Humiliation of Bootle ends SDP's political adventure

a few notches on the scale of issues of political interest.

The party's candidate in the Bootle by-election, Mr Jack Holmes, had

just come seventh out of the eight candidates, polling precisely 155

votes and trailing 263 votes behind Lord David Sutch's Raving Loony

Party.

The entire Bootle campaign had a beleaguered air about it and it was

difficult not to feel that the stuffing had been knocked out of the

party.

A couple of days before the by-election, Dr Owen and Mr Holmes held a

press conference in the lounge bar of a dingy local pub, with a few

small SDP posters, stuck to a board with drawing pins, forming the

backdrop for the cameras.

A small group of half-interested journalists listened to the doctor

pronounce yet again on the need for proportional representation and for

deals and pacts with other parties. He talked of his own future -- ''I

have to decide whether I wish to take part in this insanity'' -- and the

next day was musing once more about whether he should quit.

When the Bootle result came it was a sad humiliation which seemed a

million miles away from the heady days of 1981 when the Gang of Four --

David Owen, Roy Jenkins, Bill Rodgers and Shirley Williams -- formed the

party which was going to break the mould and change the face of British

politics. A million miles, too, from the stunning by-election victories

at Crosby, Hillhead and Greenwich.

The beginning of the end for the SDP can probably be traced back to

the party conference season of 1986 when the Liberals, meeting in

Eastbourne, dealt a severe blow to the Alliance formed between the two

parties by steadfastly refusing to abandon a non-nuclear defence policy.

The then Liberal leader, Mr David Steel, flew to London for a crisis

meeting with Dr Owen, and while they were eventually able to cobble

together a form of words which took them through the 1987 election, the

relationship between the two men, and the two parties, was never quite

the same again.

The election brought its own problems, with Owen and Steel being

ridiculed as Tweedledum and Tweedledee because of their less than

impressive joint television appearances, and a result for the Alliance

which fell well short of their hopes and expectations.

A few days after the election, David Steel proposed a full merger of

the two parties, provoking a bitter squabble within the SDP between Owen

and his supporters, who wanted to carry on as an independent force, and

the majority of the party who backed the merger.

Matters really came to a head at the 1987 SDP conference in

Portsmouth, with Owen making an impassioned plea to the party to keep

its nerve, but finding himself all but ignored by the membership as they

moved towards the creation of the Social and Liberal Democrats. Owen

says he wept in his hotel room.

The man would probably concede himself that his greatest failing is

his unwillingness to compromise, and it was in evidence yet again when

he decided he wanted nothing to do with merger and would carry on

leading his small band of the faithful, which included MPs John

Cartwright and Rosie Barnes.

From then on, however, it was downhill all the way, with Paddy

Ashdown's Liberal Democrats determined to smash the Owenites and firmly

establish themselves in the centre ground. The SDP, with dwindling

membership and kept afloat only by the generosity of David Sainsbury,

found itself being pushed more and more to the sidelines and being

looked upon as an irrelevance. Bootle provided the last straw.

It is sad that Mr Cartwright and Mrs Barnes will almost certainly end

up as casualties of what has turned out to be an unhappy political

adventure. Mrs Barnes is tougher than she looks and has built up a good

reputation as a constituency MP. Mr Cartwright, arguably more than Dr

Owen, embodies what the SDP stands for.

As for the doctor himself, he may soldier on as an MP or he may decide

to give up politics altogether and turn his considerable talents to

something else. His present position is hardly the pinnacle of the

glittering political career which was predicted by some for the man who

was Foreign Secretary at the age of 39.

In the book Personally Speaking, in which Owen was interviewed at

length about his life and beliefs by Mr Kenneth Harris, he gives a

defiant insight into what makes him tick.

He says: ''At heart we are a thoughtful nation, a nation that will

respond to thoughtful leadership. Eventually Britain will both prosper

and be united again. I believe this will happen under a coalition

government which introduces proportional representation as a way of

deepening our democracy and preventing us from debilitating ourselves on

an ideological seesaw.

''For my part, I was a Social Democrat when I joined the party Hugh

Gaitskell led in 1959, I was a Social Democrat when I helped found the

SDP in 1981 and I intend to remain a Social Democrat.''

In his heart he probably will, but as former SDP MP, now Liberal

Democrat, Mr Charles Kennedy said last week: ''The game is up, the

party's over.''