Anyone remember the SDP?
Paul Linford and I got into an agreeable sidetrack at Guido's place about being fellow alums of the UCL law faculty in the '80s, when it was a hot bed of SDP activists. About four or five of the faculty were up to their eyeballs in SDP-ery, and I think some of them might even have stood in the '83 election.
Anyway, having gone for a mooch around Wikipedia I dug up the Limehouse Declaration, which looks comparatively left wing by modern standards. Here's an extract:
"Our economy needs a healthy public sector and a healthy private sector without frequent frontier changes. We want to eliminate poverty and promote greater equality without stifling enterprise or imposing bureaucracy from the centre. We need the innovating strength of a competitive economy with a fair distribution of rewards".
So that's a big no to privatisation and a big yes to wealth redistribution....
Meanwhile, let us all be cheered by Polly Toynbee's failure to get elected for Lewisham West in '83, coming in a miserable third but in the process ensuring the future Miniature (sic) for Sport Colin Moynihan took the seat from Labour.
Paul Linford and I got into an agreeable sidetrack at Guido's place about being fellow alums of the UCL law faculty in the '80s, when it was a hot bed of SDP activists. About four or five of the faculty were up to their eyeballs in SDP-ery, and I think some of them might even have stood in the '83 election.
Anyway, having gone for a mooch around Wikipedia I dug up the Limehouse Declaration, which looks comparatively left wing by modern standards. Here's an extract:
"Our economy needs a healthy public sector and a healthy private sector without frequent frontier changes. We want to eliminate poverty and promote greater equality without stifling enterprise or imposing bureaucracy from the centre. We need the innovating strength of a competitive economy with a fair distribution of rewards".
So that's a big no to privatisation and a big yes to wealth redistribution....
Meanwhile, let us all be cheered by Polly Toynbee's failure to get elected for Lewisham West in '83, coming in a miserable third but in the process ensuring the future Miniature (sic) for Sport Colin Moynihan took the seat from Labour.
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