Roy Jenkins

The Right Honourable Roy Harris Jenkins, Baron Jenkins of Hillhead OM PC (November 11, 1920 – January 5, 2003) was a British politician. Prominent as a Labour Member of Parliament and government minister in the 1960s and 1970s, he went on to be one of the four principal founders of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the early 1980s. He was also a distinguished writer, especially of biographies.

Early life

Born in Abersychan, Monmouthshire in south-eastern Wales, as an only child, Roy Jenkins was the son of a National Union of Mineworkers official, Arthur Jenkins, who was wrongly imprisoned during the 1926 General Strike for his supposed involvement in a riot, and later an MP, who was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Clement Attlee and briefly a minister in the 1945 government. His mother, Hattie Harris was the daughter of a local steelworks manager. Jenkins was educated at Abersychan County School, University College, Cardiff, and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he took First Class Honours in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE). University colleagues included Tony Crosland, Denis Healey, and Edward Heath. During World War II he served with the Royal Artillery and then at Bletchley Park. He married Jennifer Morris (later Dame Jennifer Jenkins) in 1945.

MP and Minister

Having previously failed to win in Solihull in 1945, he entered the British House of Commons in 1948 as the representative of Southwark Central and the "Baby of the House". Owing to constituency boundary changes, his was abolished in 1950, and he stood instead in Birmingham Stechford. He was elected in the 1950 UK general election and represented the constituency until 1977. Jenkins was principal sponsor, in 1959, of the bill which became the Obscene Publications Act, which was responsible for establishing the liable to "deprave and corrupt" criteria as a basis for a prosecution of suspect material and literary merit as a defence.

At first Minister of Aviation in the Wilson government elected in the 1964 general election, he was Home Secretary from 1965 to 1967, where he was responsible for the relaxation of the laws relating to divorce, abolition of theatre censorship and gave government support to David Steel's Private Member's Bill for the legalisation of abortion and Leo Abse's bill for the decriminalisation of homosexuality. Wilson, with his puritan background, was not especially sympathetic to these developments, however. Jenkins replied to public criticism by asserting that the so called permissive society was in reality the civilised society.

From 1967 to 1970 he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, replacing James Callaghan following the devaluation of the pound in November 1967. He quickly gained a reputation as a particularly tough Chancellor, although he was hesitant about increasing taxes and reducing expenditure. It is though, generally assumed that Labour's defeat in the 1970 general election was partly the consequence of one month's bad trade figures announced a few days before the election and his delivery of a fiscally neutral Budget shortly before the election.

Jenkins was elected deputy leader of the Labour Party in July 1970, but resigned in 1972 over the party's policy on favouring a referendum on British membership of the EEC; his position had been undermined the previous year by his decision to lead sixty-nine Labour MPs through the division lobby in support of the Heath's government's motion to take Britain in to the (then) EEC. This led to some former admirers, including Roy Hattersley, choosing to distance themselves from Jenkins. His lavish lifestyle - Wilson once described him as "more a socialite than a socialist" - had already alienated much of the Labour Party from him.

When Labour returned to power he was made Home Secretary again, serving from 1974 to 1976. In this period he undermined his previous liberal credentials to some extent by pushing through the controversial Prevention of Terrorism Act, which, among other things, extended the length of time suspects could be held in custody and instituted exclusion orders.

President of the European Commission

Jenkins was a candidate for the leadership of the Labour Party in March 1976, but came third out of the six candidates, behind Callaghan and Foot. Jenkins had wanted to become Foreign Secretary (Rosen (2001) 318), but accepted an appointment as President of the European Commission instead, succeeding François-Xavier Ortoli. The main development overseen by the Jenkins Commisson was the development of the Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union from 1977, which began in 1979 as the European Monetary System, a forerunner of the Single Currency or Euro.^* Jenkins remained in Brussels until 1981, contemplating the political changes in the UK from there.

The Social Democratic Party (SDP)

On November 22, 1979 Jenkins delivered the annual Dimbleby Lecture which he called "Home Thoughts from Abroad", detailing what he saw as the reasons for Britain's persistent underperformance as a failure of adaptability and the two party system. More importantly he advocated a new "radical centre" and called for a new political grouping. As one of the so-called "Gang of Four", he was a founder of the SDP in January 1981 with David Owen, Bill Rodgers and Shirley Williams.

He led the new party from March 1982 until after the 1983 elections, and served as SDP Member of Parliament for Glasgow Hillhead from 1982 to 1987. During the 1983 election campaign his position as the prime minister designate for the SDP-Liberal Alliance was questioned by his close colleagues as his campaign style was now regarded as ineffective.

In the House of Lords

From 1987, Jenkins remained in politics as a member of the House of Lords as Lord Jenkins of Hillhead. Also in 1987, Jenkins became Chancellor of Oxford University. In 1993, he was appointed to the Order of Merit. He was leader of the Liberal Democrats in the Lords until 1997. In December 1997 he was appointed chair of an Independent Commission on the Voting System, which became known as the "Jenkins Commission", to consider alternative voting systems for the UK. The Jenkins Commission reported in favour of a new uniquely British mixed-member proportional system called "Alternative vote top-up" or "limited AMS" in October 1998. No action had been taken on this recommendation at the time of Jenkins' death from a heart attack in 2003.

Jenkins wrote 19 books, including a biography of Gladstone (1995), which won the 1995 Whitbread Award for Biography, and a much-acclaimed biography of Winston Churchill (2001). His official biographer, Andrew Adonis, was to have finished the Churchill biography had Lord Jenkins not survived heart surgery he underwent towards the end of its writing. At the time of his death he was apparently starting work on a biography of President Kennedy.

Roy Jenkins is fondly remembered by Private Eye as having a passion for claret and a distinct inability to pronounce his 'r's. This was clearly shown in their obituary cartoon with the caption: Roy Jenkins, 1920-2003. WIP. For many conservatives though, such as Peter Hitchens, he is not fondly remembered, being seen as responsible for the decline of traditional values in Britain.

References

Rosen, Greg (2001) Dictionary of Labour Biography, Politicos

Selected bibliography

Books by Roy Jenkins:

Churchill: A Biography, (Macmillan, 2001), ISBN 0374123543.
Gladstone, (Macmillan, 1995), ISBN 0812966414.
European Diary 1977–81, (HarperCollins, 1991)
Truman, (HarperCollins, 1986}
Baldwin, (HarperCollins, 1984)
Asquith, (Collins, 1964, revised edition 1978}
Sir Charles Dilke: A Victorian Tragedy, (Collins, 1959)
Mr Balfour's Poodle, (Collins, 1954)

Books about Roy Jenkins:

ed. Andrew Adonis and Keith Thomas, Roy Jenkins: A Retrospective (Oxford University Press, 2004)
John Campbell, Roy Jenkins (Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1983)
Roy Jenkins, A Life at the Centre, (Macmillan, 1992)
Giles Radice, Friends and Rivals: Crosland, Jenkins and Healey (Little, Brown, 2001)

The authorised biography by Andrew Adonis, mostly written in Jenkins' lifetime, is also due to appear soon.

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