Launch of The SDP  1981

Oil on board   40 x 50 inches

Collection Dewe Rogerson

In 1981 Roy Jenkins, Dr David Owen, Bill Rodgers, and Shirley Williams, "The Gang of Four", broke away from the Labour Party to form the Socialist Democrat Party.  The SDP was the first new major UK political party in a hundred years and John hastened back from Normandy, France to capture the historic moment.  He was noticed by the national press, though in The Daily Telegraph's Peterborough column he suffered the fate of those with unusual surnames.