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Michael James Meadowcroft (born March 6, 1942) is a politician and political affairs consultant in the United Kingdom. March 6 is the 65th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (66th in Leap years). ...
This article is about the year. ...
Meadowcroft was a Liberal Party Member of Parliament for Leeds West from 1983 to 1987, and founder of the "continuing" Liberal Party in 1989 frollowing the party's merger with the Social Democratic Party to form the Social & Liberal Democratic Party. The Liberal Party was one of the two major British political parties from the early 19th century until the 1920s, and a third party of varying strength and importance up to 1988, when it merged with the Social Democratic Party (the SDP) to form a new party which would become...
A Member of Parliament, or MP, is a representative elected by the voters of an electoral district to a parliament; in the Westminster system, specifically to the lower house. ...
Leeds West is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. ...
The Liberal Party is a minor United Kingdom political party. ...
The Social Democratic Party (SDP) was a United Kingdom political party that existed as a national party between 1981 and 1990. ...
The Liberal Democrats, often shortened to Lib Dems, are a liberal political party based in the United Kingdom. ...
Meadowcroft grew up in Southport and was educated at King George V School. In 1958, he left school to work as a bank clerk, and joined the Liberal Party. He became Chairman of the Merseyside Region of the National League of Young Liberals in 1961.
He is a traditional jazz clarinettist and saxophonist, and for some years led his own "Granny Lee’s All-Stars" troupe. He has also been a director of the Leeds Grand Theatre and Opera House. He married Elizabeth Bee in 1987, and has a son and daughter from his dissolved first marriage.
Political career
Liberal Party, 1967-1983 He joined the Liberal Party’s full-time staff in 1962 as a local government officer. In August 1967, he became the party’s full-time regional officer in Yorkshire. In 1968, he was elected to Leeds City Council, on which he served until 1983. He also served on West Yorkshire County Council in 1973–76 and 1981–83. Leeds is a city in the metropolitan borough of the City of Leeds in West Yorkshire in the north of England. ...
West Yorkshire is a metropolitan county in England, corresponding roughly to the core of the West Riding of the traditional county of Yorkshire. ...
In 1970, he was appointed assistant secretary of the Joseph Rowntree Social Services Trust. In this role, he had contact with African liberation movements, and travelled several times to central and southern Africa. He attended Bradford University beginning 1975, and was awarded an MPhil in 1978 for a thesis on the political history of Leeds from 1903–26. The University of Bradford is a university in Bradford, West Yorkshire in the United Kingdom. ...
He served as general secretary of the Bradford Metropolitan Council for Voluntary Service until 1983, and as chairman of the Liberal Assembly Committee from 1976–81. The Liberal Assembly was the annual party conference of the British Liberal Party before its termination in 1988 and has been adopted as the name for the continuity Liberal Party created as its replacement. ...
He was the party’s President-elect in 1987, but the merger prevented him taking office.
Meadowcroft wrote extensively on Liberal philosophy from his base in community politics, and became a critic of the party's leadership, whom some accused of seeing radical liberalism as an electoral liability.
He was profoundly suspicious of the proposed alliance with the Social Democratic Party in 1981, writing a sceptical pamphlet, "Social Democracy – Barrier or Bridge?", for the radical magazine Liberator. A radical Liberal magazine associated with but not connected to the UK Liberal Democrats. ...
Meadowcroft had fought Leeds West in both 1974 general elections, but stood down in 1979. He was readopted for 1983 and won the seat. He served as health spokesman for the Liberal Party in Parliament, and was a whip. He lost his seat in 1987, and later public blaming SDP leader David Owen’s flirtation with Thatcherism for his voters’ disaffection with the SDP-Liberal Alliance. The Right Honourable Dr. David Anthony Llewellyn Owen, Baron Owen of the City of Plymouth CH PC MD (born July 2, 1938) is a British politician and one of the founders of the British Social Democratic Party (SDP). ...
Thatcherism is the system of political thought attributed to the governments of Margaret Thatcher, British Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990. ...
The SDP-Liberal Alliance was an electoral alliance of the Social Democratic Party and the Liberal Party in the UK that ran from 1981 to 1988, when the bulk of the two parties merged to form the Social and Liberal Democrats, later referred to as simply the Liberal Democrats. ...
He was elected to the Liberal/SDP merger negotiating team, but was among the Liberal negotiators who walked out in January 1988 over what they were convinced were the deal’s unacceptable terms. At the Blackpool special assembly later that month, he led the campaign opposing the merger. He briefly stayed on to help Alan Beith’s unsuccessful campaign to become leader of the merged party. Alan Beith The Right Honourable Alan James Beith April 20, 1943) British politician, and the Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament for Berwick-upon-Tweed. ...
Re-founding of Liberal Party, 1983- In the early spring of 1989, he announced the refounding of the Liberal Party. The political and financial difficulties of the Social and Liberal Democrats led many to believe that the Liberal Party had good prospects. But his party needed parliamentary defections in order to attract wider support, and these did not materialise. The SLD’s adoption of the name "Liberal Democrats" in autumn 1989 encouraged most Liberals to remain in the party rather than leaving to join Meadowcroft’s party. Since then, it has held a few dozen council seats consistently, and fought enough general election seats to secure broadcasting time, but has only very rarely won enough votes to qualify for a refund of the candidate's deposit. Its annual assembly seldom exceeds a hundred attendees. The Liberal Party is a minor United Kingdom political party. ...
Meadowcroft is still President of the independent Liberal Party, but, spending most of his time abroad, is little involved in running it. He fought Leeds West for the Liberal Party in 1992, being narrowly beaten into fourth place by the Liberal Democrats, but has contested no subsequent elections.
Consulting career Meadowcroft was appointed a senior visiting fellow of the Policy Studies Institute in 1989, and became Chairman of the Electoral Reform Society. This coincided with the fall of the Iron Curtain and sudden demand for expertise in political campaigning and election organising in eastern Europe and the Third World. He set up ERS’ international consultancy and has since been on thirty-three missions in nineteen countries, assisting the transition to democracy, including Malawi, Palestine, Russia, Bosnia, Bulgaria and Cambodia. The Electoral Reform Society is a pressure group based in the UK which promotes electoral reform. ...
In the summer of 1989, the foreign ministers of Austria and Hungary, Alois Mock and Gyula Horn, ceremonially cut through the border defences separating their countries. ...
For the Jamaican reggae band, see Third World (band). ...
Publications - "Success in Local Government" (1971)
- "Liberals and a Popular Front" (1974)
- "Bluffer’s Guide to Politics" (1976)
- "Liberal Values for a New Decade" (1980)
- "Social Democracy – Barrier or Bridge?" (1981)
- "Liberalism and the Left" (1982)
- "Liberalism and the Right" (1983)
- "Liberalism Today and Tomorrow" (1989)
- "The Case for the Liberal Party" (1992)
- "Focus on Freedom" (1997)
References
External links - Michael Meadowcroft's personal website
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