26 November 1981

Shirley Williams wins the Crosby by-election for the SDP/Liberal Alliance

Both Shirley Williams and Roy Jenkins – another founding member of the SDP were not elected to Parliament at this point. Jenkins had fought Warrington earlier in the year but had narrowly failed to win the seat but it was Williams who was selected for the campaign which was to deliver the first SDP Member of Parliament through an election. The Liberal Party did not field a candidate following the creation of the Liberal/SDP Alliance. The seat had been regarded as a safe Conservative seat until this point and Graham Page, the previous MP, had a majority of 19,272. Williams turned that into an SDP majority of 5,289, securing 49% of the vote. She held the seat until the Tories regained it at the 1983 general election. She was created a life peer in 1993 as The Baroness Williams of Crosby of Stevenage in the County of Hertfordshire and served as Liberal Democrat leader in the House of Lords from 2001 until 2004.