The Lord Owen | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Foreign Secretary | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| In office 21 February 1977 – 4 May 1979 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Prime Minister | James Callaghan | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Preceded by | Anthony Crosland | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Succeeded by | The Lord Carrington | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Born | David Anthony Llewellyn Owen (1938-07-02)2 July 1938 (age 87) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Party | Independent (1990–present) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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David Anthony Llewellyn Owen, Baron Owen,CH, PC, FRCP (born 2 July 1938)[1] is a British politician and physician who served asForeign Secretary as aLabour Party MP underJames Callaghan from 1977 to 1979, and later led theSocial Democratic Party (SDP). He was aMember of Parliament for 26 years, from 1966 to 1992.
Owen served as BritishForeign Secretary from 1977 to 1979, at the age of 38 the youngest person in over forty years to hold the post. In 1981, Owen was one of the "Gang of Four" who left the Labour Party to found the Social Democratic Party. He was the only member of the Gang of Four who did not join theLiberal Democrats, which was founded when the SDP merged with theLiberal Party. Owen led the Social Democratic Party from 1983 to 1987, and thecontinuing SDP from 1988 to 1990. Appointed as alife peer in 1992, he sat in theHouse of Lords as acrossbencher until March 2014, and sat as an "independent social democrat" until his retirement in 2024.[2]
In the course of his career, Owen has held, and resigned from, a number of senior posts. He first quit as Labour's spokesman on defence in 1972 in protest at the Labour leader and former prime ministerHarold Wilson's attitude to theEuropean Economic Community; he left the LabourShadow cabinet over the same issue later; and overunilateral disarmament in November 1980 whenMichael Foot became Labour leader. He resigned from the Labour Party when it rejectedone member, one vote in February 1981 and later 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 theLiberal Party.
Owen was born in 1938 toWelsh parents inPlympton, near the city ofPlymouth, inDevon, England.[3] He also has Swiss and Irish ancestry.[3] He described Plymouth as, "a Cromwellian city, surrounded by royalists."[4] After schooling atMount House School, Tavistock, andBradfield College, Berkshire,[5] he was admitted toSidney Sussex College, Cambridge, in 1956 to read Medicine, and obtained alower second; he was made an honorary fellow of the college in 1977. He began clinical training atSt Thomas's Hospital in October 1959.
Owen was deeply affected by theSuez Crisis of 1956, whenAnthony Eden's Conservative government launched a military operation to retrieve the Suez Canal afterNasser's decision to nationalise it. At the time, aged 18, he was working in a labouring job before going toCambridge. Owen later toldKenneth Harris:
[T]here wasGaitskell ... criticizing Eden, and here were these men working alongside me, who should have been his natural supporters, furious with him. TheDaily Mirror backed Gaitskell, but these men were tearing up theirDaily Mirrors every day. ... My working mates were solidly in favour of Eden. It was not only that they taught me how people like them think; they also opened my eyes to how I should think myself. From then on I never identified with the liberal – with a small 'l' – establishment. Through that experience I became suspicious of a kind of automatic sogginess which you come across in many aspects of British life. ... The rather defeatist, even traitorous attitude reflected in the pre-warApostles at Cambridge. I suppose it underlay the appeasement years. Its modern equivalent is a resigned attitude to Britain's continuous post-war economic decline.[6][7]
In 1960, Owen joined theVauxhall branch of theLabour Party and theFabian Society. He qualified as a doctor in 1962 and began work at St Thomas's Hospital. In 1964, he contested theTorrington seat as the Labour candidate against theConservative Party incumbent, losing in what was a traditional Conservative-Liberalmarginal. He wasneurology and psychiatricregistrar at St Thomas's Hospital for two years, as assistant toWilliam Sargant, then Research Fellow on the Medical Unit doing research into Parkinsonian trauma and neuropharmacology.
