Social Democratic Party (SDP)

The papers comprising The Social Democratic Party (SDP) Archive collection come largely from the party's headquarters in Cowley Street, London. They trace the short history of the SDP from its birth in the Council for Social Democracy and The Limehouse Declaration of 1981 to its merger with the Liberal Party in 1988, when the Social and Liberal Democrats were formed.

The Social Democratic Party was founded officially on March 26th, 1981, led by the so-called 'Gang of Four', former Labour Cabinet Ministers, Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Shirley Williams and Bill Rogers. Earlier in the year the Four had announced their intention to depart from the leftward direction the Labour Party was following. They were to be accompanied by a small but significant number of moderate Labour MPs who were also disillusioned with the increasing influence of left wing ideas and policies and trade-union representatives within the Labour Party, following its defeat in the General Election of 1979.

The SDP positioned itself in the center of British politics and, although founded by a faction of the Labour Party, its ranks comprised former ordinary members of both Labour and Conservative Parties and others who had no prior involvement in British parliamentary politics. There were areas of common policy between the newly formed SDP and the Liberal Party, and the two parties outlined these formally in June 1981, in a statement issued by the SDP/Liberal Joint Working Party, entitled "A fresh Start for Britain". Later in the same year the two parties formed The Alliance, with the agreement that they would fight elections on a common platform and with joint candidates.

Presenting fresh political ideas before the British electorate, including distinctive SDP policies such as the social market economy, maintaining membership of the European community and rejection of non-nuclear defence, the SDP enjoyed initial success and the Alliance had an immediate impact on the nation's politics. Heading the popular opinion polls, the Alliance won a succession of by-election victories in the early eighties. This progress was to continue in the general election campaign of 1983. In the final count, the SDP obtained 11.6 percent of the vote and the Liberal-SDP Alliance total represented 25 percent of the vote, the best '3rd party' result since 1923. Labour was to secure only 27% of the vote, but in the British electoral system this figure resulted in 209 MPs. The Alliance fared poorly in this respect, obtaining only 23 parliamentary seats.

In the years that followed, the SDP was not able to maintain this early impetus. The general election of 1987 was disappointing to both parties of the Alliance, the joint-party share of the vote dropping to 23% and the SDP winning just 5 MPs. In response, the Liberal leader David Steel proposed a merger of the two parties. David Owen, leader of the SDP since 1983, had resisted pressures for a merger between the SDP and the Liberal Party throughout the period 1981-7. But in the wake of the 1987 election Owen's efforts to maintain a distinct identity for the party were finally defeated by those favouring merger. Prolonged negotiations and all-member ballots culminated in the founding of a new party, the Social and Liberal Democrats, which came into official existence in March 1988. Although at this time the unification process was complete a minority of SDP members refused to join the newly formed party. The SDP was consequently re-established in March 1988 and David Owen, who had resigned his SDP membership in August 1987 when the party opted for merger, was elected as its leader. However, the already reduced membership was to dwindle and there was a failure to reach electoral agreement with the newly merged party, resulting in further losses at the polling stations. In May 1990 the Bootle by-election resulted in disaster, and in the following weeks the SDP National Committee decided to finally wind down the SDP as a national party.

From the guide to the Social Democratic Party (SDP) Archives, 1980-1989, (University of Essex: Albert Sloman Library)