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Social Democratic Party (UK)

Social Democratic Party
Abbreviation SDP
Founder Roy Jenkins
David Owen
Bill Rodgers
Shirley Williams
Founded 26 March 1981
Dissolved 3 March 1988
Split from Labour Party (de facto)
Merged into Liberal Democrats
Ideology Centrism
Social liberalism
Political position Centre
National affiliation SDP–Liberal Alliance
European affiliation None
International affiliation None
European Parliament group Technical Group of Independents (1983–84)
Colours Blue and red

The Social Democratic Party (SDP) was a centrist political party in the United Kingdom.

The SDP was founded on 26 March 1981 by four senior Labour Party moderates, dubbed the 'Gang of Four':Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Bill Rodgers and Shirley Williams, who issued the Limehouse Declaration. Owen and Rodgers were sitting Labour Members of Parliament (MPs); Jenkins 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 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.


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