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Baron Owen
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History
British politician who served as Foreign Secretary in the Labour government of James Callaghan from 1977 to 1979, becoming the youngest person appointed to the position since 1935.
He later led the Social Democratic Party (SDP).
He was a Member of Parliament for 26 years, from 1966 to 1992.
In 1981, Owen was one of the "Gang of Four" who left the Labour Party to found the Social Democratic Party. He lead the party from 1983 to 1987, and the continuing SDP from 1988 to 1990.
1992 appointed as a life peer, and sat in the House of Lords as a crossbencher until March 2014, and sat as an "independent social democrat" until his retirement in 2024.
In the course of his career, he has held, and resigned from, a number of senior posts:
1972 - resigned as Labour's spokesman on defence in protest at the Labour leader and former prime minister Harold Wilson's attitude to the European Communities
resigned from the Labour Shadow cabinet over the same issue later
1980 - resigned over unilateral disarmament
1981 - resigned from the Labour Party when it rejected one member one vote
resigned as Leader of the Social Democratic Party, which he had helped to found, after the party's rank-and-file membership voted to merge with the Liberal Party