At the nextgeneral election in 1966, Owen returned to his home town and was elected Labour Member of Parliament (MP) for thePlymouth Suttonconstituency. Aged 27, he was one of the youngest MPs in Parliament. In theFebruary 1974 general election Owen became Labour MP for the adjacentPlymouth Devonport constituency, winning it from the Conservative incumbentDameJoan Vickers by a slim margin (437 votes). He managed to hold on to it in the1979 general election, again by a narrow margin (1001 votes). From 1981, however, his involvement with the SDP meant he developed a large personal following in the constituency and thereafter he was re-elected as an SDP candidate with safe margins. He remained as MP for Plymouth Devonport until his elevation to apeerage in 1992.
From 1968 to 1970, Owen served asParliamentary Under Secretary of State for theNavy inHarold Wilson's first government. After Labour's defeat in the1970 general election, he became the party's Junior Defence Spokesman until 1972 when he resigned withRoy Jenkins over Labour's opposition to the European Community. On Labour's return to government in March 1974, he became Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health before being promoted to Minister of State forHealth in July 1974.
As Minister of State for Health, Owen encouraged Britain to become "self-sufficient" in blood products such asFactor VIII, a recommendation also promoted by the World Health Organisation.[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.[9][10][11] David Owen has been outspoken that his policy of "Self-Sufficiency" was not put into place (although he was, himself, Minister of Health)[12] and gave rise to theTainted Blood Scandal which saw 5,000 British Haemophiliacs infected with Hepatitis C, 1,200 of those were also infected with HIV.[13] It was later described in theHouse of Lords as "the worst treatment disaster in the history of the National Health Service".[14]
In September 1976, Owen was appointed by the new prime minister of five months,James Callaghan, as a Minister of State at theForeign Office, and was consequently admitted to thePrivy Council. Five months later, however, theForeign Secretary,Anthony Crosland, died suddenly and Owen was appointed his successor. Aged 38, he became the youngest Foreign Secretary sinceAnthony Eden in 1935.
In 1977, Owen was condemned by Black civil rights leaderBilly Strachan for refusing to prevent the hanging of two Black Bermudians for murder in the British colony.[15] As Foreign Secretary, Owen was identified with the Anglo-American plan forRhodesia, which formed the basis for theLancaster House Agreement, negotiated by his Tory successor,Lord Carrington, in December 1979. The Contact Group sponsoredUN Resolution 435 in 1978 on which Namibia moved to independence twelve years later. He wrote a book entitledHuman Rights and championed that cause in Africa and in the Soviet Union. He later admitted to at one stage contemplating the assassination ofIdi Amin while Foreign Secretary but settled instead on backingPresident Nyerere ofTanzania with money for arms purchases for his attack onUganda which led to the exile of Amin toSaudi Arabia.[16]
Shortly after Labour's defeat in the1979 general election and following theelection of a new Shadow Cabinet Callaghan moved Owen from the position ofShadow Foreign Secretary toShadow Energy Secretary, a move which was reported as being a demotion.[17]
Eighteen months after Labour lost power, the staunchly left-wing politicianMichael Foot waselected party leader, despite vocal opposition from Labour Party moderates (including Owen), sparking a crisis over the party's future.
Michael Foot's election as Labour party leader indicated that the party was likely to become more left-wing, and in 1980 committed itself to withdrawing from the EEC without even a referendum (as Labour had carried out in 1975). Labour also endorsed unilateral nuclear disarmament and introduced an electoral college for leadership elections, with 40% of the college going to a block vote of the trade unions.
