Alan Sked

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Alan Sked (2018)

Alan Sked (born August 22, 1947 in Glasgow ) is a British historian and EU-skeptical politician . He has been Professor Emeritus of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science since 2016 . From 1993 to 1997 he was founding chairman of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), from which he has emphatically distanced himself since the late 1990s because of its radicalization tendencies.

Life

academic career

Sked, from Scotland , attended Allan Glen's School in Glasgow. Subsequently, he studied history at the University of Glasgow (MA) and at Merton College of the University of Oxford , where he looked after by Alan JP Taylor , a DPhil acquired.

From 1972 he was a lecturer, senior lecturer, reader and professor at the Department of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He has been an emeritus since 2016. From 1981 to 1990 he was also the coordinator of the postgraduate master's program in European Studies there . Most recently in London he taught European, American and intellectual history. His most important research focus is also the history of the Habsburg monarchy . In addition to English, Sked speaks German, French and Hungarian.

His academic students include: a. William Mallinson , Oliver Bange and Tilman Remme .

Sked is the author of numerous books that have been translated into several languages. He has also published articles in anthologies and in specialist journals (articles, reviews, etc.) such as Diplomacy & Statecraft , European Review , Foreign Policy , History. The Journal of the Historical Society , Millennium. Journal of International Studies , Slavic Review , The National Interest , The Slavonic and East European Review , The Journal of Modern History , The International History Review , Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, and The English Historical Review . He advised u. a. the BBC for the documentary Abraham Lincoln: Saint or Sinner and is presently (2011).

Sked is also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in London.

Political activity

Liberal party

During his student days, Sked was a proponent of European integration . He was a member of the Liberal Party , for which he ran unsuccessfully (6.2 percent) in the British general election in 1970 in Paisley . He said he was also a supporter of the EEC membership referendum in the UK in 1975 . At the end of the 1980s, he began to change his political mindset.

Anti-Federalist League

Sked, meanwhile oriented towards neoliberalism , left the Liberal Party and in 1989 supported the founding of the Thatcher -near EU-skeptical think tank Bruges Group around Ralph Harris, Baron Harris of High Cross . After Thatcher's successor John Major (Conservative Party) had embarked on a more Europe-friendly course and Sked found no support at Bruges, he turned around in 1991.

He ran in the British general election in Bath in 1992 against Chris Patten (Conservative Party) for the barely noticed Anti-Federalist League , which he previously founded and which he positioned against the Maastricht Treaty . He got 0.2 percent of the vote; however, both candidates lost to Don Foster ( Liberal Democrats ). In two by-elections the following year, in Newbury (1.0 percent) and Christchurch (1.6 percent), he failed despite the support of Enoch Powell .

UK Independence Party

In 1993 the successor organization UK Independence Party (UKIP) emerged from the LSE . From 1993 to 1997 he was its chairman. Above all, it advocated the United Kingdom's exit from the EU , but saw itself as a “democratic” party and deliberately separated itself from the right-wing fringes under his leadership. In 1995 he asked for financial support from Sir James Goldsmith ( Referendum Party ), which was not crowned with success. In the 1997 general election , Sked ran in Romsey , where he only got 3.5 percent. Resistance against him then formed around Nigel Farage , David Lott and Michael Holmes . Sked's leadership style was up for grabs and his intellectual demeanor was criticized; he was eventually ousted from the party.

Sked distanced himself several times from his old party from the end of the 1990s. For him, UKIP had been infiltrated by right-wing extremists , one could only warn against it. In 2015, in a guest post for The Atlantic , he accused the Farage party of obtaining financial advantages in the European Parliament on the one hand, but being unconstructive on the other. He himself remembers the party as “moderate”, but now it is also open to xenophobia and Islamophobia , homophobia and racism . Sked revealed again, as in the course of the European elections in the United Kingdom in 2014 , that he had created a " Frankenstein monster".

New Deal

In 2013 he founded the now disbanded, more left-wing EU-skeptical New Deal party , which did not run for political office with any candidate during its existence.

Fonts (selection)

  • with Chris Cook (Ed.): Crisis and Controversy, Essays in Honor of AJP Taylor . Palgrave Macmillan, London 1976, ISBN 0-333-18635-4 .
  • (Ed.): Europe's Balance of Power, 1815–1848 . Barnes & Noble, New York 1979, ISBN 0-06-496323-3 .
  • The survival of the Habsburg Empire: Radetzky, the imperial army, and the class war, 1848 . Longman, London et al. a. 1979, ISBN 0-582-50711-1 .
  • with Chris Cook: Post-War Britain: A Political History . Penguin, London 1979, ISBN 0-14-022204-9 ( Post-War Britain: A Political History: A Political History, 1945–1992 (= Penguin History ). 4th edition, Penguin, London 1993, ISBN 0-14- 017912-7 )
  • Britain's Decline: Problems and Perspectives (= Historical Association Studies ). Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, 1987, ISBN 0-631-15084-6 .
  • The Decline and Fall of the Habsburg Empire, 1815-1918 . Longman, London et al. a. 1989, ISBN 0-582-02530-3 . (2nd edition, Routledge, London 2001, ISBN 0-582-35666-0 )
  • An Intelligent Person's Guide to Post-War Britain (= Intelligent Persons Guide Series ). Gerald Duckworth & Co, London 1997, ISBN 0-7156-2749-X .
  • Metternich and Austria. An evaluation . Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2008, ISBN 978-1-4039-9114-0 .
  • Field Marshal Radetzky, Imperial Victor and Military Genius . IB Tauris, London a. a. 2011, ISBN 978-1-84885-677-6 .

literature

  • Fred Halliday : Alan Sked and International Relations: A Note . In: Millennium: Journal of International Studies 16 (1987) 2, pp. 263-264.
  • Philip Plickert : The father of Brexit looks at his work . FAZ of January 29, 2020, page N4.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Kit Holden: Founder of the Ukip party: Alan Sked, the inventor of Brexit , article on tagesspiegel.de from August 22, 2018
  2. ↑ Nick Cohen: No truth behind Veritas . theguardian.com , February 6, 2005.
  3. ↑ Ukip founder Alan Sked: 'The party has become a Frankenstein's monster' . theguardian.com , May 26, 2014.
  4. ^ Alan Sked: Confessions of a British Politician: I Created a Monster . theatlantic.com , May 6, 2015.
  5. ↑ Shiv Malik: Ukip founder creates new leftwing anti-EU party . theguardian.com , September 8, 2013.
personal data
SURNAME Sked, Alan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British historian and EU-skeptical politician
DATE OF BIRTH August 22, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH Glasgow