Musically the eighties were a great period as the unsophisticated sonic assault of punk refined into the multi-faceted sound of post-punk. Politically they sucked. I hold the SDP responsible – those 4 disgruntled ex-Labour ministers that divided the centre-left vote and kept the people’s party out of power for a generation. In 1981 they wanted to break the mould but 7 years later they had ignominiously ended up amalgamating with the Liberals after the realisation that the ”Alliance” between the two was totally uneccessary seeing as they had identical policies. The fall-out was around for seemingly ever though and I reckon that we never really recovered until the 1994 Euro election and then the subsequent creation of New Labour that we were really rid of their festering stench.
Denis Healy once said of David Owen the SDP leader with the Mills and Boon-hero looks : “when he was born, the good fairy had given him everything – good looks, brilliant intelligence, luck. Unfortunately, the bad fairy made him a shit.” Being made Foreign Secretary at 35 meant that Owen was on a permanent ego-trip, refusing to accept the SDP’s eventual takeover by the Libs. He carried on leading a rump of 2 MPs widely hailed as groupies until Labour took all their seats in the 1992 General Election.
In the meantime old SDP skeletons are still continuing in their divisive ways. Current Liberal Democrat peer Dick Taverne helped push Ming over the edge with his sniping earlier in the week - demonstrating spoilsport Owen characteristics down to a tee. Taverene’s fluke by-election win in 1973 as early SDP proto-type was short-lived when he was beaten by a young Margaret Beckett in the following General Election.
No-one really remembers which side of the SDP/Lib divide the current crop came from. I cannot find any evidence of Clegg in pre LD times. Apparently Chris Huhne was SDP as were Ashdown and Kennedy. All three could have stayed within Labour to fight, fight and fight again - in the words of Hugh Gaitskell but jumped ship to take part in an experiment that only suceeded in damaging Labour and consigning them to impotentence electorally and intellectually for about 14 years too long. The word “wreckers” is meant for people like these.
As for others, they chose different directions. Owen’s once right hand man Danny Finkelstein is now the Newsnight resident Tory in their regular political panel via John Major’s Downing Street office. Another SDP big name Roger Liddle did the more logical thing meanwhile came home to Labour and became a Blair adviser. As for the (3 remaining) original defectors, dubbed at the time the Gang of Four I am reminded of the top toe-tapping tune by their namesake Leeds four piece punk-funksters Gang of Four: “Damaged Goods“.
PS Also courtesy of YouTube here is Gang of Four track “To Hell with Poverty” from golden pop year 1981. At least in those days music wasn’t scared to stick its neck out and make statements.
17 comments
Comments feed for this article
October 17, 2007 at 10:27 pm
Paul Burgin
Actually Rupa, David Owen was 38 when he became Foreign Secretary.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Owen#In_government
What always gets me though was that he didn’t hold any cabinet post beforehand and was Tony Crosland’s No 2 at the FO
October 18, 2007 at 9:20 am
Luke Akehurst
Ashdown was a Liberal, not SDP.
To be fair to Kennedy, I’m not sure we was ever in the Labour Party before joining the SDP. As well as Labour defectors the SDP attracted many members at grassroots level who had never been in politics before.
Huhne was indeed Labour before he was SDP.
The other Labour defectors to SDP who are now Lib Dem MPs that I can think of are Vincent Cable (once a Glasgow Labour Cllr and SPAD to John Smith), Mike Hancock (once Labour Leader on Hants County Council), Bob Russell (twice a Labour PPC).
John Horam MP has gone the whole hog and gone from Labour to SDP to Tory now.
Several of the MPs who defected ended up back in the Labour Party e.g. John Grant.
A notable redefector from Labour to SDP and back to Labour was of course the late Piara Khabra.
The best book on the sorry history of the SDP is Ivor Crewe and Anthony King, SDP: the Birth, Life and Death of the Social Democratic. Party (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1995). Lots of interesting analysis of the different motives for defection.