Early in 1981, Owen and three other senior moderate Labour politicians –Roy Jenkins,Bill Rodgers andShirley Williams – announced their intention to break away from the Labour Party to form a "Council for Social Democracy". The announcement became known as theLimehouse Declaration and the four as the "Gang of Four". The council they formed became theSocial Democratic Party (SDP), with a collective leadership.[18] Although Owen was one of the founding members of the party, he was not always enthusiastic about creating aschism on the centre-left, saying to theGlasgow Herald in January 1981 that he felt "haunted by the possibility that, if the Labour Party splits, the centre left will never again form the Government in Britain".[19]
Twenty-eight other Labour MPs and one Conservative MP (Christopher Brocklebank-Fowler) joined the new party. In late 1981, the SDP formed theSDP–Liberal Alliance with theLiberal Party to strengthen both parties' chances in the UK's "first past the post" electoral system. The alliance performed so well that for much of the early part of 1982, it appeared that it would become a centre-left coalition government at the next election. In 1982, uneasy about the Alliance, Owen challenged Jenkins for the leadership of the SDP, but was defeated by 26,256 votes to 20,864. In the following year'sgeneral election, the Alliance gained 25% of the vote, only slightly behind the Labour Party, but because of thefirst-past-the-post voting system, it won only 23 out of 650 seats.[20] Although elected, Jenkins resigned the SDP leadership and Owen succeeded to it without a contest among the six remaining SDP MPs.
In 1982, during theFalklands War, Owen spoke at theBilderberg meeting advocating sanctions against Argentina.[21] Ironically, the success of the war ended any hope that SDP might have had of winning the 1983 election. The Tories were proving unpopular largely due to high unemployment and theearly 1980s recession. However, Britain's success in the conflict sawMargaret 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.[22]
Owen is widely regarded as having been, at the very least, a competent party leader. He had high popularity ratings throughout his leadership as did the SDP–Liberal Alliance. Owen kept a high profile, so much so thatSpitting Image, the satirical puppet show, depicted the Liberal leaderDavid Steel popping up like a jack-in-the-box in Owen's pocket. He succeeded in keeping the party in the public eye and in maintaining its independence from the Liberals for the length of the 1983 Parliament. Moreover, under him, the SDP increased its representation from six to eight seats via the by-election victories ofMike Hancock, atPortsmouth South (1984), andRosie Barnes, atGreenwich (1987).
However, the progress of the SDP–Liberal Alliance as a whole was hampered, with policy splits between the two parties. The first was over theminers' strike of 1984–85, with Owen and most of the SDP favouring a fairly tough line but the Liberals preferring compromise and negotiation. After thekilling of David Wilkie for driving a miner to work, Owen called for all miners to return to work on the following Monday to show their "gut reaction" to the killing.[23] More significantly the Alliance had a dispute over the future of Britain's independent nuclear deterrent. Owen and the SDP favoured replacingPolaris withTrident as a matter of some importance, whereas most Liberals were either indifferent to the issue or committed disarmers. The SDP favoured a radicalsocial market economy, while the Liberals mostly favoured a more interventionist,corporate style approach. The cumulative effect of these divisions was to make the Alliance appear less credible as a potential government in the eyes of the electorate.
Moreover, Owen, unlike Jenkins, faced an increasingly moderate Labour Party underNeil Kinnock and a dynamic Conservative government. The1987 general election was as disappointing for the Alliance as the 1983 election and it lost one seat. Nevertheless, it won over 23% of the vote – at that time, the second-largest third-placed vote in British politics since 1929.
In 1987 immediately after the election, the Liberal leaderDavid Steel proposed a full merger of the Liberal and SDP parties and was supported for the SDP by Roy Jenkins, Shirley Williams and Bill Rodgers. Owen rejected this notion outright, on the grounds that he and other Social Democrats wished to remain faithful tosocial democracy as it was practised within Western Europe, and it was unlikely that any merged party would be able to do this, even if it was under his leadership. Nevertheless, the majority of the SDP membership supported the merger.
The Liberal Party and SDP merged to form the Social and Liberal Democrats (SLD) in March 1988, renamed theLiberal Democrats in October 1989.
