| |||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
The 1982 Social Democratic Party leadership election was called following the formation of the Social Democratic Party (SDP). The party had been founded by the Gang of Four the previous year and had rapidly built up its membership, but lacked a formal leadership structure. Each of the Gang of Four was regarded as coequal leader.
One of the first disputes within the party was over the method of election for the leadership. Shirley Williams and David Owen strongly believed that the party should be committed to 'One Member, One Vote' and therefore the Leader should be elected by the whole membership. Roy Jenkins, however, believed that the Leader should be elected in a ballot of SDP Members of Parliament only. Ivor Crewe and Anthony King's book on the party points out that such a system would make his election as Leader much more likely. Bill Rodgers went along with Jenkins.
In autumn 1981, the SDP Steering Committee agreed (as suggested by Jenkins and Rodgers) to recommend to a constitutional conference that the Leader be elected by MPs, but that the ultimate decision on the mode of election would have to be endorsed by the membership. The conference, held in February 1982, decided to offer three options: election by the party membership, election by the MPs only, and a system in which the first leader would be elected by the membership but subsequent leaders by the MPs (on the assumption that there would be many more of them after the next general election). In the event, the membership decided to preserve their power over the election of the leader.
Roy Jenkins was unofficially regarded as the Leader of the SDP from the time of its foundation, as the most senior of the founding members. However, he was out of Parliament at the time, and despite his support, it was generally accepted in the party that the leader must be an MP. Fortunately for Jenkins, the Glasgow Hillhead constituency (which had already been assessed as a potential SDP seat) fell vacant in January 1982 and Jenkins won the by-election in March.
David Owen had been infuriated by the party even considering election by MPs only and therefore decided that either he or Williams were to challenge Jenkins for the leadership as early as November 1981. Williams privately informed Jenkins before polling day in Hillhead that she had decided not to stand and, on the day after the election, gave a press interview in which she described him as "the Alliance's natural leader". Owen continued to press Williams to run, as a result of which she issued a press statement on 18 May 1982 which read "I will not be standing for the leadership."
Jenkins' supporters tried to persuade Owen not to run in order to prevent the party from being divided, although at the back of their minds was the thought that Owen might be able to capitalise on his prominence during the Falklands War when he had frequently appeared in the media commentating as a former Foreign Secretary how he deterred a 1977 invasion plan by despatching some Royal Navy ships. Owen was undeterred and when Williams announced that she would not run, he immediately declared that he would. When nominations closed on 11 June, there were therefore two candidates.
Backstage negotiation at the time of the constitutional conference had agreed that, in the event of a contest, the candidates should not overtly campaign for the job, as it would increase divisions in the party. The candidates were practically united on issues of policy and therefore the differences between the two candidates were largely those of image and personality. The only significant policy issue which divided them was on relations with the Liberal Party. Jenkins wanted a very close alliance between the SDP and Liberals, and viewed the SDP as a means of levering more ex-Labour supporters into the political centre. Owen, by contrast, viewed the Alliance as a simple electoral pact in order to get the SDP established as a serious electoral force, and he absolutely ruled out the idea of unifying the two into an 'Alliance Party'.
Despite the agreement prohibiting campaigning, the candidates both took the opportunity to brief Lobby journalists against the other. Both candidates' supporters felt some degree of bitterness against the other.
Jenkins and Owen were roughly evenly split among the parliamentary party for support, with Jenkins maintaining a slight edge. Of the SDP's twenty nine Members of Parliament, fifteen supported Jenkins (including Bill Rodgers) while thirteen supported Owen (including Shirley Williams). One (Michael O'Halloran) was uncommitted. Following below is a partial list of endorsers for each candidate:
In the end, 75.6% of the membership returned their ballots, and the election proved a relatively close contest: Jenkins won with 55.7% of the vote. Owen accepted his defeat, and was appointed by Jenkins as Deputy Leader of the Parliamentary Party.
Jenkins remained in the post for only a year. In the 1983 General Election, the SDP-Liberal Alliance won 25.4% of the vote, but the Alliance were left holding only twenty three seats of which only six were held by the Social Democrats, and Owen announced that he would force another leadership election. Jenkins chose to step aside rather than contest the challenge.
| Candidate | Votes | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
Roy Jenkins  | 26,256 | 55.7 | |
| David Owen | 20,864 | 44.3 | |
Alongside the leadership election, there was a separate contest to become President of the Council of Social Democracy, an institution with representatives of every area party of the SDP, with responsibility for deliberating on, and adopting, policies. The President was also to sit on the party's National Committee. Three candidates stood. Two, Shirley Williams and Bill Rodgers, were members of the "Gang of Four" Labour Party politicians which had led the party's formation. The other candidate was Stephen Haseler, former joint secretary of the Social Democratic Alliance. [1]
| Candidate | Votes [1] | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shirley Williams | 19,006 | 65.9 | |
| Bill Rodgers | 5,584 | 19.4 | |
| Stephen Haseler | 4,255 | 14.8 | |
Roy Harris Jenkins, Baron Jenkins of Hillhead, was a British politician who served as President of the European Commission from 1977 to 1981. At various times a Member of Parliament (MP) for the Labour Party, Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the Liberal Democrats, he was Chancellor of the Exchequer and Home Secretary under the Wilson and Callaghan Governments.
