"which the yes and no campaigns were both cross-party – the referendum voted in 1975 to continue Britain's membership by two thirds to one third. This issue later caused catastrophic splits in the Labour Party in the 1980s, leading to the formation of the Social Democratic Party. In the initial legislation during the Heath Government, the Bill affirming Britain's entry was only passed because of a rebellion of 72 Labour MPs led by Roy Jenkins and including future leader John Smith, who voted against the Labour whip and along with Liberal MPs more than countered the effects of Conservative rebels"
"(SDP) was formed by a split of some prominent figures on the right of the Labour Party in March 1981. Its main figures were the ""Gang of Four"" - Shirley Williams, Roy Jenkins, David Owen and Bill Rodgers. Of the four, Williams and Jenkins were out of Parliament, with the party keen for them to stand in by-elections under their new party label. Following the agreement of an electoral pact with the Liberal Party, who had come third in Crosby in 1979, with 15% of the vote, the two parties supported Jenkins in the 1981 Warrington by-election, where he narrowly"
"was appointed as its new president. They were overtaken by events, as Jenkins, Williams, David Owen and Bill Rodgers - the ""Gang of Four"" - formed the Campaign for Social Democracy. The SDA said that they hoped to form the local structure of a new organisation. Despite opposition from the Gang of Four, the SDA immediately began negotiating local pacts with the Liberal Party, and stood eight candidates in the Greater London Council election, 1981 against Labour left-wingers. None came close to being elected, but their intervention did prevent Ted Knight from holding his seat. Once the Gang of Four"
"Limehouse Declaration 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 from David Owen's London home in Limehouse. The opening paragraph of the declaration indicates that it was triggered by decisions taken at the Labour Party conference in January 1981. In this document the so-called 'Gang of Four' signalled their intent to leave the Labour Party and form a Council for Social Democracy, as"
"and William Rodgers, the so-called ""Gang of Four"") left Labour and formed the SDP, which was launched on 26 March 1981. This was largely seen as the consequence of the Labour Party's swing to the left, polarising divisions in an already divided party. The SDP won the support of large sections of the media. For most of 1981 and early-1982 its opinion poll ratings suggested that it could at least overtake Labour and possibly win a general election. The Conservatives were then unpopular because of the economic policies of Margaret Thatcher, which had seen unemployment reach a postwar high. The"
"Gang of Four, who led the split which formed the Social Democratic Party. In 1982, Hayward retired from his Labour Party positions. Ron Hayward Ronald George Hayward, (27 June 1917 – 22 March 1996), was a leading activist in the British Labour Party. Born near Chipping Sodbury in Gloucestershire, Hayward served in the Royal Air Force during World War II. At the end of the war, he became the Labour Party's secretary and agent in Banbury. In 1949 he moved to Kent, where he began a friendship with local MP Arthur Bottomley. The following year, Bottomley ensured his appointed as"
"electorate. Moreover, Owen, unlike Jenkins, faced an increasingly moderate Labour Party under Neil Kinnock and a dynamic Conservative government. The 1987 general election was as disappointing for the Alliance as the 1983 election and it lost one seat. Nevertheless, it won over 23% of the vote - at that time, the second-largest third-placed vote in British politics since 1929. In 1987 immediately after the election, the Liberal leader David Steel proposed a full merger of the Liberal and SDP parties and was supported for the SDP by Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams and Bill Rodgers. Owen rejected this notion outright, on"
"A leadership election was held later in the year, Jenkins beating Owen in the ballot to become the first leader of the new party. Later in the year, Shirley Williams defeated Bill Rodgers in the ballot to become SDP president. The SDP formed the SDP–Liberal Alliance with the Liberal Party in June 1981, under the joint leadership of Roy Jenkins (SDP) and Liberal leader David Steel. The Liberal Party, and in particular its leader, David Steel, had applauded the formation of the SDP from the sidelines from the very start. Senior Liberal MP for Rochdale Cyril Smith caused some embarrassment,"
