ABSTRACT
The launch of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in Great Britain in 1981 was heralded by the claim that it was going to ‘break the mould’ of British politics (Bradley, 1981) and create a new central consensus which would end the adversary politics of the Conservative and Labour parties (Finer, 1975) and restore stability and prosperity to the British economic and social scene. The ‘success’ of that venture is best illustrated by the two landslide Conservative victories in the general elections of 1983 and 1987 when the SDP, in Alliance with the Liberal Party, won approximately a quarter of the votes at each contest but less than 5 per cent of the seats in the House of Commons. After the second of these elections, an attempt to merge the SDP and the Liberals resulted in a fragmentation of both, which will undoubtedly be to the benefit of the Conservative and Labour Parties (as opinion polls clearly illustrated in 1988 and 1989).
