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SDP Fact Files
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A fact file of the members of the SDP: Tony Benn, Michael Foot, Derek Hatton and Neil Kinnock.
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Fact Files and SDP QuestionsCreated @November 12, 2022 8:34 PM
Topic Politics
Gov and PM Conservatives Thatcher
Type Homework
Tony Benn
- Member of the Labour Party - joined in 1943,
first elected in Parliament in 1950 representing
Bristol South East.
- From 1970s - unofficial leader of the party’s
radical populist left.
- He came from a wealthy and privileged familty
and attended Oxford.
- Both of his grandfathers had been mambers of
Parliament and his father had been Liberal, then
Labour MP who entered the House fo Lords as
1st Viscount Stansgate.
- Minister of technology 1966-1970
- Secretary for industry and minister for posts
and telecommunications (1974-75) and secretary
for energy (1975-79).
- During the 1970s he had become the most
influential leftist thinker in the Labour Party. He
set out his ideas in a book called Arguments for
Socialism (1979).
- The “democratic socialism” that he advocated
Fact Files and SDP Questions 1
, would involve a large measure of public
investment, public expenditure, and public
ownership combined with self-management in
the workplace, along with open (as opposed to
secretive) government.
- He characterized his proposed socioeconomic
model as a “home-grown British product,” distinct
from both capitalism and communism.
- He was a prominent supporter of the National
Union of Mineworkers and its radical leader
Arthur Scargill in their historic 1984–85 strike, the
defeat of which was a bellwether for the decline
of trade unionism.
- In 2001 Benn left Parliament “in order to spend
more time on politics,” and for the remainder of
his life he continued to take to the ramparts to
voice his radical critique of the status quo and his
support for leftist activism.
Michael Foot
- Member of the Labour Party - leader of Party from Nov 1980 to October 1983, an
intellectual left-wing socialist
- Foot was a member of a strongly Liberal family (his father had been a member of
Parliament).
- He attended Wadham College, Oxford.
- The mass unemployment of the 1930s turned him to socialism, and from 1945 to
1992, apart from a break between 1955 and 1960, he was a Labour member of
Parliament.
- In 1974 he established himself as a leading member of Prime Minister Harold
Wilson’s cabinet, first as secretary of state for employment (1974–76) in charge of
complex and controversial trade-union legislation.
- And in (1976–79) as leader of the House of Commons, a role that required him to
hold the parliamentary party together.
- From deputy leader of the Labour Party (1976–80), he rose to become the party’s
chief, defeating Denis Healey, the candidate of Labour’s right wing, in November
1980 by a vote of 139 to 129.
Fact Files and SDP Questions 2
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