popularity, the SDP was disbanded. Roy Jenkins died in 2003.

The remaining members of the gang of four, and more disinterested politicians and historians, have long argued that the SDP’s ideas – such as the “classless society” and “more responsive public services” called for in the Limehouse declaration – outlived the party, shaping the Lib Dems, New Labour, even the Conservatives. “ Theresa May’s first [surprisingly left-leaning] speech as prime minister – that was pure social democracy,” claims the 1981 defector from Labour to the SDP. Williams says: “People still come up to me and say: ‘I weep that the SDP are no longer with us.’” Affection, influence, the adventure of a new party – many political careers fail to achieve these. But will the possibility be enough to tempt the anti-Corbyn mutineers, some of whom were ministers only a few years ago? We may find out within weeks, or it may take years.

BBC News | TALKING POLITICS | SDP: Breaking the mould Thursday, 25 January, 2001, 16:24 GMT SDP: Breaking the mould The SDP was launched by four former Labour MPs By BBC News Online's Ray Dunne It is 20 years since four MPs called a press conference in London to announce their plans to "break the mould of British politics". It was an ambitious pledge but within 10 years it would become clear that the Social Democratic Party (SDP) would achieve no such thing. However, the 'gang of four' - Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Bill Rodgers and Shirley Williams - came close and at times it looked like they may succeed. David Owen announced the end of the party in 1990 The four left the Labour Party citing major differences over European and defence policies. The party had lost the 1979 general election and was taking a sharp turn to the left under leader Michael Foot. The 'Limehouse declaration' unveiled at the London press conference outlined an alternative vision. Within two months, a party had been formed under the title SDP - the four having apparently toyed with the idea of calling themselves New Labour.

Breakaway party In a recent interview, former leader David Owen now Lord Owen said: "We looked at Radical, New Labour Party, Democratic Labour but we ended up with Social Democratic Party because that was part of the European continental tradition." He said they had rejected the New Labour name because they wanted the breakaway party to have a wider appeal and attract disillusioned Conservatives as well as Labour members. For a time it did. The party joined forces with the Liberal Party to create the Liberal-SDP Alliance in autumn 1981. This electoral alliance was headed jointly by Liberal leader David Steel and SDP leader Roy Jenkins. By the middle of 1982 the Alliance could boast 30 MPs - nearly all defectors from the Labour benches. Only a single Conservative crossed over although the party did win a handful of by-elections. Early opinion polls suggested that the British electorate supported this bid to "break the mould". At one point, the Alliance had in the region of 50% support in the polls. Major upset However, by the time of the 1983 the poll ratings had fallen.

The Alliance secured more than 25% of the vote - just two points behind Labour - and entered the new parliament with 23 MPs. Shirley Williams is now a Lib Dem peer By the time Margaret Thatcher next decided to go to the country support for the Alliance was still strong. The 1987 general election saw the Alliance this time under the leadership of the "Two Davids" - David Steel and David Owen - win 23% of the vote and 22 seats. Labour, with Neil Kinnock at the helm, won 31% of the vote and secured 229 seats. After six years of existance the SDP and the Alliance, it was beginning to look like the mould of British politics would not be broken. Official merger After the election, Liberal Party leader David Steel proposed an official merger or what he called at the time a "democratic fusion" with the SDP. While most of the SDP's membership voted in favour of the merger, its leader David Owen remained adamantly opposed. He continued to lead a rump with a pledge to fight the now new Social and Liberal Democrat Party (SLD). Initially, his move seemed to be well informed.

One year after the merger, the SDP pushed the SLD into third place in the Richmond by-election. But by 1990, everything had gone wrong. The party came seventh out of eight candidates with just 155 votes in the Bootle by-election trailing even the Monster Raving Loony Party. Within days, David Owen had announced the end of the party that was supposed to break the mould of British politics. What went wrong? Many have suggested that personalities got in the way. But according to Lord Owen the problems were down to a reforming Labour Party. Speaking this week, he said: "I think as the Labour Party started to reform it became inevitable that the SDP would not be able to survive as a separate party." New Labour architect? The former SDP leader recently caused controversy when he suggested that he was the original architect of the policies behind New Labour. Lord Owen, who stood down as an MP in the 1992 election, believes that the reformed Labour Party is one of the lasting legacies of the SDP. Charles Kennedy was once a SDP MP Others however would disagree.

Some critics have suggested that all the party achieved was a split in the left's vote throughout the 1980s allowing the Tories to remain in power. But he believes that the "pressure of having a party take away a very substantial proportion of its vote" forced the Labour Party to modernise. Few in the ranks of New Labour agree. While the gang of four never actually managed to break the mould of British politics, their influence and that of the SDP can still be felt. All four remain in politics, with Jenkins, Williams, and Rodgers sitting in the House of Lords for the Liberal Democrats. Lord Owen is a cross-bencher and is these days concentrating on fighting off attempts to get Britain to sign up to the euro as head of the pressure group New Europe. Many former members of the party are now working in the backrooms for both the Tories and Labour. But most have remained in the Liberal Democrats - not least their leader, one time SDP MP Charles Kennedy.

