Membership of the Manifesto Group included John Smith, Denis Healey, George Robertson, Roy Hattersley, Gerald Kaufman and Jack Cunningham.
It also included Brian Walden, David Marquand, John Horam, Ian Wrigglesworth, the then Father of the House George Strauss, the former Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart, Ben Ford,[2] Giles Radice and Phillip Whitehead.
Mabon ensured the electoral success of Manifesto members to senior positions in the Labour Party, such as the Cabinet and NEC.
George Robertson, who later became Secretary of State for Defence under Prime Minister Tony Blair, said that Manifesto under Dickson Mabon organised elections better than the Tribune Group had ever managed to.
The small majority of moderate Denis Healey over Tony Benn in the Deputy Leadership Contest of September 1981, and the party votes for unilateral nuclear disarmament and withdrawal from the EEC, solidified their decision, and many left to form the Social Democratic Party.