David Owen (politician)

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David Owen (2011)
David Owen (1981)

David Anthony Llewellyn Owen, Baron Owen , CH , PC (born July 2, 1938 in Plympton , Devon ) is a British politician , former Foreign Secretary and one of the founders of the British Social Democratic Party ( SDP ), which was absorbed into the Liberal Democrats .

Life

The son of a doctor in Wales , Owen studied medicine at Sydney Sussex College Cambridge and Oxford . In 1960 he joined the Fabian Society and the Labor Party . In 1962 he became a hospital doctor in London ; he specialized in neurology and psychiatry through relevant research until 1964. In 1966 he won the general election in the constituency in Plymouth Devonport and was a member of the House of Commons .

Just two years later, in 1968, he was promoted to State Secretary for the Royal Navy in the British Ministry of Defense. After moving to the opposition, he was a member of the shadow cabinet as spokesman for his parliamentary group on defense issues. Owen resigned from the shadow cabinet because of Harold Wilson's vacillations on the European question. In 1974 he became Minister of State for Health Affairs, advocating the abolition of private hospital beds in public clinics. During the reign of James Callaghan , Owen moved to the State Department in 1976 under Anthony Crosland . After his death Callaghan appointed him in February 1977 as his successor as Secretary of State until 1979, when he had to relinquish his office to Peter Carington, 6th Baron Carrington , as a result of the election victory of the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher .

After disputes within the Labor Party over constitutional issues, David Owen resigned from the Labor Party together with Roy Jenkins and other right-wing members and founded the British Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1981, whose parliamentary group he became in the House of Commons. Just one year after the founding of the new party, which was followed extremely positively and closely in the media, he challenged Roy Jenkins as chairman, but lost at the party congress on July 2, 1982 with 44.3% of the vote. When only 24 seats were won by the alliance with the Liberal Party in the parliamentary elections in the following year due to the British majority suffrage, he ultimately replaced Jenkins as chairman. In the local council elections in May 1985, the alliance achieved certain successes, but failed in the long run due to the British electoral system. In 1988, part of the small SDP united with the traditional Liberal Party to form the Social Liberal Democratic Party (SLDP). With a downsized SDP that only had five MPs in the House of Commons, Owen pursued his project of a middle force between the two big ones until 1992. He made a firm commitment to the European Community and advocated a social market economy in terms of economic policy . In 1984 he published a book on this economic policy conception under the title: A future that will work at a time when Margaret Thatcher was able to celebrate her greatest successes through the weakness of the divided opposition. On defense policy, he stood behind the nuclear strategy of NATO . Since the dissolution of his party in 1992, he has been considered independent, but supported John Major in the 1992 election campaign and showed his willingness to join his cabinet. Major did not support these suggestions. Owen may have hoped for a job at the end of his career, but by the time Chris Patten was appointed Hong Kong's last Governor and UK Commissioner from his parliamentary seat in 1992 , the best jobs were already taken.

From 1992 to 1995 he was first EC and later EU special representative for the Balkans . During this time he worked with Cyrus Vance on the Vance-Owen Plan , which ventilated ethnic cantons in Bosnia to settle the civil war. Allegations that he was thereby supporting the genocide or ethnic cleansing led to his forced withdrawal.

In 1992 he was raised to a life peer as Baron Owen , of the City of Plymouth, which gave him a seat in the House of Lords , which he took on the Crossbencher side .

On August 17, 2003, shortly after Idi Amin's death , Lord Owen stated in a radio interview with BBC 4 that, as Foreign Minister, he had proposed an attempt to kill Amin in the cabinet in order to end his terror regime, which was, however, considered a heinous proposal by his cabinet colleagues Was rejected. Owen said, “ Amin's regime was the worst of all. It's a shame we allowed him to stay in power for so long. "

In 2016, on the part of those in favor of leaving the European Union , he supported the campaign for the referendum on the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union .

person

Owen was Britain's youngest Foreign Secretary for over 40 years. For most of his career, Owen was a controversial figure who aroused wide approval from a few political friends, but aroused disapproval from most of the others because of his arrogance.

He is married to the American literary agent Debbie Owen.

Works

  • The Politics of Defense (Jonathan Cape and Taplinger Pub. Co, 1972)
  • In Sickness and in Health: the Politics of Medicine (Quartet Books, 1976)
  • Face the Future (Jonathan Cape and Praeger, 1981)
  • Balkan Odyssey (Victor Gollancz, Harcourt Brace 1995)
  • The Hubris Syndrome: Bush, Blair and the Intoxication of Power (Politico's, 2007; updated edition 2012)
  • In Sickness and in Power: Illness in Heads of Government During the Last 100 Years (Methuen, 2008; revised edition 2011) and "In Sickness and In Power. Illness in Heads of Government, Military and business leaders since 1900" (Methuen, 2016 )
  • Time to Declare: Second Innings (Politico's, 2009) - revised and updated abridgement of Time to Declare and Balkan Odyssey
  • Nuclear Papers (Liverpool University Press, 2009)
  • Europe Restructured (Methuen, 2012)
  • The Health of the Nation. NHS in Peril (Methuen, 2014)
  • The Hidden Perspective: the Military Conversations 1906–1914 (Haus Publishing, 2014)
  • Cabinet's Finest Hour. The Hidden Agenda of May 1940 (Haus Publishing, 2016)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Owen, David
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Owen, David Anthony Llewellyn, Baron Owen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British politician, co-founder of the British Social Democratic Party, British Foreign Secretary, EU special envoy for the Balkans
DATE OF BIRTH July 2, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH Plympton , Devon