ABSTRACT
The early 1980s saw the testing of the prospects for an effective third force in British politics. The creation of the Social Democratic Party in March 1981 and the rapid establishment of the Alliance with the Liberals seemed to promise a credible alternative political grouping, one sufficiently popular to establish a sizeable bloc of seats in competition with the other parties or possibly even to displace one of them altogether, most likely the strife-torn Labour Party. The crucial test of these expectations was the series of critical by-elections during 1981–82 at Warrington, Croydon North-West, Crosby and Glasgow Hillhead. They were to be the crucible in which the most serious attempt to establish a new party since the War was to be forged. Out of them, it will be argued, the Alliance was able to establish itself as a credible third force, but one which, in spite of the often spectacular results obtained, indicated some of the elements which were to limit an Alliance breakthrough and prevent a radical reshaping of the contours of British politics. These elections, too, were to be raked over subsequently by protagonists in the controversy about the nature of the SDP-Liberal Alliance. Occurring as they did at the inception of a new party and when the relationship with the Liberal Party was still being determined, they were to be viewed as crucial elements in the battle for the identity and leadership of the new third force in British politics and to its fate.
