1988 Leadership Campaign Following This Year’S Leadership Election for the Liberal Democrats, Harriet Smith Looks Back to the Party’S First Such Election
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The 1988 Leadership Campaign Following this year’s leadership election for the Liberal Democrats, Harriet Smith looks back to the party’s first such election. At .pm on Thursday July , Paddy scared to say what he thought, frequently got into trouble as a result of indiscreet conversa- Ashdown MP was declared as first leader of the tions with the press, and displayed boundless, newly-merged Social & Liberal Democrats. He won indefatigable energy. He was widely recognised .% of the votes cast in the ballot, while his only within and outwith the party as someone to keep a (wary) eye on. opponent, Alan Beith MP, polled . %. Turnout was Alan Beith was a complete contrast — a % of a total membership of ,. quiet Methodist lay-preacher, he embodied tra- ditional Liberal values and beliefs and was seen The results of the election for the first Presi- as someone who would guard the Liberals’ po- dent of the party were also announced on the litical integrity. He was also a very strong Par- same day. The winner was Ian Wrigglesworth, liamentary performer. Other potential candi- a senior figure in the former SDP, who beat dates talked about within the party and men- Des Wilson and Gwynoro Jones, both Liber- tioned by the press and media were Russell als. Although this result was closer than the Johnston, Malcolm Bruce and Robert leadership, there was an inevitability to it — Maclennan, briefly leader of the SDP at the eleven years ago, there was a strong feeling that time of merger. In the end, however, they all the two most senior figures in the party should decided not to stand and Bruce became Chair represent both old parties, although this feel- of Ashdown’s campaign. David Steel, as out- ing was not always shared, particularly among going Liberal leader, and Jim Wallace, as Chief some ex-Liberals. Whip, stayed strictly neutral throughout the campaign. Merger and after The election was an all-member ballot us- ing the alternative vote system. This was a The build-up to the leadership campaign be- unique method for electing a leader among gan as soon as the party was formally merged the major political parties in the UK. In both in March — David Steel had made it clear the Labour and Conservative parties, leaders that he did not want to continue as leader af- were (and still are) elected by MPs and other ter the struggles of the Alliance days, and David sections of the party using electoral colleges, Owen had gone off into his own wilderness. and in the case of the Conservatives, a com- At that stage in the party’s development, there plicated series of ballots. The one-member- were still serious divisions between former Lib- one-vote system of election used in the Lib- erals and former SDP members. eral Democrats’ leadership election at- Potential candidates for the leadership were tracted considerable attention from the press identified almost immediately. Paddy Ashdown because of this. was already well-known in the party before he As with the election, there was an ar- became an MP in , mainly as a result of tificial ‘cold war’ period before the serious elec- the Youth Charter he formulated as a result of tion period started, but as there was no mora- his experience of working with unemployed torium on campaigning before the official cam- youngsters. His unusual background (for a Lib- paign, the period was used for intensive be- eral) as a soldier and diplomat also attracted hind-the-scenes negotiations with potential attention. Once elected, he quickly made a supporters. Because of the recent merger, it was name for himself as someone who was not seen as essential for leadership candidates to 18 journal of liberal democrat history 24: autumn 1999 have support from ex-SDP members but with a few differences. In , This enabled Ashdown and Beith as well as ex-Liberals. Both teams hustings did not begin until after to articulate clearly their policies on also spent their time planning their nominations closed, and every mem- these areas, plan press releases and press and media strategies, the time- ber of the party received notification maximise publicity for their policy table for keynote speeches and hus- of the date of the hustings. Each hus- positions and their views of the par- tings, and general publicity. tings — there were seven — had a ty’s future. It was an effective way of Just before the real contest started, specific policy area as a theme to enabling the candidates to set out Alan Beith’s campaign got off to an which each candidate spoke, fol- their vision for policy development, unfortunate start when one of his lowed by general questions. The sub- then giving members a chance to ask supporters — reputedly