The Birth of the SDP

Abstract

The story of the birth of the SDP begins with the climactic General Election of 1979. The defeat of Labour in that election represented the party’s worst showing in fifty years. Labour’s share of the vote showed a striking drop from 39.2 per cent in the October 1974 election to 36.9 per cent in 1979. Speculation had become reality — the Labour Party had embarked on its journey towards electoral decline. During the next two years three different forces would come together to create the new party: Roy Jenkins in Brussels, the democratic Labour groups like Steven Haseler’s Social Democratic Alliance (SDA), and the ‘Gang of Three’ — Williams, Rodgers and Owen. The appalling results of the 1979 General Election and the sparking of these three forces made the formation of a new party inevitable:

With a right-wing and unpopular Tory Government in power, Labour bound to move to the left in opposition, Shirley Williams out of the House of Commons, and Roy Jenkins watching it all from Brussels and waiting to come back, you had a pretty combustible combination.¹