Rodgers first entered the
House of Commons at
a by-election in 1962, representing
Stockton-on-Tees, and served in Labour governments under
Harold Wilson and
James Callaghan, becoming
Secretary of State for Transport in
Callaghan's cabinet in 1976. Within the Labour Party, he was known for being a highly effective organiser around centrist causes such as multilateral nuclear disarmament and Britain's membership of the
European Economic Community. He held the post until Labour's defeat in the
1979 general election. From 1979 to 1981 he was Shadow Defence Secretary. With Labour drifting to the left, Rodgers joined
Shirley Williams,
Roy Jenkins and
David Owen in forming the
Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1981. In September 1982, Rodgers stood to become the president of the SDP, but took only 19.4 per cent of the vote, finishing in a distant second place behind Williams. At the
1983 general election the
SDP–Liberal Alliance won many votes but few seats, and Rodgers lost his seat of
Stockton North (known as
Stockton-on-Tees before the boundary changes of 1983). He remained outside Parliament, unsuccessfully contesting
Milton Keynes for the SDP in the
1987 general election, until he was created a
life peer as
Baron Rodgers of Quarry Bank, of Kentish Town in the London Borough of Camden, on 12 February 1992. During that interval he was Director-General of the
Royal Institute of British Architects and also became Chairman of the
Advertising Standards Authority. in 2013 In 1987, Rodgers was chairman of the successful "Yes to Unity" campaign within the SDP in favour of merger with the
Liberal Party. He became the
Liberal Democrats' Lords spokesman on home affairs in 1994 and was
the party's leader in the Lords between 1997 and 2001. Rodgers's autobiography was titled
Fourth Among Equals, reflecting his position as the least prominent of the SDP's founders. He was interviewed in 2012 as part of
The History of Parliament's oral history project. Rodgers retired from the House of Lords on 12 December 2023. ==Personal life==