At the request of two of the remaining SDP MPs,John Cartwright andRosie Barnes, Owen continued to lead a much smallercontinuing SDP, with three MPs in total. The party polled well at its first election, its candidate coming a close second in the 1989Richmond by-election, but thereafter a string of poor and ultimately disastrous by-election results followed, including coming behind theOfficial Monster Raving Loony Party in theBootle by-election of May 1990, prompting Owen to wind up the party in 1990. 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.[24]
Some branches, however, continued to function using theSDP name;Bridlington's was still extant in 2006.
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.[25]
After winding up the re-formed SDP, Owen announced his intention to stand down as an MP at the next general election. He then served the remainder of his term as an independent MP and after the1992 general election was made alife peer, nominated by then Conservative Prime Minister,John Major, with the title,Baron Owen,of the City ofPlymouth in theCounty of Devon.[26] inLetters Patent dated 30 June 1992. As a member of theHouse of Lords, he is called "Lord Owen" and he sat as acrossbencher until 2014 (see below). Owen was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters fromPlymouth University in 1992.
During the April 1992 election campaign, Owen writing inThe Mail on Sunday newspaper advised voters to vote Liberal Democrat where they had a chance of victory and to vote Conservative rather than letNeil Kinnock become prime minister. Owen maintained his long-standing position that he would never join theConservative Party, although the memoirs of at least three ofJohn Major's cabinet ministers refer to Major being quite keen to appoint Owen to his cabinet, but threats of resignation from within the Cabinet prevented him from doing so. When asked in a conversation withWoodrow Wyatt on 18 December 1988 whether she would have Owen in her government if approached by him,Margaret Thatcher replied: "Well, not straight away. I don't think I would do it straight away. He was very good on theNorthern Ireland terrorist business. He's wasting his life now. It's so tragic. He's got real ability and it ought to be used".[27] In another conversation with Wyatt on 4 June 1990 Thatcher said Owen's natural home was the Conservative Party.[28][29]
Owen was approached privately byTony Blair, then leader of the Opposition, in 1996 on whether he was ready to support New Labour. Lord Owen declined mainly because he disagreed with Blair's intention, as prime minister, to join the eurozone.[30] In 2019, Owen recounted that Blair implied that a “political future” awaited him if he rejoined Labour. Owen said he "was very tempted, but then [Blair] started to talk about the euro.” Owen concluded that Blair was “passionately committed” to taking Britain into the Euro; thus, Owen said no.[31]
In May 2005, he was approached two days before the general election by someone very close toTony Blair to endorse Labour. He declined, because though he did not want a Conservative government, he wanted the Liberal Democrats to do sufficiently well to ensure a greatly reduced Labour majority.[32] In September 2007, it was reported in the British press that Lord Owen had met the new prime ministerGordon Brown and afterwards had refused to rule out supporting Labour at the next general election.[33] It later emerged that he could have been part of the "government of all the talents" initiative advising on the NHS, but Owen declined. In October 2009 he wrote an article inThe Times predicting that the Conservatives, then well ahead in the opinion polls, were unlikely to win an outright majority. He helped create the web-based Charter 2010 to explain and promote the potential of ahung parliament. The website campaign was launched in January 2010 while the Conservatives still appeared on course to win outright. Within weeks the polls changed and the website became a major source of information about hung parliaments. In May 2010The Sunday Times called Owen "the prophet of the coalition".