Alex Carlile jects were: questions about their more general — released a list of fifteen reasons Local government/environment concerns. why Ashdown was not fit to be Constitutional reform In addition to the official hus- elected. Beith eventually condemned Health tings, other groups in the party held the letter after intervention from Economy and industry their own. There were Green and David Steel and other senior party Education Women’s hustings (on the same day), members, but the move had intro- Home Affairs and Association of Liberal Council- duced a sour note. Foreign Affairs and Defence lors’, Young Social & Liberal Demo- crats’ and Parliamentary Candidates’ The campaign begins conferences. Ashdown By the time nominations closed on June , both candidates had attracted a strong list of supporters. Ashdown’s key lieutenants were Malcolm Bruce MP, Archy Kirkwood MP, Tim Clement-Jones, Des Wilson (deus ex machina) and Alan Leaman. Other MPs who sup- ported Ashdown included Matthew Taylor, Richard Livsey, Ronnie Fearn and Menzies Campbell. Tom McNally, Lindsay Granshaw, Anne Sofer, Denis Sullivan and David Marquand were his high-profile SDP backers, later joined by Roy Jenkins and Shirley Williams. Beith’s team was chaired by Geraint Howells MP; supporters in- cluded Cyril Smith, Alex Carlile MP, David Alton MP, Lord (George) Mackie, Richard Wain- wright, Annette Penhaligon, Andrew Gifford and Rev. Roger Roberts. The contrast between a radical, cross-party approach to the development of the new So- cial & Liberal Democrats, and the more traditional approach to per- petuating old-style Liberalism in the new party could not have been more marked. Ashdown launched his cam- paign in his constituency, Yeovil, on June. Beith followed the next day, launching his effort from the cottage in Cheshire where he was born. The elec- tion process was similar to this year’s, journal of liberal democrat history 24: autumn 1999 19 and Beith used these opportunities ALDC tradition — leaflet distribu- ment of political forces. This is a pity, to make speeches on the future of tion, telephone canvassing and, for since what we need is a fresh assem- the party and on policies relevant to the first time in a leadership elec- bly of new ideas.’ the audience. A never-to-be-forgot- tion, extensive use of the press and He argued throughout the cam- ten hustings was the Liberal Move- media. paign that a united, democratic, new ment’s in Wolverhampton, where a party should not be afraid to re-think large number of radical Liberals (in- policies where necessary in order to cluding members of Ashdown’s Political differences ‘make the message forward looking’ team) got together to make very A year before the election, Ashdown (Ashdown’s phrase). His underlying clear their hostile views about the had already begun to articulate the theme throughout was that choice former SDP. Ashdown was given a political creed which he espoused and individual freedoms were the hard time whereas Beith was wel- throughout his leadership, and which entitlement of every citizen, but that comed openly. eventually led to the development of with that entitlement must come In addition to formal and infor- the Joint Cabinet Committee with rights and responsibilities. New mal hustings, both candidates used New Labour in . He began an thinking should include looking at invitations from local associations as article in with the words: ‘The the social security/benefits/welfare opportunities to put across their realignment of the Left in Britain has system, putting green politics at the views on various concerns. There always been seen in terms of realign- top of the agenda, and using the was also — as in , and in good market wherever possible to pro- mote prosperity. In , these were new, challenging ideas, and were a conscious effort to move forward from the ideas and policies of the Grimond era. This did not mean that the Grimond legacy was rejected; the opposite was true. Grimond’s clar- ity of thinking, new ways of look- ing at politics in his day, and his de- termination to succeed were crucial to the development of Ashdown’s political philosophy. He felt, however, that the new party was the ideal, and possibly only, opportunity to expand and redirect those ideas in keeping with a different political age. Eleven years ago, those ideas challenged conventional political wisdom; eleven years on, they have become common currency. Beith’s message was based on more traditional Liberal thinking. By nature a less radical figure than Ashdown, he appealed to members who felt threatened by the centrist, professional, non-inclusive approach of the former SDP. Although both candidates shared a fundamental be- lief in Liberal values, Beith harked back to the former Liberal Party as his vision for the future. Unlike Ashdown, he rejected the idea of overtaking Labour, saying,