"was founded by the so-called ""Gang of Four"" in March 1981, which consisted of right-wing Labour MPs discontent with the direction of the Labour Party at the time; but Mabon later called himself a founder member of the party. He unsuccessfully contested Renfrew West and Inverclyde for the SDP in 1983 after the local Liberals refused to stand their candidate down for him in his previous seat, and fought Renfrew West again for the SDP/Alliance in 1987, and also the Lothians seat in the 1984 election for the European Parliament. Mabon was one of the SDP's negotiators in their merger"
"the nomination following the defection of the sitting Labour MP Bill Rodgers who was one of the original gang of four who set up the Social Democratic Party in 1981. Cook won the seat with a majority of 1,870 with Rodgers finishing in third place behind the Conservative candidate. He served as Opposition whip under Neil Kinnock from 1987 to 1992. He was a member of the Speaker's Panel of Chairmen in the 2005–10 parliament. He was a lead campaigner for gun control following the Dunblane massacre in 1996, and it was reported that he once asked the Tory MP"
"were members of the SDP. The party's leader, Roy Jenkins, managed to retain his seat at Glasgow Hillhead, but SDP President Shirley Williams was defeated at Crosby (which she had won at a by-election in November 1981) as a result of unfavourable boundary changes. Labour Party leader Michael Foot, who resigned within days of the election, was critical of the SDP–Liberal Alliance for siphoning support away from Labour, allowing the Conservatives to win more seats and secure a triple-digit majority, while Labour was left with 209 seats in Parliament. The MP for Plymouth Devonport, Dr. David Owen (who had been"
"SDP formed a political and electoral alliance with the Liberal Party, the SDP–Liberal Alliance. The party merged with the Liberal Party in 1988 to form the Social and Liberal Democrats, now the Liberal Democrats, although a minority left to form a continuing SDP led by David Owen. The origin of the party can be traced back to the ideological divisions in the Labour Party in the 1950s (with its forerunner being the Campaign for Democratic Socialism established to support the Gaitskellites), but publicly lies in the 1979 Dimbleby Lecture given by Roy Jenkins as he neared the end of his"
"although economic growth was now re-established following the recession of 1980 and 1981. The Labour opposition, which changed leader from James Callaghan to Michael Foot in 1980, was in no position to exploit the situation and mount a threat to the Conservative government's power. The change of leader saw the party shift dramatically to the left, and in 1981 a host of disenchanted Labour MP's formed the breakaway Social Democratic Party. The new party swiftly formed an alliance with the Liberals with a view to forming a coalition government at the next election. Roy Jenkins, leader of the SDP, worked"
"a Labour Government Minister under Harold Wilson and James Callaghan between 1974-79), took over as SDP leader after the 1983 general election. He was more sceptical about close relations with the Liberals than his predecessor Roy Jenkins, and favoured retaining the party's distinct identity. Owen's influence ensured that proposals for a merger between the two parties were shelved after a lengthy debate at the 1983 SDP conference. During the 1983-87 parliament, some SDP members started to become unsettled at what appeared to be the increasingly right-wing course taken by SDP leader David Owen. This resulted in some members launching the"
"Minister Margaret Thatcher during the 1980s, with the policy being maintained by her successor John Major and then advocated by Labour Party leader Tony Blair in his re-write of Clause IV. In 2004, a purge of Marxist-Leninists from the SLP, over the issue of relations with North Korea, led to the formation of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist–Leninist). The party attracted trade union figures such as Mick Rix and Bob Crow. In early 2014, the SLP gained three Labour councillors in Barking and Dagenham through defection. However, these members lost their seats in the 2014 UK local elections"
