Alan Sked
| Alan Sked | |
|---|---|
| Leader of New Deal | |
|
In office 13 September 2013 – March 2015 |
|
| Preceded by | New position |
| Succeeded by | None |
| Leader of the UK Independence Party | |
|
In office 3 September 1993 – May 1997 |
|
| Preceded by | New Position |
| Succeeded by | Craig Mackinlay |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
22 August 1947 United Kingdom |
| Political party | Independent |
| Other political affiliations |
UKIP, Anti-Federalist League, British-American Project, New Deal |
Alan Sked FRHistS (born 22 August 1947) is a British academic and politician. He is Professor of International History at the London School of Economics, founded the party now known as the UK Independence Party and stood as a candidate in several parliamentary elections.
Sked was educated at Allan Glen's School in Glasgow, before going on to study Modern and Medieval History at the University of Glasgow, followed by a DPhil in Politics at Merton College, Oxford.
Sked's doctoral supervisor at Oxford was A. J. P. Taylor, who was a major influence on him. In particular, Sked's writings on the Habsburg Monarchy owe much to Taylor, although their interpretations are very different. In addition to writing on Habsburg history, he has written texts on British political and European history. His books have been translated into German, Italian, Czech, Portuguese, Japanese and Mandarin Chinese.
At LSE he teaches courses on US and modern intellectual history, and on the history of sex, race and slavery. Sked is a member of the British-American Project, which exists to promote Britain’s political ties to the US.
In the 1970 general election he stood at Paisley as a candidate for the Liberal Party (which later combined with the SDP to form the Liberal Democrats), but later rejected the party's support for what would become the European Union (EU). He served for ten years (1980–1990) as Convenor of European Studies, a postgraduate MA programme at LSE, where he examined many theses on the EU and served as joint chairman of LSE's European Research Seminar. He came to believe that the EU was corrupt and anti-democratic, and a liability to the British economy. He was a founding member of the Bruges Group and remained a member until 1991, when he was expelled by its executive committee. This was because in November 1991 he had founded the Anti-Federalist League (AFL), an anti-EU political party that ran candidates, including Sked, in the 1992 general election, when he contested Bath.
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