Lord Owen draws curtain on parliamentary career spanning nearly 60 years

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

Former SDP leader David Owen has retired from the House of Lords, drawing to a close a parliamentary career spanning almost six decades.

The 86-year-old’s departure from the upper house was announced as peers returned to Westminster after the summer recess.

Lord Owen was first elected as a Plymouth MP in 1966.

He remained in the Commons until 1992 when he was appointed a life peer and took a seat in the unelected house.

Lord Owen served as foreign secretary from 1977 to 1979 in James Callaghan’s Labour government. At the time he was the youngest person to hold the post since Anthony Eden in 1935.

Two years later he became one of the “Gang of Four” who split from the party then led by Michael Foot to form the SDP.

Within months of its creation, the new party entered into an alliance with the Liberals in a bid to challenge the dominance of Labour and the Conservatives.

But the pact was dogged by tensions between “the two Davids” – Owen and Steel – leading the parties.

The alliance lasted until 1988 when the SDP and Liberal parties merged to form what eventually became the Liberal Democrats headed by Paddy Ashdown.

Lord Owen opposed the move and continued to lead a much smaller continuing SDP until the disastrous 1990 Bootle by-election, where its candidate finished seventh behind the Monster Raving Loony Party.

Despite being disbanded, the SDP was later revived by activists and remains a presence in local politics in some areas.

On leaving the Commons, Lord Owen led European efforts to end fighting in the Balkans in the early 1990s.

Defence and international affairs remained his key areas of interest at Westminster.

His most recent contributions in the Lords earlier this year covered the Gaza conflict and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Lord Owen had sat in the upper chamber as a crossbencher until March 2014 when he changed his listed party affiliation to independent social democrat.