Steel served as a Member of the UK Parliament for 32 years, from 1965 to 1997, and as a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) from 1999 to 2003, during which time he was the parliament's Presiding Officer. He was a member of the House of Lords as a life peer from 1997 to 2020. Steel resigned from the House of Lords after the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse accused him of an "abdication of responsibility" over his failure to investigate allegations of child sex abuse against the former Liberal MP Sir Cyril Smith.[2]
In 1976, following the downfall of Jeremy Thorpe, and a short period in which Jo Grimond acted as caretaker leader, he won the Liberal leadership by a wide margin over John Pardoe. At only 38 years old, he was one of the youngest party leaders in British history. In March 1977, he led the Liberals into the "Lib–Lab pact". The Liberals agreed to support the Labour government, whose narrow majority since the general election in October 1974 had been gradually eroded and left them as a minority government, in power, in return for a degree of prior consultation on policy. This pact lasted until August 1978.[8]
Steel was criticised, both then and since, for not driving a harder bargain. However, Steel's defenders contend that the continuing scandal surrounding Thorpe left the party in a very weak state to face an early general election, and Steel was wise to buy himself some time from Prime Minister James Callaghan. At the same time, the growing unpopularity of the Labour government impaired the Liberals' performance, and Steel's first election as leader, the 1979 general election, saw a net two-seat loss for the Liberals.
SDP–Liberal Alliance
In 1981, a group of Labour moderates left their party to form the Social Democratic Party. They were joined by the former Labour deputy leader, Chancellor and Home Secretary Roy Jenkins, who had previously had discussions with Steel about joining the Liberals. Under Jenkins' leadership, the SDP joined the Liberals in the SDP–Liberal Alliance. In its early days, the Alliance showed so much promise that for a time, it looked like the Liberals would be part of a government for the first time since 1945. Opinion polls were showing Alliance support as high as 50% by late 1981. Steel was so confident that he felt able to tell delegates at the Liberal Assembly that year: "Go back to your constituencies, and prepare for government."[9] In the wake of the 1981 Croydon North West by-election, where Liberal candidate Bill Pitt came from third position to easily gain the Alliance's first by-election victory, Steel's reaction to the result was to state that his belief "that we are now unstoppable."[10]
Steel had genuine hopes at that stage that the Alliance would win the next general election and form a coalition government. However, the beginning of the Falklands War the following spring radically shifted the attitude of the electorate, and the Conservatives regained the lead in polls from the Alliance by a wide margin.[11] The Alliance secured more than 25% of the vote at the 1983 general election, almost as many votes as Labour. However, its support was spread out across the country, and was not concentrated in enough areas to translate into seats under the first past the post system. This left the Alliance with only 23 seats — 17 for the Liberals, and six for the SDP. Steel's dreams of a big political breakthrough were left unfulfilled.[12]
Shortly afterwards, the former Labour Foreign Secretary David Owen replaced Jenkins as leader of the SDP, and the troubled leadership of the "Two Davids" was inaugurated. It was never an easy relationship—Steel's political sympathies were well to the left of Owen's. Owen had a marked antipathy towards the Liberals, though he respected Steel's prior loyalty to his own party contrasting it with Jenkins' lack of interest in preserving the SDP's independence. The relationship was also mercilessly satirised by Spitting Image which portrayed Steel as a squeaky voiced midget, literally in the pocket of Owen. Steel has often stated that he feels this portrayal seriously damaged his image.[13] This portrayal of Steel as weaker than Owen was also present in other satires, such as Private Eye's Battle for Britain strip. The relationship finally fell apart during the 1987 general election when the two contradicted each other, both on defence policy and on which party they would do a deal with in the event of a hung parliament.
