David Owen

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David Anthony Llewellyn Owen, Baron Owen, CH, PC (born July 2, 1938) is a British politician and one of the founders of the British Social Democratic Party (SDP). He led the SDP from 1983 to 1987 and the re-formed SDP from 1988 to 1990. He is also known for becoming the youngest person in over forty years to hold the post of British Foreign Secretary (from 1977 to 1979) and as one of the authors of the failed Vance-Owen and Owen-Stoltenberg peace plans offered during the Bosnian War. He has been a controversial figure for much of his career, inspiring great devotion among close followers but also disaffection due to perceived arrogance.

Owen had been long regarded as a serial resigner. He had quit as Labour's spokesman on Defence in 1972 in protest at the Labour Leader Harold Wilson's attitude to the EEC; he left the Labour Shadow cabinet over the same issue later; and over unilateral disarmament in November 1980 when Michael Foot became Labour leader. He resigned from the Labour Party when it rejected "one member, one vote" in February 1981. He resigned as Leader of the Social Democratic Party which he had helped to found when the party's rank-and-file membership voted to merge with the Liberal Party" [Unfinest Hour: Britain and the Destruction of Bosnia 2001 ; p157-158].

He married Deborah Owen (née Schabert), an American literary agent, in 1968. They have two sons and one daughter.

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[edit] Early life

Owen was born in 1938 in the town of Plympton, beside Plymouth in Devon, England. After schooling at Mount House School, Tavistock and Bradfield College, Berkshire, he was admitted to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge in 1956 to study medicine. He began clinical training at St Thomas' Hospital Medical School, London, in October 1959.

In 1960, Owen joined the Vauxhall branch of the Labour Party and the Fabian Society. He qualified as a doctor in 1962 and began work at the Royal Waterloo Hospital. In 1964, he contested the Torrington seat as the Labour candidate against the Conservative incumbent, losing in what was a traditional Conservative-Liberal marginal.

[edit] Labour MP and Government Minister

At the next general election, in 1966, Owen returned to his home town and was elected Labour Member of Parliament (MP) for the Plymouth Sutton constituency. In the February 1974 general election he became Labour MP for the adjacent Plymouth Devonport constituency, winning it from the Tory incumbent Dame Joan Vickers by a slim margin (less than 500 votes). He managed to hold on to it in the 1979 general election, again by a narrow margin (1001 votes). From 1981, however, his involvement with the SDP meant he developed a large personal following in the constituency and thereafter he was re-elected (as an SDP candidate) with safe margins. He remained as MP for Plymouth Devonport until his elevation to a peerage in 1992.

From 1968 to 1970, Owen served as Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the Navy in Harold Wilson's first government. After Labour's defeat in the 1970 General Election, he became the party's Junior Defence Spokesman until 1972 when he resigned with Roy Jenkins over Labour's opposition to the European Community. On Labour's return to government in March 1974, he became Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health before being promoted to Minister of State for Health in July 1974.

In September 1976, Owen was appointed by the new Prime Minister of five months, James Callaghan as a Minister of State at the Foreign Office and was consequently admitted to the Privy Council of the United Kingdom. Ten months later, however, the Foreign Secretary, Anthony Crosland, died suddenly and Owen was appointed his successor. Aged thirty-eight, he became the youngest Foreign Secretary since Anthony Eden in 1935 and was seen as the youthful dynamic face of Labour's next generation.

As Foreign Secretary, Owen was identified with the Anglo/American plan for what was then Rhodesia which formed the basis for the Lancaster House Agreement, negotiated by his Tory successor, Lord Carrington in December 1979. The Contact Group sponsored UN Resolution in 1978 on which Namibia moved to independence twelve years later. He wrote a book entitled Human Rights and championed that cause in Africa and in the Soviet Union. He has admitted to at one stage contemplating the assassination of Idi Amin while Foreign Secretary but settled instead to backing with money for arms purchases to President Nyerere of Tanzania in his armed attack on Uganda which lead to the exile of Amin to Saudi Arabia.

However, a year after Labour lost power in 1979, the staunchly left-wing politician Michael Foot was elected party leader, sparking a crisis amongst Owen and other moderates as to the party's future.

[edit] Social Democratic Party and Liberal-SDP Alliance

Michael Foot's election as Labour party leader indicated that the party was likely to become more rather than less left-wing and in 1980 committed itself to coming out of the EEC without even the referendum which Labour had carried out in 1975. Also, Labour endorsed unilateral nuclear disarmament and introduced an electoral college, for leadership elections, with 40% of the college going to the block vote of the trade unions. Early in 1981, Owen and three other senior moderate Labour politicians – Roy Jenkins, Bill Rodgers and Shirley Williams – announced their intention to break away from the Labour Party to form a "Council for Social Democracy". The announcement became known as the Limehouse Declaration and the four as the "Gang of Four". The council they formed became the Social Democratic Party (SDP), with a collective leadership.

Twenty-eight other Labour MPs and one Conservative MP (Christopher Brocklebank-Fowler) joined the new party. In late 1981, it formed the SDP-Liberal Alliance with the Liberal Party to strengthen both parties' chances in the UK's "first past the post" electoral system. In 1982, uneasy about the Alliance, Owen challenged Jenkins for the leadership of the SDP, but was defeated by 26,256 votes to 20,864. In the following year's General Election, the Alliance gained 25% of the vote, only slightly behind the Labour Party, but because of the "first past the post" system, it won only 23 out of 650 seats. Although elected, Jenkins resigned the SDP leadership and Owen succeeded to it without a contest among the 6 SDP MPs.

Unlike Jenkins, however, Owen and the SDP faced an increasingly moderate Labour Party under Neil Kinnock and a less unpopular Conservative government. The 1987 general election was as disappointing for the Alliance as the 1983 election and it lost one seat. Nevertheless, it won over 23% of the vote, the second largest third force vote in British politics since 1929.

