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Robert Maclennan: Last leader of the SDP who oversaw transition to Liberal Democrats

A one-time Labour MP and minister, Maclennan campaigned for the creation of the Scottish parliament and advocated constitutional reform

Marcus Williamson
Wednesday 05 February 2020 17:18 GMT
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Maclennan make his first speech as SDP leader in 1987
Maclennan make his first speech as SDP leader in 1987

Robert Maclennan, who has died aged 83, was the last leader of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), the short-lived centrist party that emerged from the political turmoil of the early Eighties only to merge with the Liberal Democrats just a few years later.

Maclennan was born in 1936 to Isobel, a doctor, and Sir Hector Maclennan, an obstetrician and gynaecologist. He was educated at Glasgow Academy and Balliol College, Oxford, where he read history and law. Further study took him to Trinity College, Cambridge and Columbia University, New York. He was called to the bar in 1962, practising as an international lawyer in London.

He began his long career in national politics in 1966, standing for the Labour Party in Caithness and Sutherland and taking the seat from the Liberals with a slim 64-vote majority. A popular MP, Maclennan was re-elected to the constituency, now known as Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, eight times.

He encouraged the development of the arts, was a keen advocate for atomic power and strongly supported the controversial reprocessing of nuclear materials at the Dounreay plant, the most important employer in his constituency.

As an advocate of devolution from early in his career, he campaigned successfully for the creation of the Scottish parliament and for wider constitutional reform. By 1974 he had become a minister at the Department of Prices and Consumer Protection, having responsibility for competition policy. In this role, he helped pilot the Consumer Credit Act (1975) through parliament.

The SDP was founded in 1981 by the so-called Gang of Four – Shirley Williams, Roy Jenkins, David Owen and Bill Rodgers. Maclennan, one of 28 MPs to leave Labour at the time, joined the new party on its launch, rejecting what he and others saw as the hard-left drift of his former party. A test of his move to the new party came at the general election two years later, when he was re-elected, doubling his majority, as many of his other colleagues lost their seats.

For the general election of June 1987, the SDP made an alliance with the Liberals, with the two presenting themselves to the electorate as one party. However, the result was a major disappointment, resulting in only 22 seats and triggering a period of reflection. David Steel called for a merger of the two parties, a proposal supported by the grassroots members but opposed by David Owen, who resigned as leader.

In the absence of other suitably senior candidates, Maclennan was elected the third leader of the SDP in August 1987. In this role, he played a major part in steering the merger with the Liberal Party over the months that followed. Although Maclennan, like Owen, had at first opposed the merger, he felt duty-bound to implement the wishes of the membership of both parties, completing the process in March 1988. The SDP experiment was over, and the modern Liberal Democrats party was born.

Reflecting on the demise of the SDP in an article for The Independent in 1995, the political scientist Anthony King wrote: “The great merger row was hugely entertaining (seen from the outside) or deeply dispiriting (seen from the inside). But, in fact, it had little to do with the SDP’s fate. The truth is that the SDP had failed long before it died. And no one killed it. It was destroyed by its environment.”

Following a ballot of the party’s membership, Maclennan was elected president of the Liberal Democrats in 1994, serving in the role for the next four years. He retired as an MP in 2001 and was elevated to the Lords, as Lord Maclennan of Rogart, remaining the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for Scotland and for the Cabinet Office until 2015.

He is survived by his wife Helen Noyes (nee Cutter), two children and one stepson.

Robert Maclennan, politican, born 26 June 1936, died 17 January 2020

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