Two parties merge
Steel addressing the Liberal Party assembly in Harrogate on merger in 1987
Steel was convinced the answer to these difficulties was a single party with a single leader, and was the chief proponent of the 1988 merger between the Liberals and the SDP. He emerged victorious in persuading both parties to accept merger in the teeth of opposition from Owen and radical Liberals such as Michael Meadowcroft, but badly mishandled the issuing of a joint policy document. Steel had often been criticised for a lack of interest in policy, and it appeared he had agreed to the document – drawn up by politically naive SDP advisers – without reading it. His colleagues rejected it immediately and demanded a redraft, fatally wounding his authority.
Steel was briefly joint interim leader of the Social and Liberal Democrats (as the new party was at first called) in the run-up to elections in which he did not stand, before becoming the party's foreign affairs spokesman. In 1989, he accepted an invitation from Italian Liberals to stand for the European Parliament in the 1989 election as a Pan-European gesture, but was not elected.[14]
In this role, he used the style "Sir David Steel", despite his peerage. He suspended his Liberal Democrat membership for the duration of his tenure as Presiding Officer, believing that the post, like the Speaker of the UK House of Commons, should be strictly nonpartisan. All subsequent Presiding Officers have followed this practice.
On 14 March 2019, Steel was suspended by the Liberal Democrats after an admission that discussions he had conducted in 1979 with the then Liberal MP for Rochdale Cyril Smith, at a time when Steel was leader of the Liberal Party, had led him to conclude that Smith had been a sexual abuser of children in the 1960s and that Steel nonetheless failed to instigate any assessment by the party of whether Smith was an on-going risk to children. Richard Scorer, representing victims at the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, called for him to be stripped of his peerage.[18] On 14 May 2019, the Liberal Democrats ruled that there were "no grounds for action" against Steel and reinstated him to party membership.[19]
On 25 February 2020, Steel announced his resignation from the Liberal Democrats and subsequently his position as a member of the House of Lords, after admitting that during his leadership of the Liberal Party he "assumed" that Smith had been a child abuser, and failed to investigate claims made by Private Eye against Smith, dating from before Smith was a party member.[20] This came about after the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse accused Steel of an "abdication of responsibility" over allegations against Smith. He retired officially from the House of Lords on 27 March 2020.[21]
Honours and awards
Coat of arms of David Steel
Crest
A jaguar salient Proper
Escutcheon
Azure in chief two furisons Or in base a tower Argent port and windows Sable on a chief Argent dexter on a gonfannon Purpure a saltire equisee Argent the gonfannon pendent from a pole fessways Purpure between two chords each Purpure and Argent and sinister a portcullis chained Sable.
Supporters
Dexter a Masai warrior sinister a border reiver Proper.
Motto
Vir Tamen Aurum Est (The Man's The Gold For A'That)[22]
He has also received numerous foreign honours, including: Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit (Germany) in 1992; Chevalier in the Légion d'Honneur (France) in 2003; and Honorary Knight of the Order of St. George (Habsburg-Lorraine) in 2016.[25]
Steel has received a number of Honorary Doctorates from many universities including Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Stirling.[26][27]
Personal life and family
Steel married fellow law graduate Judith Mary MacGregor in October 1962. They resided at Aikwood Tower in the Borders of Scotland for twenty years, but now live in Selkirk. They have two sons and a daughter, and nine grandchildren.[4] In 1995, his elder son Graeme was convicted for growing cannabis at his house, and sent to prison for nine months.[28] One of his granddaughters, Hannah, was elected to Scottish Borders Council (representing the Galashiels and District ward) in the 2022 Scottish local elections.[29]
His recreations are angling and classic car rallying: he won the bronze medallion in 1998 for London to Cape Town. He is a member of the National Liberal and Royal Over-Seas League clubs.[1]
Steel was featured in his own episode of the Channel 4 documentary series Empire's Children (2007) which explored his family background, particularly his father's attempt to save the African people from British internment camps during the Mau Mau rebellion.[30]
Further reading
Peter Bartram, David Steel: His Life and Politics (W.H. Allen, 1981)
David Steel, A House Divided (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980)
David Steel, Against Goliath: David Steel's Story (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989)
David Torrance, David Steel – rising hope to elder statesman (Biteback, 2015)
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