Back in 1980 I read about the rumblings about an emerging “third way” in British politics called the “Campaign for Social Democracy” (CSD) lead by four Labour politicians of which David Owen was one. I liked it because it was perfectly consistent with the modern socialism espoused in Tony Crosland’s “The Future of Socialism” – internationalist, pro mixed economy, pro social reform, pragmatic.
I wrote to Bill Rodgers (one of the four) and when quite rapidly the CSD morphed into a political party, the SDP, I was an early recruit. In early Thatcherite Britain those of us who were Croslandite (now really Jenkinsite) needed a new home with Labour under the cosh of Michael Foot , an anachronistic Bevanite relic. The SDP offered it.
I take the view that the SDP , in alliance with the Liberals, would have won an election in 1983/4 had the Falklands War not happened. But it did and the Blessed Margaret never looked back. And that was the end for the SDP. I was an Owenite refusing to join the new Liberal Democrats. I was living in Hong Kong at the time and we had a small group of hard core SDP members who formed an Owenite local branch. We invited Owen to meet with us (he was en route to Peking) and he did.
I hadn’t met Owen before and at our meeting I found him the rudest person I’d ever met! Far from welcoming our support he dismissed us. He was ineffably arrogant. Never meet your heroes they say!
Blair’s Labour was the SDP in all but name. So , I think, is Starmer’s. Hooray !
Paddy’s Blogs in a crazy world 
I was also a supporter of the SDP. At the time, Owen seemed the answer to everything, while Thatcher was running aground before the Falklands happened.. Sadly it seems he couldn’t get on with many other colleagues and perhaps was instrumental to the SDP not gaining traction.
David Owen has a great brain but I doubt he will be missed much.
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I heard much the same about him from someone I knew who’d worked in local government when Owen came to visit one time; he said Dr Owen was dismissive and unfriendly and left a bad impression on him and his colleagues..
It seems he was a shrewd thinker who couldn’t get on with other people, which may have been his undoing in politics.
One thing I admired about him was his capacity for hard work, including hard physical work – he worked as a labourer on a building site during his holidays from medical school.
I envy him that house he owns on the Thames in Limehouse, which he claimed he’d bought for about £3,000 in the mid-sixties, and is probably worth into the millions now. I’ll bet he did a lot of the work on that house himself.
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