"over the party. Four MPs also attended, Denis Howell, John Golding, Denis Healey and Giles Radice. The group was created following the 1981 special conference decision to establish an electoral college (40% trade unions, 30% members, 30% MPs) to elect the Labour Party leader and deputy rather than the Parliamentary Labour Party choosing. A major effort of the group was to use union block votes to overturn the left's majority on the Labour National Executive Committee and the Trades Union Congress general council. The departure of members from the centre and right further swung the party to the left, but"
"[U.S.] Republican. American politics isn’t contained in that way. Turn the clock back to the 1970s, and the Democrat Party went from the liberal Kennedy wing right through to the out-and-out racists in the Southern states. The Republican Party had its liberal wing – people like John Lindsay, Chuck Percy and Nelson Rockefeller."" Simon Burns Burns resigned from being Minister of State for Transport in October 2013 to stand in the First Deputy Chairmen of Ways and Means by-election following the resignation of Deputy Speaker Nigel Evans. Returned to Parliament as a Conservative MP in the 2015 election, he was"
"1966. Elected at the 1970 general election as Labour MP for Wrexham, he was re-elected in the February 1974, October 1974, and May 1979 elections. He also served as an indirectly elected Member of the European Parliament from 1975-1979. Ellis had grown increasingly disaffected with the leftward direction of the Labour Party by the beginning of the 1980s. He was one of the core handful of Jenkinsite Labour MPs who were prepared to leave the Labour Party without the Gang of Three of David Owen, Bill Rodgers, and Shirley Williams. In fact, he had even gone so far as seriously"
"had left Parliament in 1977 to serve as President of the European Commission, while Williams had lost her seat in the 1979 general election. The four left the Labour Party as a result of the January 1981 Wembley conference which committed the party to unilateral nuclear disarmament and withdrawal from the European Economic Community. They also believed that Labour had become too left-wing, and had been infiltrated at constituency party level by Trotskyist factions whose views and behaviour they considered to be at odds with the Parliamentary Labour Party and Labour voters. For the 1983 and 1987 General Elections, the"
"David Owen objected and continued to lead a ""rump"" SDP. In March 1988, the Liberal Party and Social Democratic Party merged to create the Social and Liberal Democrats, renamed the Liberal Democrats in October 1989. Over two-thirds of the members and all the serving MPs of the Liberal Party joined this party, led first jointly by Steel and the SDP leader Robert Maclennan. A group of Liberal opponents of the merger with the Social Democrats, including Michael Meadowcroft (the former Liberal MP for Leeds West) and Paul Wiggin (who served on Peterborough City Council as a Liberal), continued with a"
"Bill Rodgers) were former CDS founders, and a number of the younger CDS members joined in leaving Labour for the SDP. Campaign for Democratic Socialism The Campaign for Democratic Socialism or CDS was an 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. The origins of the CDS can be traced to the 1959 general election, which Labour was largely expected to win, but lost due to the Conservatives exploiting public uncertainty over"
"from the CPGB to organise a new party known as the Communist Party of Britain. This was considered by many in the anti-eurocommunist faction, including national executive members like Barry Williams, to be the death of the 'Party'. In 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed, the Eurocommunist-dominated leadership of the CPGB, led by Nina Temple, decided to disband the party, and establish Democratic Left, a left-leaning political think tank rather than a political party. Democratic Left itself dissolved in 1999, to be replaced by the New Politics Network, which in turn merged with Charter 88 in 2007. This merger formed"
"Birmingham — Roy Hattersley, Denis Howell, Jeff Rooker, Terry Davis and Robin Corbett — wrote to Sharon Atkin, Bernie Grant and Linda Bellos in letters that they themselves leaked to the newspapers, demanding that they not attend a meeting in Birmingham, scheduled for 7 April, of activists campaigning for Black Sections within the Labour Party. Similarly, after the Greenwich by-election defeat five London Labour Party members — Brian Nicholson, Roger Godsiff, John Spellar, Roy Shaw and Dianne Hayter — formed the ""Londoners for Labour"" association, according to their press releases aimed at reclaiming the London Labour Party from ""the loonies""."
