1976-1988
Alliance days
Vignettes of the days of elation and experiment, frustration and failure.
The merger debate in the SDP 1981-87
The history of the SDP-Liberal relationship, from beginnings to alliance to merger.
The SDP’s ideological legacy
What was the ideological inheritance of the Social Democratic Party? And what did it bequeath to the Liberal Democrats?
Young Liberals; the ‘Red Guard’ era
The role of foreign policy issues in the growth of the Young Liberals in the 1960s and ’70s.
Report: from Beveridge to Blair
Report of LDHG meeting of September 1997 on the welfare state, with Frank Field MP and Nick Timmins.
A Party for what?
Review of Ivor Crewe and Anthony King, SDP: The Birth, Life and Death of the Social Democratic Party (Oxford University Press, 1995).
Richard Holme on the merger negotiations
My recollections of the process which led to the merger of the Liberal Party and the SDP are hazy since I am not a diary-keeper. Nor can I give anything but an outsider's view of the formal merger negotiations since, to my chagrin at the time, I was not elected to be a member of…
Roy Jenkins (Lord Jenkins), 1920-2003
Roy Jenkins played a significant role in developing and articulating a new progressive vision of social, political and constitutional change. His reforms at the Home Office helped to transform Britain into a more modern, more civilised society. He was a successful, if orthodox, Chancellor of the Exchequer. He played an important and consistent role in…
Jeremy Thorpe, 1929-2014
The infamy of Jeremy Thorpe’s downfall unfairly colours all else in his life. Thorpe was a stylish, progressive and popular politician. Under his leadership the Liberal Party won more votes than ever before or since at a general election and helped drive legislation taking Britain into the European Community through a divided Parliament. But the…