The 1983 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 9 June 1983. It gave the Conservative Party under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher the most decisive election victory since that of the Labour Party in 1945, with a majority of 144 seats and the first of two consecutive landslide victories.
Shirley Vivian Teresa Brittain Williams, Baroness Williams of Crosby, was a British politician and academic. Originally a Labour Party Member of Parliament (MP), she served in the Labour cabinet from 1974 to 1979. She was one of the "Gang of Four" rebels who founded the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1981 and, at the time of her retirement from politics, was a Liberal Democrat.
The SDP–Liberal Alliance was a centrist and social liberal political and electoral alliance in the United Kingdom.
David Anthony Llewellyn Owen, Baron Owen, is a British politician and physician who served as Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs as a Labour Party MP under James Callaghan from 1977 to 1979, and later led the Social Democratic Party (SDP). He was a Member of Parliament over 26 years from 1966 to 1992.
William Thomas Rodgers, Baron Rodgers of Quarry Bank, is a British politician who served as Secretary of State for Transport from 1976 to 1979, and was one of the 'Gang of Four' of senior British Labour Party politicians who defected to form the Social Democratic Party (SDP). He subsequently helped to lead the SDP into the merger that formed the Liberal Democrats in 1988, and later served as that party's leader in the House of Lords between 1997 and 2001.
The Limehouse Declaration was a statement issued on 25 January 1981 by four senior British Labour politicians, all MPs or former MPs and Cabinet Ministers: Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Bill Rodgers and Shirley Williams. It became known as the Limehouse Declaration as it was made near David Owen's London home in Limehouse. The four were known as the Gang of Four.
Sir Thomas Galloway Dunlop Galbraith, known as Tam Galbraith, was a Scottish Unionist politician.
The Social Democratic Party (SDP) is a minor political party in the United Kingdom established in 1990. Ideologically, the SDP combines social conservatism with centre-left economic policy and support for a social market economy alongside Euroscepticism. Founded by Jack Holmes, it has been led by William Clouston since 2018.
The Social Democratic Party (SDP) formed in 1988 was a political party in the United Kingdom led by David Owen, which lasted for only two years. A successor party to the original Social Democratic Party (SDP), it was known informally as the 'continuing' SDP.
Robert Thomas Ellis was a Welsh politician who was elected several times as a Labour Party Member of Parliament, and later joined the Social Democratic Party (SDP).
Michael Stuart Thomas is a former British politician, identified with the Labour Party until 1981 and thereafter with the Social Democratic Party (SDP). He became well known for his role in both the establishment of the SDP and then in the SDP's subsequent demise. The SDP's leader, Roy Jenkins, referred to Thomas as the "pint-sized Pavarotti", on the basis of his stocky build and beard together with his ebullient manner.
A Glasgow Hillhead by-election was held on 25 March 1982. The by-election was caused by the death of the Conservative Party Member of Parliament for Glasgow Hillhead Tam Galbraith on 2 January 1982.
The 1981 Warrington by-election was held on 16 July 1981.
The 1981 Crosby by-election was a by-election held in England on 26 November 1981 to elect a new Member of Parliament (MP) for the House of Commons constituency of Crosby on Merseyside. It followed the death of Crosby's MP Sir Graham Page, of the Conservative Party.
The Liberal Democrats are a liberal political party in the United Kingdom. Since the 1992 general election, with the exception of the 2015 general election, they have been the third-largest UK political party by the number of votes cast. They have 14 Members of Parliament in the House of Commons, 83 members of the House of Lords, four Members of the Scottish Parliament and one member in the Welsh Senedd. The party has over 2,500 local council seats. The party holds a twice-per-year Liberal Democrat Conference, at which party policy is formulated. In contrast to its main opponents' conference rules, the Lib Dems grant all members attending its Conference the right to speak in debates and vote on party policy, under a one member, one vote system. The party also allows its members to vote online. The party served as the junior party in a coalition government with the Conservative Party between 2010 and 2015; with Scottish Labour in the Scottish Executive from 1999 to 2007, and with Welsh Labour in the Welsh Government from 2000 to 2003 and from 2016 to 2021.
The Social Democratic Alliance (SDA) was a political organisation in the United Kingdom.
Elections to Strathclyde Regional Council were held on Thursday 6 May 1982, on the same day as the eight other Scottish regional elections. This was the third election to the regional council following the local government reforms in the 1970s.
The Social Democratic Party (SDP) was a centrist to centre-left political party in the United Kingdom. The party supported a mixed economy, electoral reform, European integration and a decentralised state while rejecting the possibility of trade unions being overly influential within the industrial sphere. The SDP officially advocated social democracy, but its actual propensity is evaluated as close to social liberalism.
In UK politics, the Gang of Four was a breakaway group of four Labour politicians who founded the Social Democratic Party in 1981, including two sitting Labour MPs and a former deputy leader of the party.
