Word: social
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...show in which his image was beamed up to the satellite from a tiny studio in Des Moines, bounced back down to antennas at selected cable outlets, and distributed through coaxial TV cables to the homes of voters. As Dukakis talked about concerns ranging from health insurance to Social Security benefits, his show reached an estimated 1.5 million homes in Iowa and neighboring states. Total bill: $15,000, a fraction of what it would cost to contact that many people by mail or telephone...
...chorus girl, Livingstone worked as a lab technician before entering politics. He became a folk hero for many Laborites in 1981, when he was elected leader of the Greater London Council. Livingstone turned the council, responsible for such matters as public transit, garbage collection and social welfare projects, into the biggest-spending local government Britain had ever seen. He attracted headlines by doling out tax funds to every group imaginable, including a gay community center, a Welsh harp society, a graffiti workshop and an organization called Babies Against the Bomb. The council declared London a nuclear-free zone, earning plaudits...
After months of wrangling, the Social Democratic Party dismembered itself last week. At the University of Sheffield in central England, party delegates voted 273 to 28 to merge with the nearly twice as large Liberal Party. The two centrist groups had been partners under the Alliance banner since 1981, and began talking merger when their candidates won only 22 of 650 seats in last year's parliamentary elections. But while their formal marriage was intended to strengthen future showings, it sealed a bitter divorce between the Social Democrats and former Leader David Owen, who co-founded the party...
Emotions ran so high before the vote that Owen's backers refused to sleep in the same hotel as the promerger forces. Social Democratic President Shirley Williams angrily accused Owen, a former Labor Foreign Minister, of "acting with impetuosity at the moment of crisis" and warned that "all of us will be losers" if the proposed union did not pass. "Mergerites" tried to block a rally that Owen had called to launch his group, but they backed down after both sides assembled legal teams...
...vote delighted members of the Liberal Party, which approved the merger three weeks ago. Liberal Party Leader David Steel said the wide margin of approval "means that both parties can go forward together not just with confidence but with enthusiasm." Robert Maclennan, who succeeded Owen as head of the Social Democrats, declared that the newly formed party "has a great opportunity to take British politics out of the straitjacket of Conservative dominance...