"tendency (a Trotskyist group led by Ted Grant), and the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SDP) breaking away and forming an Alliance with the Liberal Party (who had two Jewish MPs, The Lord Carlile of Berriew and Clement Freud), later to unite as the Liberal Democrats. One such parliamentary defector to the SDP was Neville Sandelson, and the Keynesian economist The Lord Skidelsky also defected. Those Jewish Labour MPs who stuck with the party included Harry Cohen, Alf Dubs, Millie Miller, Eric Moonman, and David Winnick. During the late 1980s and 1990s, with the shift away from the socialist left of"
"to the left while the Conservatives had drifted further to the right. This drove a significant number of right wing Labour members and MPs to form a breakaway party in 1981, the Social Democratic Party. Labour fought the election on unilateral nuclear disarmament, which proposed to abandon the British nuclear deterrent despite the threat from a nuclear armed Soviet Union, withdrawal from the European Community, and total reversal of Thatcher's economic and trade union changes. Indeed, one Labour MP, Gerald Kaufman, has called the party's 1983 manifesto ""the longest suicide note in history"". Consequently, upon the Labour split, there was"
"Liberal Democrats (UK) The Liberal Democrats (often referred to as the Lib Dems) are a liberal British political party formed in 1988 from a merger of the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party (SDP), a splinter group from the Labour Party which had formed the SDP–Liberal Alliance from 1981. At the 2010 general election, the Lib Dems led by Nick Clegg won 57 seats, making them the third-largest party in the House of Commons behind the Conservatives with 306 and Labour with 258. With no party having an overall majority, the party formed a coalition government with the Conservatives,"
"Church of England, and is married and has 3 children. General elections Robin Tilbrook Robin Tilbrook (born 1958) is a solicitor and English politician, the chairman and a founder member of the English Democrats, a political party that advocates English independence. Tilbrook was born in Kuala Lumpur, Federation of Malaya, in 1958. He was educated at Wellington College, Berkshire, gained a BA (Hons) in Politics and Economics from the University of Kent at Canterbury, and then studied at The College of Law, Chester. He was a Coldstream Guardsman, and has worked in a factory, in junior management, and as a"
"later Conservative Party faction known as the Hughligans was ""a self-conscious attempt to recreate the 'Fourth Party'"", according to Rhodri Williams. Fourth Party The Fourth Party was a label given to a quartet of British MPs, Lord Randolph Churchill, Henry Drummond Wolff, John Gorst and Arthur Balfour, in the 1880–1885 parliament. They attacked what they saw as the weakness of both the Liberal government and the Conservative opposition. Despite the label, they were all backbench members of the Conservative Party. In the view of ""The New York Times"", they would ""act as skirmishers to the main body, popping out here"
"was prominent) together. In 1980, the Labour Party conference was dominated by factional disputes and what Callaghan regarded as Bennite motions. Callaghan resigned as party leader late that year and was replaced by Michael Foot, a left-winger who by then had distanced himself from Benn but failed to transmit this to the media or the voters. The following year, Denis Healey only narrowly won the deputy leadership in a contest with Benn. In 1981, thirty MPs on the right-wing of the Labour Party defected to found the Social Democratic Party, which formed an alliance with the Liberal Party and opinion"
"party to change their name. By coincidence, a by-election arose in Warrington, in 1981, and Kean stood against the new party with the slogan ""Enforce Law, End Poverty, Create Jobs"". The 1979 SDP's vote fell to 0.1% of the total. The party's final candidacy came at the Glasgow Hillhead by-election, 1982, where Roy Jenkins, a leading figure in the newer SDP, was a candidate. Kean's SDP fielded Douglas Parkin, who changed his name to ""Roy Harold Jenkins"" by deed poll. The SDP took ""Roy Harold Jenkins"" to court, claiming that this attempt to confuse voters constituted a corrupt practice under"
"in 1974–79, under Wilson and then James Callaghan. Escalating economic crises (the ""Winter of Discontent"") and a split with David Owen and others forming the SDP, resulted in Opposition status during the Thatcher years, 1979–1990. Labour returned with a 179-seat majority in the 1997 general election under the leadership of Tony Blair. The party's large majority in the House of Commons was slightly reduced to 167 in the 2001 general election and more substantially reduced to 66 in 2005. Under Gordon Brown it was defeated in the 2010 general election, becoming the Opposition to a Conservative/Liberal-Democrat coalition. After further losses"
"and in defiance of the National Executive voted to create a new Social Democratic Party. This group was led by Jack Holmes, whose defeat by the Raving Loonies at Bootle had caused the party's demise. Owen did not contest the 1992 general election. John Cartwright and Rosie Barnes – both National Executive members and members of parliament who had been left without a party after the 1990 winding-up vote – stood as ""Independent Social Democrats"" in the 1992 general election. The Liberal Democrats did not run candidates against them, and helped them with their campaigns. The new SDP (of which"
"When Foot became leader, the Conservative politician Kenneth Baker commented: ""Labour was led by Dixon of Dock Green under Jim Callaghan. Now it is led by Worzel Gummidge."" Foot's nickname in the press gradually became ""Worzel Gummidge"", or ""Worzel"". This became particularly common after Remembrance Day 1981. After his tenure as leader, Foot would be ""depicted as a scarecrow on ITV’s satirical puppet show ""Spitting Image""."" Almost immediately after his election as leader, he was faced with a serious crisis. On 25 January 1981, four senior politicians on the right-wing of the Labour Party (Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams, David Owen"