Dick Taverne

Who is Dick Taverne?

Dick Taverne, Baron Taverne, QC is an English politician, who is one of the small number of members of the British House of Commons elected since the Second World War who was not the candidate of a major political party.

In the 1970s, as a Labour Member of Parliament, he was dissatisfied with the party's political direction, so he left Labour and resigned his seat, forcing a by-election which he won.

Taverne's 1973 victory in Lincoln was short-lived; Labour regained the seat at the October 1974 general election. However, his success opened the possibility of a realignment on the left of British politics, which took shape in 1981 as the Social Democratic Party, which Taverne joined, joining the Liberal Democrats when the party merged with the Liberal Party.