During the2011 Alternative Vote referendum he signed a letter inThe Guardian stating that he opposed AV but would continue to campaign for proportional representation.[34]
In January 2011, Owen said that his "heart was with Labour" and that he looked forward to the time when he could vote Labour again. He added that what hampered him in the past was the way the Labour Party elects its leader and it was very necessary for the electoral college arrangement to be reformed and he refused to rule out joining the Labour Party in the future. He vigorously opposed the Health and Social Care Bill in 2011–12. In a pamphlet, "Fatally Flawed", he demonstrated that far from the internal market, which he had championed in the 1980s, the Bill introduced an external market and he worked closely with the Labour Front Bench in the House of Lords. In March 2014, it was revealed that Owen had donated over £7,500 to the Labour Party, following the Labour leaderEd Miliband's reforms of the party's links with trade unions. No longer eligible to sit as a crossbencher, Owen now sits in the House of Lords as an "Independent Social Democrat".[2] Owen later said he admired Miliband's "integrity" and "guts".[31]
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.[35]
However in March 2019, Owen said he would not support Labour, criticising Corbyn's leadership for its failure to "unequivocally" root outantisemitism in the Labour Party.[31] In October 2019, Owen warned that Labour would lose potentially 5 million Leave voters who supported them due to its stance for a second Brexit referendum, and said that Labour under Corbyn andJohn McDonnell reminded voters of "the Labour Party of the 1980s". He also criticised McDonnell's push to change Labour's policy to a second referendum stance.[36] In the subsequent December 2019 general election, true to Owen's warning, Labour lost 60 seats, including long time Labour seats in thered wall which supported leaving the EU.
Owen retired from the House of Lords on 13 August 2024.[37]
In August 1992, Owen was British Prime Minister John Major's choice to succeed Lord Carrington as the EU co-chairman of the Conference for theFormer Yugoslavia, along withCyrus Vance, the former US Secretary of State as the UN co-chairman.
Private Eye, the British satirical magazine, playfully alluded towards Owen's legendary tendency towards self-destruction. "It's a lost cause", says the bubble emanating from Major's mouth. "I'm your man", says the bubble from Owen's mouth. The Labour Shadow Foreign Minister,Jack Cunningham, greeted Major's appointment of Owen in the British House of Commons by saying that the Prime Minister's choice "was regarded as somewhat eccentric by [MPs] and myself – he [Owen] is known for many qualities, but not as a mediator. Indeed he has Balkanised a few political parties himself."[38]
Some believe David Owen comes across badly in Adam Le Bor's book,Milosevic: A Biography: "After he was appointed the European Community negotiator for the former Yugoslavia in 1992, Lord Owen and his wife Debbie cultivated a personal friendship with Milosevic and his wife Mira, flying in a helicopter to lunch with them in one of Tito's former palaces and offering publishing advice to Mira Milosevic". In August 1992, five months after the Bosnian war started, Owen said, "Now it is clear that Milosevic really wants peace".[39]
Owen became a joint author of theVance–Owen Peace Plan (VOPP), in January 1993, which made an effort to move away from the presumption of ethnic partition.[40] According to America's last ambassador to Yugoslavia, the Bosnian Government were ready to accept the VOPP, but unfortunately theClinton Administration delayed in its support, thus missing a chance to get it launched.[41] The VOPP was eventually agreed in Athens in May 1993 under intense pressure by all parties including Bosnian Serb leaderRadovan Karadžić but then rejected later by the Bosnian-Serb Assembly meeting in Pale, after Karadžić insisted that the Assembly had the right to ratify the agreement. After Vance's withdrawal, Owen andThorvald Stoltenberg brokered the EU Action Plan of December 1993. They both helped the Contact Group of the US/UK/France/Germany and Russia to present its plan in the summer of 1994.
In early 1994, theEuropean Parliament voted by 160 votes to 90, with 2 abstentions, for Owen's dismissal, but he was supported by all 15 EU Member State governments. There was a perception in America that Owen was "not fulfilling his function as an impartial negotiator".[42] Owen, however, was consistently supported by all 15 EU Member States and the German Presidency in July 1994 urged him to remain as did the French Presidency in January 1995. Owen was made aMember of the Order of the Companions of Honour for his services in the former Yugoslavia in 1994.[43]
In January 1995, Lord Owen wrote toFrançois Mitterrand asPresident of the European Union to say that he wished to step down before the end of the French presidency. At the end of May 1995, he was succeeded by the former Swedish Prime MinisterCarl Bildt. "Had I been younger, I would probably have resigned when the Americans ditched the Vance-Owen Peace Plan".[44]
Owen testified as a witness of the court in thetrial of Slobodan Milošević, the former president ofFR Yugoslavia.
