David Anthony Llewellyn Owen, Baron Owen, CH, PC, FRCP (born 2 July 1938)[1] is a British politician and physician who served as Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs as a Labour Party MP under James Callaghan from 1977 to 1979, and later led the Social Democratic Party (SDP).

Owen later told Kenneth Harris: [T]here was Gaitskell ... criticizing Eden, and here were these men working alongside me, who should have been his natural supporters, furious with him.

In the February 1974 general election Owen became Labour MP for the adjacent Plymouth Devonport constituency, winning it from the Conservative incumbent Dame Joan Vickers by a slim margin (437 votes).

[8] This was principally due to the risk of Hepatitis infection from high-risk blood donors overseas who were often paid and from "skid-row" locations.

[15] As Foreign Secretary, Owen was identified with the Anglo-American plan for Rhodesia, which formed the basis for the Lancaster House Agreement, negotiated by his Tory successor, Lord Carrington, in December 1979.

However, Britain's success in the conflict saw Margaret Thatcher and her Tory government surge back to the top of the opinion polls, and her position was strengthened further by the end of the year as the recession died down.

Moreover, under him, the SDP increased its representation from six to eight seats via the by-election victories of Mike Hancock, at Portsmouth South (1984), and Rosie Barnes, at Greenwich (1987).

The first was over the miners' strike of 1984–85, with Owen and most of the SDP favouring a fairly tough line but the Liberals preferring compromise and negotiation.

Owen and the SDP favoured replacing Polaris with Trident as a matter of some importance, whereas most Liberals were either indifferent to the issue or committed disarmers.

Moreover, Owen, unlike Jenkins, faced an increasingly moderate Labour Party under Neil Kinnock and a dynamic Conservative government.

Owen blamed the SDP's demise on the reforms which had been taking place in the Labour Party since Kinnock's election as leader in 1983.

Lord Holme later blamed Owen for the Alliance's failure to make a breakthrough at the 1987 general election, believing that a merged party would have performed much better and possibly gained more votes and seats than Labour.

He then served the remainder of his term as an independent MP and after the 1992 general election was made a life peer, nominated by then Conservative Prime Minister, John Major, with the title, Baron Owen, of the City of Plymouth in the County of Devon.

When asked in a conversation with Woodrow Wyatt on 18 December 1988 whether she would have Owen in her government if approached by him, Margaret Thatcher replied: "Well, not straight away.

[31] In September 2007, it was reported in the British press that Lord Owen had met the new prime minister Gordon Brown and afterwards had refused to rule out supporting Labour at the next general election.

In October 2009 he wrote an article in The Times predicting that the Conservatives, then well ahead in the opinion polls, were unlikely to win an outright majority.

During the 2011 Alternative Vote referendum he signed a letter in The Guardian stating that he opposed AV but would continue to campaign for proportional representation.

[30] In the June 2017 general election, Owen made no political donation nationally although he was "pleasantly surprised that the manifesto was a lot better than expected", and praised Corbyn for showing "more flexibility in taking account of Labour MPs and party members’ views than ever Michael Foot did" in reference to the manifesto's commitments to NATO and nuclear weapons despite Corbyn's lifelong pacifism.

He did, however, make a personal donation to the Labour candidate in his former constituency of Plymouth Sutton & Devonport, Luke Pollard, who successfully won the seat.

[38] Owen became a joint author of the Vance–Owen Peace Plan (VOPP), in January 1993, which made an effort to move away from the presumption of ethnic partition.

[39] According to America's last ambassador to Yugoslavia, the Bosnian Government were ready to accept the VOPP, but unfortunately the Clinton Administration delayed in its support, thus missing a chance to get it launched.

In an editorial on 27 February 2011 the Sunday Times said, "It was a man who has not been in office for nearly 32 years – Lord Owen, the former foreign secretary – who has been the most eloquent British voice over Libya.

As former Minister of State for Health, Lord Owen has long been highly critical of previous governments for their role in and handling of the tainted blood scandal.

[45] In 2009 the culmination of these efforts, the privately funded and independent "Archer Report" in which Lord Owen was heavily involved, published its findings[46] but was thwarted because it had no power to compel witnesses as it was not a statutory public inquiry.

Successive governments have refused to hold a public inquiry[47] into the matter and continue to withhold documentation on grounds of commercial interest.

[50] Lord Owen has regularly told the media that he is not a conspiracy theorist but that he does suspect there has been a cover-up carried out by the Civil Service[51] and that this was done after prosecutions and jail sentences were brought against government officials in France.

[52][53] In September 2016 at a film-screening of the documentary Bad Blood: A Cautionary Tale, he dramatically ended a 15-minute speech on the subject proclaiming: "I have failed and I feel very miserable about it".

[citation needed] He called for a referendum before Britain's ratification of the Lisbon treaty, and expressed concerns about proposals for the creation of a 'European Rapid Reaction Force'.

"[60] He has supported Vote Leave and spoken at rallies against the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which Owen stated would put the NHS in danger.

[68] Lord Owen is chairman of the Trustees of the Daedalus Trust established to promote and provide funds for the interdisciplinary study of how 'the intoxication of power' in all walks of life can affect personality and decision making.