Democratic Party (UK, 1969)

Last updated

The Democratic Party, initially known as Our Party, was formed in May 1969 by Desmond Donnelly, who had been a Labour MP for Pembrokeshire, but had resigned the whip in January 1968 and been expelled by the party two months later. His Constituency Labour Party supported him and was disaffiliated from the party along with Donnelly's expulsion.

The party had an anti-socialist agenda and supported UK intervention in the Vietnam War. In some respects, the party was to the right of the Conservatives, advocating the abolition of the welfare state, sweeping changes to the taxation system, and the return of national service. It fought two by-elections and five seats in the 1970 general election, but only Donnelly polled a significant number of votes.

The party wound up in April 1971 when Donnelly joined the Conservative Party, without even informing the Democratic Party's membership.

Election Results

ConstituencyCandidateVotes %Position
Newcastle-under-Lyme by-election, 1969 D. Parker1,6993.64
Louth by-election, 1969 Sir G. P. M. FitzGerald1,2254.44
Newcastle-under-Lyme, 1970 Dr P. H. Boyle1,1942.64
Reading, 1970 A. Boothroyd8671.83
North Devon, 1970 B. G. Morris1750.44
Huyton, 1970 J. W. G. Sparrow1,2321.73
Pembrokeshire, 1970 D. L. Donnelly11,82421.53

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2001 United Kingdom general election</span>

The 2001 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 7 June 2001, four years after the previous election on 1 May 1997, to elect 659 members to the House of Commons. The governing Labour Party led by the prime minister Tony Blair was re-elected to serve a second term in government with another landslide victory with a 167-seat majority, returning 412 members of Parliament versus 418 from the 1997 general election, a net loss of six seats, though with a significantly lower turnout than before—59.4%, compared to 71.6% at the previous election.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1997 United Kingdom general election</span>

The 1997 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday, 1 May 1997. The governing Conservative Party led by the prime minister John Major was defeated in a landslide by the opposition Labour Party led by Tony Blair, achieving a 179-seat majority and a total of 418 seats. As of June 2024. It remains the most recent election in which a party won an overall majority from opposition, and the highest ever general election victory won by Labour.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1979 United Kingdom general election</span>

The 1979 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 3 May 1979 to elect 635 members to the House of Commons.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1983 United Kingdom general election</span> British 1983 election

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1987 United Kingdom general election</span>

The 1987 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 11 June 1987, to elect 650 members to the House of Commons. The election was the third consecutive general election victory for the Conservative Party, who won a majority of 102 seats and second landslide under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher, who became the first Prime Minister since the Earl of Liverpool in 1820 to lead a party into three successive electoral victories.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SDP–Liberal Alliance</span> Electoral alliance in the United Kingdom

The SDP–Liberal Alliance was a centrist and social liberal political and electoral alliance in the United Kingdom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">February 1974 United Kingdom general election</span>

The February 1974 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 28 February 1974. The Labour Party, led by Leader of the Opposition and former Prime Minister Harold Wilson, gained 14 seats but was seventeen short of an overall majority. The Conservative Party, led by incumbent Prime Minister Edward Heath, lost 28 seats. That resulted in a hung parliament, the first since 1929. Heath sought a coalition with the Liberals, but the two parties failed to come to an agreement and so Wilson became Prime Minister for a second time, his first with a minority government. Wilson called another early election in September, which was held in October and resulted in a Labour majority. The February election was also the first general election to be held with the United Kingdom as a member state of the European Communities (EC), which was widely known as the "Common Market".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alberta New Democratic Party</span> Political party in Canada

The Alberta New Democratic Party, commonly shortened to Alberta NDP, is a social democratic political party in Alberta, Canada. It is the provincial Alberta affiliate of the federal New Democratic Party, and the successor to the Alberta section of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and the even earlier Alberta wing of the Canadian Labour Party and the United Farmers of Alberta. From the mid-1980s to 2004, the party abbreviated its name as the "New Democrats" (ND).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1999 European Parliament election in the United Kingdom</span>

The 1999 European Parliament election was the United Kingdom's part of the European Parliament election 1999. It was held on 10 June 1999. Following the European Parliamentary Elections Act 1999, it was the first European election to be held in the United Kingdom where the whole country used a system of proportional representation. In total, 87 Members of the European Parliament were elected from the United Kingdom across twelve new regional constituencies.

Desmond Louis Donnelly was a British politician, author and journalist who was a member of four political parties during the course of his career, and moved between parties on five occasions.

Pembrokeshire was a parliamentary constituency based on the county of Pembrokeshire in Wales. It returned one Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, elected by the first past the post system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">1973 United Kingdom local elections</span>

The first elections to the new local authorities established by the Local Government Act 1972 in England and Wales and the new Northern Ireland district councils created by the Local Government Act 1972 took place in 1973. Elections to the existing Greater London Council also took place.

The Labour Party is a political party in the United Kingdom that has been described as being an alliance of social democrats, democratic socialists and trade unionists. The Labour Party sits on the centre-left of the political spectrum. In all general elections since 1922, Labour has been either a governing party or the Official Opposition. There have been six Labour prime ministers and thirteen Labour ministries. Since the 2010 general election, it has been the second-largest UK political party by the number of votes cast and number of seats in the House of Commons, behind the Conservative Party and ahead of the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National Party. The party traditionally holds the annual Labour Party Conference during party conference season.

The Campaign for Democratic Socialism or CDS was a social democratic and democratic socialist organisation in the British Labour Party, serving as a pressure group representing the right wing of the party. Established in 1960, the CDS was composed of Gaitskellites, Labour members who supported the then-party leader, Hugh Gaitskell.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Social Democratic Party (UK)</span> Political party in the United Kingdom (1981–88)

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.

A landslide victory is an election result in which the victorious candidate or party wins by an overwhelming margin. The term became popular in the 1800s to describe a victory in which the opposition is "buried", similar to the way in which a geological landslide buries whatever is in its path. A landslide victory is the opposite of an electoral wipeout; a party which wins in a landslide typically inflicts a wipeout on its opposition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2015 United Kingdom general election</span>

The 2015 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 7 May 2015 to elect 650 Members of Parliament (MPs) to the House of Commons. It was the only general election to be held under the rules of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 and was the last general election to be held before the United Kingdom voted to end its membership of the European Union (EU) in June 2016. Local elections took place in most areas of England on the same day and is to date the most recent general election to coincide with local elections. The governing Conservative Party led by the prime minister, David Cameron, won an unexpected victory; opinion polls and political commentators had predicted that the results of the election would cause a second consecutive hung parliament whose composition would be similar to the previous Parliament, which was in effect from the previous national election in 2010. However, opinion polls underestimated the Conservatives, as they won 330 of the 650 seats and 36.9 per cent of the votes, giving them a majority of ten seats.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2019 United Kingdom general election</span>

The 2019 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 12 December 2019, with 47,567,752 registered voters entitled to vote to elect 650 Members of Parliament (MPs) to the House of Commons. The governing Conservative Party led by the prime minister, Boris Johnson, won a landslide victory with a majority of 80 seats, a net gain of 48, on 43.6 per cent of the popular vote, the highest percentage for any party since the 1979 general election, though with a narrower popular vote margin than that achieved by the Labour Party over the Conservatives at the 1997 general election. This was the second national election to be held in 2019 in the United Kingdom, the first being the 2019 European Parliament (EP) election.

References