Search BBC News Online The gang Labour blames for wilderness years - Telegraph The gang Labour blames for wilderness years The 'Gang of Four', from left: Bill Rodgers, David Owen, Roy Jenkins and Shirley Williams By Patrick Hennessy, Political Editor 12:01AM BST 16 Sep 2007 Even after 26 years, the shock waves caused by the breakaway of the "Gang of Four" from the Labour Party continue to reverberate. It was a seismic event in modern political history. At its heart was David Owen, one of the party's very brightest stars who, aged just 38, had already been foreign secretary. The breakaway by four former Cabinet ministers - and subsequent formation of the Social Democratic Party, or SDP - was said at the time to have "broken the mould" of British politics. In the eyes of those who stayed behind in a deeply divided, hugely unpopular party, the Gang of Four were traitors who helped to condemn Labour to 16 more years in the wilderness.

For these reasons, Gordon Brown's private chat with Lord Owen is perhaps even more surprising than that with Lady Thatcher, who was invited for tea at Number 10 in the Prime Minister's much-publicised coup of last week. To this day, many Labour MPs and activists narrow their eyes whenever Lord Owen's name is mentioned. For he and Mr Brown to hold talks that could lead to his re-embracing of Labour is little short of extraordinary. In 1981, two years after Margaret Thatcher had been elected prime minister, the Labour Party under Michael Foot made a series of lurches to the Left, including a pledge to withdraw Britain from the European Union (then the European Economic Community), yield more power to the trade unions and lend more backing to unilateral nuclear disarmament. Early in the year Dr Owen, as he was then, and three other big-hitting Labour "moderates", Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams and Bill Rodgers, announced their breakaway move. Related Articles David Owen in talks with Gordon Brown 16 Sep 2007 The Gang of Four was joined by 28 other Labour MPs - a sizeable chunk of the parliamentary party - and one Conservative MP.

In 1981 the new party entered into an electoral pact with the Liberal Party, scoring notable by--election victories and winning 25 per cent of the vote in the 1983 general election, splitting the anti-Tory vote and ensuring Mrs Thatcher's landslide victory. In 1987 the Alliance, as it was then known, won 23 per cent of the vote. Bitter splits followed, however, on plans for a full merger with the Liberals. While Lord Jenkins, Lady Williams and Lord Rodgers went on to join what was to become the Liberal Democrats, Lord Owen, by now satirised as "Dr Death" and portrayed as Dracula in Spitting Image on television, remained leader of a "rump" SDP with only three MPs. It was wound up in 1990. In the next seven years, Lord Owen stoked Labour's ire by continuing on his rightward political journey, even flirting with joining the Conservative Cabinet. In June 1990 Mrs Thatcher said the Tory party was Lord Owen's "natural home". In 1992 John Major appointed him to a key European Union position on former Yugoslavia.

In the general election that year, Lord Owen advised voters to back the Lib Dems where they had a chance of winning and elsewhere to vote Conservative to stop Neil Kinnock from becoming prime minister. After Labour's landslide win, Tony Blair made efforts to mend the rift with the Gang of Four - most notably with Lord Jenkins. Mr Brown continued that process by offering Lady Williams an advisory role. However, both Lord Jenkins, until his death in 2003, and Lady Williams remained members of the Liberal Democrats, as does Lord Rodgers. Lord Owen sits as a crossbencher - without party affiliation - in the House of Lords. He became one of Mr Blair's fiercest critics over the Iraq war, led a campaign against membership of the euro monetary zone and even accused Mr Blair of covering up the full extent of his heart condition. This weekend, however, after tea and sympathy at Number 10, there are the first signs that Lord Owen's great political journey will see him coming home to Labour. "I'm still a social democrat," he told The Sunday Telegraph. Asked if he would support Labour under Mr Brown at the general election, he conspicuously refused to rule it out, claiming: "If an election comes I will have to decide.

I'm not going to be drawn now." Lord Owen could become the most striking recruit yet for Mr Brown - a walking symbol of the bitterness that sparked civil war in his party and kept it out of power for a generation. If the Prime Minister succeeds, and if his party lets him, it will represent a breathtaking political coup. About Us News/Politics Scotland- About The SDP The SDP was formed in 1981 by the notorious gang of four Labour M.Ps. Roy Jenkins. Shirley Williams. Bill Rogers & David Owen. All were concerned about the shift of the Labour Party to the extreme left of the political spectrum. Much of the history is recorded on Wikipedia. Although, not totally correct - amendments have been sent but not yet recorded. Twenty three Labour M.Ps. and one Conservative joined the new party. The leadership courted the Liberal Party and the two parties campaigned as the SDP/Liberal Alliance, some members eventually joining with the Liberals to form a new party. Remaining members continued with new members joining all the time, right up to today’s SDP. If you agree with our ten SDP Principles, our party is the party for you.

