Misunderstanding Mrs Thatcher

When in January 1981 the Gang of Four issued the Limehouse Declaration and opened the way to the formation of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Margaret Thatcher was not mentioned. For Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Shirley Williams and Bill Rodgers the danger was the takeover of Labour by the radical left. It never occurred to them that they had entered a decade in which Thatcher would sweep away forever the postwar Britain they wanted to revive. “Not once did the Gang of Four mention her government, her policies or the need to beat her in an election,” writes Dominic Sandbrook in Who Dares Wins. “Owen later told Charles Moore that when they were devising their plans, she never even came up. To people like Jenkins and Williams, it was self-evident that, having been foolish enough to elect somebody so strident, aggressive and narrow-minded, the British people would not make the same mistake again. ‘Roy and Shirley thought Mrs Thatcher was an aberration’, Owen said, ‘and they were looking ahead to the next bit. They assumed they would come through the middle when Thatcherism failed.’”