THE Social Democratic Party will be a familiar name to voters who remember the 1980s.

Established by break-away MPs Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Bill Rodgers and Shirley Williams in 1981 after the party committed to unilateral nuclear disarmament and withdrawal from the ECC – the precursor to the EU – the party won 12 seats in an alliance with the Liberals in 1981.

By the end of the 1980s, the two parties had merged to form the Liberal Democrats. But that was not the end for the SDP, which reformed immediately after the merge – and again in 1990, after the second iteration was dissolved after a by-election in Bootle, Merseyside, where the party’s candidate received fewer votes than the Official Monster Raving Loony Party.

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The third version of the party has proved more stable. It has been around since 1990 and is standing in 122 constituencies in next month's election.

Among those is Hexham in Northumberland, where party leader and Corbridge Parish Council chairman William Clouston is hoping for an upset. He describes his party to the left of Labour on economic issues and to the right of the Tory Party on social and cultural issues.

Mr Clouston himself was a member of the original party throughout the 1980s. He later served as a Conservative councillor on Tynedale District council, before rejoining the SDP and being elected leader in 2018.

Mr Clouston is benefiting from an electoral pact with Reform UK, which has seen the two parties step aside in six seats apiece, while there is also a collaboration between the two in South Yorkshire.

Explaining the deal, Mr Clouston told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “We did a pact with Richard Tice two years ago. It’s a small pact, we’re not standing in six seats each and we’re collaborating in South Yorkshire.

“That’s the reason there is no Reform candidate standing in Hexham. I hope some Reform supporters will be persuaded to vote for me. I made it clear to Richard that our economics were different, and our economics were non-negotiable. We don’t approve of Thatcherite economics.

“Nigel’s (Farage) has a different vision to mine, but I want the political system to change. If he breaks the duopoly of the two main parties, that’s a good thing.”

Asked to explain his party’s vision for the country, Mr Clouston continued: “In the North and the Midlands, we have closed the factories and that is catastrophic.

“We need to get our industrial output up to 15 per cent of GDP – it will take a long time and we have to pick a Government that wants to do it. Mass immigration is completely out of control, I don’t think that’s in our interest.

“We also have a housing crisis in our country – the state needs to get back to building houses.”

Those supportive of immigration will point to the fact that Britain has an ageing population and that there is a need for more younger workers to pay the taxes needed to afford the likes of pensions and higher NHS bills.

Asked to respond to this, Mr Clouston said: “It’s not convincing at all when you have got five and a half million people on out-of-work benefits. People have to be helped back into work through the health system.

“A lot of young people are in this situation. We can’t take a whole population and just throw them on the scrapheap.

“I want wages up, I don’t want wages suppressed by mass immigration. It shouldn’t be controversial to say I want British workers to be paid fairly.”

Mr Clouston felt the party had changed little since the original iteration, adding he was still in touch with founder David Owen. However, he did concede that the party’s stance on Europe had changed – describing himself the party as “left wing Brexiters”.

He added: “The Tory Party never had a policy of supporting Brexit. I think the Tories have made a complete hash of it.

“You had to have a state that was prepared to keep Port Talbot open and produce a proper industrial strategy. The Tories haven’t done that.

“Boris Johnson was unfit to be Prime Minister. The Tory Party is toast and I have no sympathy for them, they need to be taught a lesson.”

The other candidates for the Hexham constituency are Joe Morris of Labour, Guy Opperman of the Conservatives, Nick Cott of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Morphet of the Green Party and Independent candidate Chris Whaley.