Lord Owen has continued to speak out on issues of international affairs including on nuclear proliferation and constrained intervention. In 2011 he was the first politician to call for a "no-fly zone" over Libya. In an editorial on 27 February 2011 theSunday 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. His call for a no-fly-zone ... struck the right note".
As former Minister of State for Health, Lord Owen has long been highly critical of previous governments for their role in and handling of thetainted blood scandal. Alleging maladministration in 2002[45] he sought to bring about an inquiry into the matter and was joined in his efforts by former Solicitor General for England and WalesLord Archer, former Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social ServicesLord Jenkin and others.[46]
In 2009 the culmination of these efforts, the privately funded and independent "Archer Report" in which Lord Owen was heavily involved, published its findings[47] but was thwarted because it had no power to compel witnesses as it was not a statutorypublic inquiry. Successive governments have refused to hold a public inquiry[48] into the matter and continue to withhold documentation on grounds of commercial interest.[49]
During his investigation into the matter he attempted to access his archived documents and files from his time as minister. At first he was told "they couldn't find them" and was later told they had all been destroyed;[50] the exact series of events that led to the destruction of these documents remains a mystery and continues to raise questions amongst MPs such asAlistair Burt.[51] 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 theCivil Service[52] and that this was done after prosecutions and jail sentences were brought against government officials in France.[53][54]
In September 2016 at a film-screening of the documentaryBad 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".[55]
In October 2016, the Civil Service Commission refused a request to investigate Lord Owen's destroyed documents[56] and separately the Department of Health advised that "the Department does not have any plans to make public the identity of junior officials involved in this matter".[57]
On 10 May 2017 he featured in an episode ofBBC Panorama called "Contaminated Blood: The Search for the Truth".[58] On 22 September 2020, Lord Owen gave evidence to the Infected Blood Inquiry in London. As part of his testimony he said: "We should have realised how dangerous it was to rely on blood coming in from abroad from people who were giving their blood for money".[59]
Owen had previously been a supporter of Britain's membership of theEuropean Union (saying that he was "not aEurosceptic" and a "convinced European"), but in recent years has opposed what he sees as the increasedfederalisation of the EU, citing examples such as a unified currency (theeuro), a unified defence force and a unified foreign policy as "structure[s] for aUnited States of Europe".[60]
As chairman of New Europe, he was the co-leader of the 'No to the Euro' campaign with Business for Sterling, which ceased when the UK Government declared in 2005 thatEuro membership was off the agenda following the defeat of the EU Constitution in referendums in France and the Netherlands.[citation needed]
He called for a referendum before Britain's ratification of theLisbon treaty, and expressed concerns about proposals for the creation of a 'European Rapid Reaction Force'. In February 2010, he wrote a pamphlet for theSocial Market Foundation thinktank entitled "EU Social Market and Social Policy". Owen supports the referendum requirements within theEuropean Union Act 2011.
Lord Owen continued to argue for engagement, criticising David Cameron's so-called 'veto' in December 2011 and arguing instead for a formal non-eurozone grouping with the right to join or leave the eurozone. In June 2012 Lord Owen publishedEurope Restructured, outlining a blueprint for restructuring the EU to allow for those countries that wish to be part of a more integrated eurozone to be facilitated while those who may only want to belong to a Single Market community are enabled to do so. He stated that a referendum on the UK's relationship with the EU was inevitable.