October 18, 2007 at 9:54 am
Paul Burgin
I seem to recall that Charles Kennedy was a member of the Labour Party, or at least a fervent supporter. I also recall that Vince Cable knew Gordon Brown when Gordon was at Uni
October 18, 2007 at 10:48 am
susan press
Hi Rupa. Have added your blog to my Grimmer Up North blog .People on the right of this party always blame the hard left for its demise in the 1980’s but in fact the SDP were far more divisive bexause they were far more influential . The Gang Of Four took their bats and balls home after the 1981 Special Conference which set up the original electoral college. The public perception was therefore that the “moderates” had gone ( not true) and that Labour had been taken over by Trotskyists ( not true either) In those days , pre-SDP, Labour truly was a broad church, from Hattersley ( right!) to Heffer ( hard left) In the intervening years labour has not been strenghtned ideologically, IMHO, it has been weakened . As H Wilson once said, we needed both wings to fly. What is happening to labour now – barely distingushable from the Tories and Lib dems – is the logical conclusion of moving inexorably first to the centre and now the right. Which is why those of us on the left stubbornly continue to fight to re-claim our Party back to democratic socialism – howver dismal the odds. In comradeship. Susan Press, West Yorkshire LRC
October 18, 2007 at 11:07 am
Tim Callaghan
That is the real problem and one of the main reasons (I think) that there is so much vote apathy. There appears to be very little (if any) difference between the parties. The only real thing people have to go on is the (largely negative in most lay-persons eyes) legacy of Labour over the past 10 years and particularly more recently. Although not perfect, Labour really stood for something back in the 70s – something that the working man could beleive in.
October 18, 2007 at 5:05 pm
rupahuq
Factual errors accepted: (i) Owen’s actual age… inevitable comparisons were trotted out when John Major and Milliband respectively got FCO and (ii) Luke’s point about Ashdown although weirdly he had been a Labour member before joining the Libs. Thanks for the tip, the book I knew about them was called “Claret and Chips”, can’t remember the author and it must be deleted by now but their point was the way the party was trying to be post-class. I agree with Luke that they did reach out to political virgins too (housewife Rosie Barnes made much of this in her successful 87 by-election campaign). Susan: good point about the Wembley conference. I think some defecting MP toe-rags actually didn’t vote for Healey as deputy (their obvious choice) and plumped for Benn to exaggerate the supposed leftward drift and give this as a reason for leaving Labour. Tim, I think in the 70s there was still a post-war Lab/Con consensus of involving unions in decision-making, full employment, independent (?) nuclear deterrent etc etc. Thatcher smashed all that but I still blame the SDP for Labour’s wilderness years.
October 19, 2007 at 11:39 am
Rumbold
“I hold the SDP responsible – those 4 disgruntled ex-Labour ministers that divided the centre-left vote and kept the people’s party out of power for a generation.”
Well done to the SDP. Actually, Labour did not get voted in because they had no good ideas on how to run the country, had ruined it in the 1970s, and people remembered that and were impressed by Mrs. Thatcher’s leadership.
The main reason why the economy has been chugging along for the last decade was the reforms made under Thatcher and Major, just as the next government will have to deal with the consequences of Brown’s economic mismanagement.
October 19, 2007 at 11:58 am
rupahuq
Admittedly New Labour succeeded in distentangling itself from winter of discontent associations. When enough people have forgotten about Black Monday and similar Tory crises there is logically more chance of the pendulum swinging back.
Some people have done it the other way round – (Socialist) Miterrand helped grow the FN in France and then benefitted from a split right to win successive elections.
October 19, 2007 at 5:34 pm
Paul Burgin
If those who left to join the SDP had stayed behind, helped launch an assault on Millitant and helped those on the right to mould the Labour Party into a proto SDP, then maybe Labour would have got in sooner. As it was, in the early eighties British politics was divided between monetarists, corporatists, and nationalisationists. If the corporatists dominated one of the two major parties, then Thatcher would not have been so succesful.
October 22, 2007 at 10:11 am
Will French
I agree completely. “David Owen” is still a swear word in our house and the talk of GB attempting to lure Doctor Death into his big tent was, if anything, worse than inviting Maggie round for tea, which at least riled the Tories something proper.
The SDP were and are a divisive bunch of ego-driven splitters, wreckers and ne’er-do-wells. One of the most depressing aspects of the early New Labour era was the way the likes of Roger Liddle were rehabilitated without one word of contrition for all the damage they had wilfully wrought over the previous decade.
And if anyone wants to know why the Lib Dems are a hopeless shower who couldn’t organise a p!ss-up in Charlie Kennedy’s kitchen, well the proof is here – by their friends shall ye know them!
