Founded in 1989, the organisation was established by individuals close to
David Owen's 'continuing' Social Democratic Party, which had itself been formed the year beforehand by those members of the original
SDP who refused to accept that party's merger with the
Liberals. Owen had made much use of the term 'social market' (when describing the economic model he espoused) as an alternative to
Thatcherism, and upon the Foundation's establishment he was made one of its trustees. The Foundation's first executive director was the 'continuing' SDP peer
Lord Kilmarnock, and its chairman from 1991 was
Robert Skidelsky, Professor of Political Economy at
Warwick University, who was responsible for much of the Owenite SDP's economic policy, having written a
green paper on the social market economy for the party's first conference in September 1988. Following the demise of the 'continuing' SDP in 1990, the Foundation gravitated to the post-Thatcher
Conservative Party, and in press circles it was often cited as "
John Major's favourite thinktank". Skidelsky himself joined the Conservatives in 1992, shortly after being made a life peer by the government, while two directors, Rick Nye and
Daniel Finkelstein, both former SDP activists and political advisers to David Owen, later left the Foundation to work for the
Conservative Research Department. and SMF publishing a paper by Gordon Brown in 2004. In 2001, Lord Skidelsky was replaced as chair by
David, Lord Lipsey, who in the 1970s had been a special adviser to the Labour politician
Anthony Crosland. The Foundation was thus associated with some of the policies of New Labour, particularly issues of public service reform. In September 2010
Mary Ann Sieghart, the political and social affairs journalist, took over as chair. == Policy goals ==