However, three sitting SDP members of parliament — Owen, John Cartwright, and Rosie Barnes — did not join the SLD, opting instead to create a new 'continuing' Social Democratic Party.

A party conference at Paisley Town Hall in 1989 was held behind closed doors without the usual television coverage to conceal the rows of empty seats.

A shortage of members left the party exposed to electoral embarrassment if it stood candidates in areas where there was a lack of activists to bring out the vote.

[4] The SMF's first executive director, Lord Kilmarnock, was one of the post-merger SDP peers, while its chairman from 1991 was Robert Skidelsky, Professor of Political Economy at Warwick University, who was responsible for much of the 'continuing' SDP's economic policy, having written a green paper on the social market economy for the party's first conference in September 1988.

[4][5] Two other directors of the SMF, Rick Nye and Daniel Finkelstein, had both been employed as Owen's political advisers, as had Andrew Cooper, who was the Foundation's Head of Research in the mid-1990s.

When the SMF became more closely associated with the Major Government following the 'continuing' SDP's demise in 1990, Skidelsky, Finkelstein, Cooper and Nye all joined the Conservative Party.

[6] In the Richmond by-election of 1989, held in a constituency where it had an energetic branch and strong local support, the new SDP took second place behind Tory candidate William Hague, who retained the seat for his party.

On paper, Bootle looked like fertile territory for the SDP – the local Labour Party had faced major problems with the entryist Militant tendency some years before, subsequent boundary changes had incorporated parts of the Crosby constituency into Bootle – nine years after Shirley Williams had won the party its first seat there.

However, the party found itself unable to get any significant media attention, vital to compensate for a lack of activists at local level.

John Cartwright and Rosie Barnes stood under the "Independent Social Democrat" banner they had adopted in the House of Commons, defending their seats in Woolwich and Greenwich respectively.