Michael Meadowcroft

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Michael James Meadowcroft (born March 6, 1942) is a politician and political affairs consultant in the United Kingdom. He was a Liberal Member of Parliament for Leeds West from 1983 to 1987, and founder of the "continuing" Liberal Party in 1989 following the party's merger with the Social Democratic Party to form the Social & Liberal Democratic Party.

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, Andrew, and a daughter, Ruth, from his dissolved first marriage.

1 Political career
- 1.1 Liberal Party, 1967-1988
- 1.2 Re-founding of Liberal Party, 1989-
2 Consulting career
3 Publications
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Political career

[edit] Liberal Party, 1967-1988

Meadowcroft 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.

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 the University of Bradford beginning 1975, and was awarded an MPhil in 1978 for a thesis on the political history of Leeds from 1903–26.

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.

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.

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 publicly blamed SDP leader David Owen's flirtation with Thatcherism for his voters' disaffection with the SDP-Liberal Alliance.

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.

[edit] Re-founding of Liberal Party, 1989-

In the early spring of 1989, Meadowcroft 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.

Meadowcroft ceased to be President of the independent Liberal Party in 2005, handing over to Cllr Steve Radford. Spending most of his time abroad, he had been able to spend less and less time involved in running the party. 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.

[edit] 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's 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.