“…changing before our very eyes…becoming a very different sort of party, a party which is wedded to a different concept of politics. The whole party is changing into something extremely dangerous and extremely frightening.”
The warning signs had been evident for several years. As far back as 1977 there were problems being created by the influential emergence of the Trotskyist faction ‘Militant Tendency’ which led to Williams arguing that activists within the party must unite to save the party. Unfortunately these pleas appeared to land on deafened ears and by the time of the party conference in Blackpool in 1980, Williams was forced to resort to more galvanising statements as she called on her fellow social democrats to:
“…get you heads over the ‘parapet’ and fight now, or you won’t have a party worth fighting for!”
Williams, like her Labour colleagues Owen and Rodgers had become deeply disillusioned by the implementation of the union block vote which was potentially exercisable for selecting possible party leaders, who labelled it an ‘outrage against democracy’.
Shirley Williams was the more radical component of the gang of four and was sceptical of Jenkins’ views that a compromise between the militant factions and the social democratic wing of the party could be attained. In the weeks leading up to the Limehouse declaration, she regarded Jenkins as being a “very good ex-Labour minister” but was dismissive of his compromising tendencies as she regarded the two positions as being “fundamentally different”.
Roy Jenkins had been President of the European Commission since 1976 and had been looking for a point of re-entry to British politics. He delivered the annual BBC Dimbleby Lecture in November 1979 and was scathing in his criticism of the British political system, calling for proportional representation and referring to the two party system as being “sterile”. Having been overlooked for the Foreign office by Callaghan, his term of office in the EC had marginalised his influence within the party. His Social democratic values were far from welcome in a left-leaning Labour party and his only contact with the PLP was maintained through Rodgers and Robert Maclenan.
His term of office as EC President was scheduled to end in 1981 and he had been watching the debilitating divisions unravel within the Labour party. As a former deputy leader of the party under the Harold Wilson administration, he was perhaps the least embracive of any such defection from the mainstream party and viewed such action with a degree of caution. On the other hand he had become increasingly disenchanted with Labour’s lurch to the left and the attack sustained on the record of the Callaghan government post 1979.
Dr David Owen had also been a member of the former administration and like fellow members of the gang of four, held realistic ambitions of being involved in any future Labour government. Such goals were defeated the moment he was roundly ‘booed’ during a speech at the Wembley conference in May 1980 when he spoke against unilateralism. His attempts to make one final plea to the party over its destructive adoption of the Electoral College had failed and, for many, the door had been opened to an irreversible division of the party.
On 7th June 1980, Owen along with fellow ‘gang of three’ members Williams and Rodgers, issued a statement arguing that Britain must remain in the EEC and that contravention of this would result in them being forced to leave the party. This was followed by a manifesto being sent to the Guardian newspaper in August which reiterated their threat to terminate their party memberships. Although initially hesitant at such a proposal, Owen became bolder and in October announced his intention to not stand for election to the shadow cabinet.
Bill Rodgers was the only member of the now isolated ‘gang of three’ who had accepted the nomination to stand for the shadow cabinet elections. Like fellow members, he had become disheartened by the Bishops Stortford outcome which created the controversial Electoral College. He regarded the decision as being demonstrative of the parliamentary leadership unwillingness to fight off the factions of the left which were tearing the party apart. Once elected to the shadow cabinet, Rodgers refused to accept a number of posts on the grounds that “they were not weighty enough”.
Michael Foot had attempted to balance the warring factions of the party by providing generous concessions to the right with a number of significant appointments. These included Dennis Healey being made shadow Foreign Minister and Peter Shore being made spokesman for the economy. Rodgers remained defiant and eventually joined his fellow gang of three members when they formulated the first steps to defection with the Limehouse declaration, the following January.
