Feature: The SDP 'Gang of Four' - 30 years on from the time a group of Labour ministers threatened to bring down the party
Published: 17 March 2011
by GEOFFREY GOODMAN
IT was the 26th of March 30 years ago when, as George Orwell would have said, the clock almost struck 13 for the Labour Party. Almost but not quite.
That was the day the so-called Social Democratic Party (SDP) was formed by a “Gang of Four” on a day that might well have spelled the end for the Labour Party as we had known it.
The serious political status of the party came as near to collapse as it has ever done apart from a similar moment in 1931 when Ramsay MacDonald, then Labour Prime Minister, sleep-walked into the arms of a National Government coalition.
The 1981 crisis was somewhat different. Unlike 1931 Labour was not in office when former Labour ministers, led by the late Lord Jenkins, an ex-Chancellor turned head of the European Commission, decided the moment was right to change the face of British politics. With Jenkins were David (now Lord) Owen, a former foreign secretary, Bill (now Lord) Rodgers and Shirley (now Baroness) Williams.
Why did they assume such arrogance? There were three clear reasons.
First, all four believed that the traditional Labour Party was dead, dominated by trade unions who were a reflection of a working class that no longer existed; plus a political agenda focused on State power (that is, government intervention in the public interest) all of which they claimed was a thowback to Clement Attlee’s post-war social and economic “settlement”.
That was Labour’s famed 1945 government, the first Labour adminstration to hold overall power dominated by great names – Ernest Bevin, Aneurin Bevan, Stafford Cripps etc. The “Gang of Four” wanted something different – more like the old Liberal Party of the 19th century – without any trade union links.
Second, the four breakaways despised the newly elected Labour leader, Michael Foot, whom they regarded as quite unfit for that role – partly because he was an old Bevanite leftie, but also because they had a contempt for his decent socialist values.
Third, and perhaps most important, severing all links with the unions could free the new SDP to do business with market capitalism as a kind of liberal arm in a Conservative Britain.
In effect they believed in an updated version of the Gladstonian Liberal Party. This dominated Roy Jenkins’ thinking as he led the Gang of Four. They claimed that the socialism of the old Labour Party had reached a dead end. What remained of the working class didn’t matter and the unions were a political liability.
The result of all this was to encourage a civil war on the left of British politics with Foot desperately trying to keep the Labour Party alive as a united organisation. He was helped by Denis Healey and Roy Hattersley, both of whom courageously defied attempts to lure them into the breakaway. The vast majority of trade unions also refused to have any dealings with the breakaway Four.
The nearest the SDP came to success was in the 1983 general election – the Falklands War election which Margaret Thatcher called to celebrate her military triumph.
With Foot leading the Labour Party against an alliance of the Liberals and the SDP, Labour came close to disaster.
Thatcher won with an overwhelming majority of 144 Parliamentary seats. They polled 43.5 per cent against Labour’s 28.3 per cent with the SDP-Liberal Alliance polling 26 per cent – almost neck and neck with Labour. It looked like a bigger disaster than 1931. The SDP emergence had brought the Labour Party to its worst election result since it became a major political force. It also established Margaret Thatcher’s triumph over Attlee’s post-war “settlement”.
The recovery from this grave crisis was finally led by Neil Kinnock who succeeded Foot as Labour leader.
Gradually, helped by the trade unions, Kinnock restored Labour’s credibility. He lost the 1992 election against John Major but he had saved the party. The SDP Gang of Four broke up in quarrels with the Liberals amid strife among themselves. Yet there is no doubt that the SDP breakaway left a huge scar across the Labour movement. It also seriously dented the party’s public image, not least as a result of media support for the breakaways – including several national newspapers, with the Guardian and the Daily Mirror wavering in favour of the Gang of Four, whose agenda was given some credibility by extreme left-wing groups causing widespread havoc within Labour Party branches. That lasted until Neil Kinnock’s brave leadership finally eroded these destructive influences.
Yet there is little doubt that Labour under Ed Miliband still struggles to overcome a legacy from that 30-year-old handicap as it seeks to build a new radical agenda to attract the voters.
• Geoffrey Goodman is former industrial editor and assistant editor of the Daily Mirror. His recent book From Bevan to Blair: Fifty Years Reporting From the Political Front Line (Pluto Press) is a Fleet Street memoir.