David Marquand: A Political Assessment

Abstract The author draws on his own active role over five decades in the British Social Democratic and Labour parties to describe and analyse the part played in that history of his friend, the late David Marquand. The author considers Marquand's early experience as a Labour MP from the late 1960s until his disillusion with that party, his participation in founding the Social Democratic Party and his subsequent return to Labour. The wider context of British politics during that period and Marquand's own writings are used to illustrate the development of his politics.