The Liberal Democrats - A-Level Government and Politics A-Level Government and Politics The Liberal Democrats The Liberal Democrats The Liberal Democrats are a new political party combining the old Liberal Party of William Gladstone, Lloyd George and Jeremy Thorpe with the Social democrats who broke away from Labour in 1981 as a result of its lurch to the left under Michael Foot. The first leaders of the Social Democrats were the, so called, Gang of Four [Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Bill Rogers and Shirley Williams]. In 1988, following seven years in which they worked together as an Alliance the two parties decided that they would be a more powerful force in British politics if they merged. The political ideology of the Liberal Democrats is quite difficult to pinpoint with certainty since, of course, it derives from the two different parties. Thus, the Liberal wing of the party has tended to be economically closest to the Conservatives, disliking too much interference by the government in our lives and, following, Gladstone in believing in the virtue of Balanced Budgets. Nick Clegg has, for example, pleased this wing of the party by supporting cuts in public spending.

This section of Liberals has sometimes been called “Orange Book Liberals” after the “Orange Book” 2004, which emphasised the Liberalism of the Liberal Democrats. Liberals have also been totally against Labour’s proposals for identity cards and greater use of CCTV, because they involve state interference in our private lives, while they have always been extremely positive about the European Union, arguing that it provides a model of Free Trade and Cooperation between countries which could serve as a global model for other states to follow. Liberals have also fought privilege and elitism wanting to create a fair and democratic society as possible; this is why they support constitutional reform, for example, making the House of Lords an elected democratic chamber. Their focus, too, on limited government and the rule of law in order to ensure that all rights are protected has made them supportive of Gay Marriage, the Gender Equality Act and, of course, the Human Rights Act. They also support a Codified Constitution in order to entrench our Civil Liberties. Social Democrats have, though, tended to be more on the left, since they themselves were originally refugees from Michael Foot’s Labour Party.

Their ideological hero would be that great Liberal William Beveridge [1879-1963] who provided the intellectual foundations for Clement Attlee’s Welfare State in the Beveridge Report. This section of the Party would therefore focus particularly on the importance of ensuring that the Welfare State is able to effectively look after the most vulnerable in society, while it is also prepared to support higher taxes [especially on the most wealthy]. Interestingly, before the 2010 Election, Vince Cable “pledged” a new Mansion Tax on homes worth over £2 Million. Key Liberal Democrats Policies Liberal Democrats are very positive about the European Union. They support its basis in the principles of Free Trade and, as a party that supports a liberal belief in the advantages of Global Governance, rather than states simply looking after their own best interests, they see institutions with a significant Supranational element as setting an important precedent for what the 21st century should look like. Liberal Democrats also believe in Electoral and Constitutional Reform. They are, thus, keen to modernize the constitution rather than being held back by tradition and convention. Thus, they firmly support attempts to make the UK more democratic by encouraging Devolution, More Referendums and an Elected House of Lords.

They also support the principles of Electoral Reform since they argue that First Past the Post is unfair in that it ensures that where you vote matters much more than who you vote for. They are very opposed, too, to the way in which FPTP has always penalised the third party in UK politics; for example in 2010 Lib Dems gained 23% of the vote yet only received 8.7% of the parliamentary seats. The Liberal Democrats are also very eager to protect our civil liberties from the government. Two great “liberal” philosophers laid down these principles and they still provide the basis to the party today. John Locke (1632-1704) argued that we are all born with Natural Rights and Basic Freedoms and that government should Tolerate different modes of thought and respect our Individual Freedoms, while John Stuart Mill, argued that all citizens have an absolutely right to exercise their freedom, provided they do not interfere with the Freedom of others. The Liberal Democrats, therefore, resolutely oppose Identity Cards and giving the Security Services the right to monitor e mails and phone calls, while resisting right wing Tory calls to repeal the Human Rights Act.

Instead they would like a Codified Constitution in order to ensure that our rights are fully entrenched. The Liberal Democrats, like Labour, also believe that the state should improve the lives of its people, which is why they have promised Free School Lunches for all Primary School Children in their first three years at school. This nicely illustrate the more socially aware elements of the party, “Universal free school meals will help give every child the chance in life they deserve, building a stronger economy and fairer society”, while they also support a Mansion Tax on homes worth more than £2 million in order to more fairly distribute the national wealth. But on the right of the party, Liberal Democrats stress that the government must be prepared to continue with what, Nick Clegg has called “Savage Cuts” in order to balance the budget. Thus, Treasury Secretary, Danny Alexander, has said that, “Tough decisions on tax and spending will be needed to meet the government’s target of eliminating the structural deficit by 2018 and, even after that, the UK must not go back to the old bad habits”.

The Liberal Democrats have said a further £26 billion will have to be found from 2016-2018 in the form of additional spending cuts or tax rises to enable the government to balance the books”. [BBC News, 17th September 2013] The Liberal Democrats LIBERAL - SDP ALLIANCE. - YouTube LIBERAL - SDP ALLIANCE. Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Published on Mar 10, 2015 LIBERAL - SDP ALLIANCE. SHIRLEY WILLIAMS,DAVID OWEN,ROY JENKINS,BILL ROGERS THE ORIGINAL SDP DECL Category

Question: Who joined Roy Jenkins, Bill Rogers and Shirley Williams as the Social Democrats "Gang of Four"?
Answer: DAVID OWEN