In 1987 immediately after the election, the Liberal leader David Steel openly suggested a full merger of the Liberal and SDP parties and was supported for the SDP by Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams and Bill Rodgers. Owen rejected this notion outright, but the majority of the SDP membership supported the idea. The Liberal and SDP parties merged to form the Social and Liberal Democrats (SLD), soon renamed as the Liberal Democrats, whilst Owen continued to lead a much smaller re-formed SDP with three MPs. The party polled well at its first election, its candidate coming a close second in the 1989 Richmond by-election, but thereafter a string of poor and ultimately disastrous by-election results followed, including coming behind the Official Monster Raving Loony Party in a by-election, prompting Owen to wind up the party in 1990. Some branches, however, continued to function using the SDP name- notably Bridlington which continues in 2006.

[edit] Later life

After winding up the re-formed SDP, Owen announced his intent to stand down as an MP at the next General Election. He then served the remainder of his term as an independent MP and after the 1992 General Election was made a life peer with the title Baron Owen, of the City of Plymouth. As a member of the House of Lords, he is called "Lord Owen" and sits as a crossbencher.

During the April 1992 election campaign, Owen in the Mail on Sunday advised voters to vote Liberal Democrat where they had a chance of victory and otherwise to vote Conservative rather than let Neil Kinnock become Prime Minister. He maintained his long standing position that he would never join the Conservative Party, although the memoirs of at least three of John Major's cabinet ministers refer to Major being quite keen to appoint Owen to his cabinet, but threats of resignation from within the Cabinet prevented him from doing so.

[edit] Balkan Odyssey

In August 1992, Owen was British Prime Minister John Major's surprise choice to succeed Lord Carrington as the EU co-chairman of the Conference for the Former Yugoslavia, along with Cyrus Vance, the former U.S. Secretary of State as the UN co-chairman.

Private Eye", the British satirical magazine playfully alluded towards Owen's legendary tendency towards self-destruction. "It's a lost cause", says the bubble emanating from Major's mouth. "I'm your man", says the bubble from Owen's mouth. The Labour Shadow Foreign Minister, Jack Cunningham, greeted Major's appointment of Owen in the British House of Commons by saying that the Prime Minister's choice "was regarded as somewhat eccentric by [MPs] and myself - he [Owen] is known for many qualities, but not as a mediator. Indeed he has Balkanised a few political parties himself" [Unfinest Hour :Britain and the Destruction of Bosnia [2001] Brendan Simms p137]

Owen became a joint author of the Vance-Owen Peace Plan [VOPP]agreed in Athens in May 1993 by all parties including Bosnian Serb leader Karadžić under intense pressure [but then rejected later by the Bosnian-Serb Assembly meeting in Pale, after Karadžić insisted that the Assembly had the right to ratify the agreement]. With Thorvald Stoltenberg who had succeeded Vance, they brokered the EU Action Plan of December 1993. They both helped the Contact Group of the US/UK/France/Germany and Russia to present its plan in the summer of 1994.

By this time Owen was already losing his authority : in early 1994, the European Parliament had voted by 160 votes to 90, with 2 abstentions, for Owen's dismissal. There was a perception in America that Owen was "not fulfilling his function as an impartial negotiator.." [Unfinest Hour, p167]. Owen was made a Companion of Honour for his services in the former Yugoslavia in l994.

In January 1995 Lord Owen wrote to President François Mitterrand as President of the EU to say that he wished to step down before the end of the French Presidency. At the end of May 1995, he was replaced by the former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt. The irony over his resignation from EU co-Chairman was that while Owen was famous for his exits, he'd fumbled this latest one. "Had I been younger, I would probably have resigned when the Americans ditched the Vance-Owen Peace Plan" [Unfinest Hour p157-8]. So marginalised was Owen by June 1995, that Edward Mortimer in the Fiancial Times was able to put it as "[Owen's departure] may have surprised some who did not realise he was still in the job." [Unfinest Hour, p 171-2]

He testified in the trial of former Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milošević, and caused some controversy by asserting that Milošević was the only leader in the Bosnian war who had consistently supported peace, and that any form of racism was personally "anathema" to him.

[edit] Recent years

As chairman of New Europe, Owen was the co-leader of the 'no to the euro' campaign with Business for Sterling which ceased when the UK Government declared in 2005 that euro membership was off the agenda following the defeat of the EU Constitution in referenda in France and Holland.

[edit] Further reading

  • David Owen, Balkan Odyssey (Victor Gollancz, 1995)
  • David Owen, Time to Declare (Michael Joseph, 1992)
  • David Owen and Kenneth Harris, Personally Speaking (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987)

[edit] External links

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by
Ian Fraser		 Member of Parliament for Plymouth Sutton
1966–Feb 1974		 Succeeded by
Alan Clark
Preceded by
Dame Joan Vickers		 Member of Parliament for Plymouth Devonport
Feb 1974–1992		 Succeeded by
David Jamieson
Political offices
Preceded by
Anthony Crosland		 Foreign Secretary
1977–1979		 Succeeded by
The Lord Carrington
Preceded by
Roy Jenkins		 Leader of the SDP
1983–1987		 Succeeded by
Robert Maclennan
Leaders of the Liberal Democrats
  Leaders of the Liberal Party
(Post 1945) 		 Clement Davies | Jo Grimond | Jeremy Thorpe | Jo Grimond | David Steel
  Leaders of the SDP  Roy Jenkins | David Owen | Robert Maclennan
  Leaders of the Liberal Democrats  David Steel | Robert Maclennan | Paddy Ashdown | Charles Kennedy | Menzies Campbell
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../d/a/v/David_Owen_13ed.html"