Here’s hoping Gordon can lay all these ghosts to rest once and for all.
October 22, 2007 at 12:53 pm
Miles
At least The Only Ones have reformed.
October 22, 2007 at 2:07 pm
Greg Rosen
Three books worth reading on this are Dianne Hayter’s Fightback!, Phillip Whitehead’s The Writing on the Wall and Frank Chapple’s memoir. Dianne was Gen Sec of Fabian Soc at the time. Phillip was a moderate MP who stayed (tho he also voted for Foot out of frustration with Healey). This was before he became an MEP of course. The book derives from the TV series he did on the era and is packed with interviews. Chapple was the only TU leader to sign the Limehouse declaration but he did not join SDP.
I drew on these for my book Old Labour to New which also covers all this.
One of the complicating factors in blaming the SDP for splitting was the concerted campaign by the left to deselect and expell anyone who deviated from the Bennite line. Dick Taverne fought his by-election essentially because he was deselected for supporting Labour’s manifesto whith which his left-wing constituency activists disagreed. Many SDP MPs (not Woy who was already out of parl and basically a liberal) left Labour with because they were pushed out (worth reading the conference speeches from the time). In that sense there is an argument for saying that the SDP was created by the left. Had it not been created Labour would still have lost because the Bennite left dominated Labour’s policy agenda and insufficient voters wanted a Bennite government. the creation of the SDP was a political tragedy that made it harder to put the Labour party back together again once Foot etc decided that after all he would tackle Militant. But it was not the reason for Labour’s defeat in 1983. Labour’s policies at that time simply failed to attract enough support from voters. When Kinnock and Smith changed the policies, voters returned to the Labour party, and the SDP became irrelevent.
October 23, 2007 at 5:38 pm
Paul Burgin
Greg I have no doubt whatever that Labour were doomed to lose in 1983, whatever they did, but had the SDP not been created, then maybe in 1987 and definetly in 1992 we would have seen a Labour government.
David Owen and Bill Rodgers did not face deselection, as neither did several other prominent founders (Shirley Williams was also out of Parliament between 1979 and 1981). What should have happened was that more energy should have gone into fighting fire with fire where Millitant was concerned and a zero tolerance attitude from the right from anyone who was remotely sympathetic towards them. At least then there would have been some respect from the public.
As for anyone electing Michael Foot over Denis Healey, well I still fail to quite understand that. In 1980 Labour desperatley needed a leader who told the Party some unpalitable home truths and that if anyone disagreed they could go and get stuffed and efforts should also have been made to create some kind of group which cracked down on people like Joan Maynard on the NEC and anyone else who was causing problems. In short, the sort of crackdown that occured in 1986.
I know that sounds unpleasant, but thats how desperate the situation was if Labour needed to win another election in the near future
October 26, 2007 at 8:46 am
Paul Pambakian
It is foolish to blame the SDP when the leadership of the Labour Party in the early 1980’s was so out of reality with the rest of the country.
Who really deserves the blame? Every Labour Party memeber who voted for Foot and the looney left. Were they not in power, there would have been no need for a split in the first place. Can you not understand the ‘gang’ leaving a party that they felt no ideological affiliation with? Would you not leave the Conservative party if you woke up tomorrow and found out you were a member? Of course you would – and rightly so. Because you do not agree with their ideology. And for the same reason it is right that the SDP broke away and the fault lies with the Labour left.
October 27, 2007 at 9:15 am
Best of the rest: Volume I « Parburypolitica
[...] Rupa Huq blames the SDP [...]
November 5, 2007 at 10:07 pm
rupahuq
Bill Rodgers (gang of 4 member who’s always known as “the other one”) was interviewed by Andrew Neil yesterday on BBC News 24 yesterday. It struck me that his lordship seemed most unlike everyone’s stereotypical scouser although it was witnessing poverty in Liverpool that apparently made him a Gaitskellite socialist. He let slip that Owen was a “difficult character” and younger than the rest and that he was a chum of Shirley Williams since they were at Oxford together. Main thrust seemed to be “je ne regrette rien”
November 20, 2007 at 2:53 pm
rupahuq
I doubt if anyon’e still following this thread but example #3 of lost Labour seats in 87 was meant to be Fulham which breifly went Labour in an 86 by-election. In the red corner was Nick Raynsford. Flying the flag for the SDP was Roger Liddle.