In February 2016, he announced that he was backingthe UK leaving the EU for the2016 referendum, arguing that "There are many positive aspects to leaving the EU. ... It could be the spark we need to re-energise our nation: a challenge and an opportunity."[61] He has supportedVote Leave and spoken at rallies against theTransatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which Owen stated would put theNHS in danger.[62] Owen also cited his support for Brexit due to his opposition to the concept of aUnited States of Europe and stated that the Eurozone was “broken”, condemning how the EU treated Greece during its debt crisis.[63]
Owen was interviewed in 2012 as part ofThe History of Parliament's oral history project.[64][65]
In February 2022 he signed a letter to theFinancial Times, alongsideRobert Skidelsky and others, aboutUkraine,[66] in which he said, "NATO governments have rightly said they are willing to address Russia’s security concerns, but then say in the same breath that Russia has no legitimate security concerns because NATO is a purely defensive alliance. Whether we like it or not, a NATO that now borders Russia and could in future border even more of Russia is seen by Russia as a security concern."[67]
Lord Owen was chairman of Yukos International UK BV, a division of the former Russian petroleum companyYukos, from 2002 to 2005.[citation needed] and a member of the board ofAbbott Laboratories, a US healthcare company, from 1996 to 2011. He was non-executive chairman of Europe Steel Ltd and consultant to Epion Holdings, owned byAlisher Usmanov until 2015. From 2009 to 2014 Lord Owen served on the board of Texas-based Hyperdynamics Corporation, an oil concern with an exclusive lease to an offshore area of theRepublic of Guinea in west Africa.[citation needed] He also served on the board ofCoats Viyella from 1994 to 2001.
Owen was the Chancellor of theUniversity of Liverpool, from 1996 to 2009. He has written extensively on the interaction between illness and politics, with a particular emphasis on the 'hubris syndrome', a condition affecting those at the pinnacle of power. The concept has been most fully developed in a co-authored paper inBrain.[68] The concept of hubris syndrome has been analysed by Professor Gerald Russell.[69] 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.[70]
He married Deborah Owen (née Schabert), an Americanliterary agent, in 1968. They have two sons and one daughter.[citation needed][71]
Owen was a main character inSteve Waters' 2017 playLimehouse, which premiered at theDonmar Warehouse; Owen was portrayed byTom Goodman-Hill, with Nathalie Armin playing his wife.[72]
Lord Owen, Secretary of State for Health in 1975, claimed the Department of Health failed to spend money allocated to stop the import of blood and blood products from abroad. Instead, the imports, particularly from the US, and including those tainted by HIV or hepatitis, continued – without his knowledge, he said.
During the Falklands war, the British government's request for international sanctions against Argentina fell on stony ground. But at a Bilderberg meeting in, I think, Denmark, David Owen stood up and gave the most fiery speech in favour of imposing them. Well, the speech changed a lot of minds. I'm sure that various foreign ministers went back to their respective countries and told their leaders what David Owen had said. And you know what? Sanctions were imposed
In September 2016, Lord Owen addressed an audience of campaigners and victims of the contaminated blood scandal, referring to a 'cover–up' and saying 'incriminating evidence' had been suppressed by the government. 'At every single stage, the truth has been there and people have evaded it, and that must carry a penalty.' Lord Owen was visibly distressed as he said: 'I have failed and I feel very miserable about it.'
{{cite web}}:|archive-url= requires|url= (help);Missing or empty|url= (help);Unknown parameter|The final report of the Inquiry was published on 20 May 2024, concluding that the scandal could have been largely avoided, patients were knowingly exposed to "unacceptable risks", and that doctors, the NHS and the government tried to cover up what happened by "hiding the truth".url= ignored (help)
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Member of Parliament forPlymouth Sutton 1966 –1974 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Member of Parliament forPlymouth Devonport 1974–1992 | Succeeded by |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Foreign Secretary 1977–1979 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Shadow Foreign Secretary 1979 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Shadow Secretary of State for Energy 1979–1980 | Succeeded by |
| Party political offices | ||
| New office | Deputy Leader of theSocial Democratic Party 1982–1983 | Position abolished |
| Preceded by | Leader of theSocial Democratic Party 1983–1987 | Succeeded by |
| New office | Leader of the'continuing' Social Democratic Party 1988–1990 | Position abolished |
| Orders of precedence in the United Kingdom | ||
| Preceded by | Gentlemen Baron Owen | Followed by |
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