Baron Roy Harris Jenkins Jenkins of Hillhead: Biography and Much More from Answers.com
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Biography: Roy Harris Jenkins
Roy Harris Jenkins (born 1920), British Labour politician and author, was a leading member of the cabinet before becoming president of the European Community and later a founder of the Social Democratic Party.
Roy Jenkins was born on November 11, 1920, the son of Arthur Jenkins, a Welsh miner who became an officer of his union and later a Labour member of Parliament. Roy was educated at Abersychan Grammar School and Balliol College, Oxford, where he took first class honors in politics, philosophy, and economics in 1941, having already been active in student politics and debate. He served in the Royal Artillery from 1942 to 1946, rising to captain in 1944.
Even before he was demobilized Jenkins entered politics, contesting the seat for Solihull unsuccessfully in the general election of 1945. He filled in the years 1946 to 1948 working for the Industrial and Commercial Financial Corporation. In 1948 Jenkins obtained his seat in Parliament after winning a by-election for Central Southwark; from 1950 to 1976 he sat for Stechford, Birmingham. He held office only briefly under Prime Minister Clement Attlee, in 1949-1950 as parliamentary private secretary to the secretary for Commonwealth relations. He early showed his interest in European union, serving as a United Kingdom delegate to the Council of Europe from 1955 to 1957. He belonged to the moderate side of the Labour Party; and was Fabian Society chairman from 1957 to 1958.
When the Labour Party was out of power, Jenkins occasionally held directorships or consultantships for various businesses; he also served on the boards of the Society of Authors and the British Film Institute. He was himself an author of some repute, publishing a history of the parliamentary crisis of 1911, Mr. Balfour's Poodle, in 1954; biographies of Sir Charles Dilke (1958) and Herbert Asquith (1964); and numerous books on politics - 15 titles in all, plus his autobiography (1991). His wife, Jennifer Morris, whom he married in 1945, was active in the historical preservation movement and was chairwoman of the Historic Buildings Council from 1975 to 1984. They had two sons and one daughter.
When Labour returned to power in 1964, Jenkins entered Harold Wilson's cabinet as minister for aviation. Hitherto known as a party intellectual and debater, he showed himself in office to be an excellent administrator and was promoted in 1965 to home secretary, roughly equivalent to being U.S. attorney general and HUD secretary. Both as a backbencher and as home secretary Jenkins was instrumental in ending capital punishment and literary censorship and easing divorce and abortion laws. He moved up to chancellor of the exchequer in 1967. Here he distinguished himself by devaluing the pound - a measure he had supported earlier - and courageously retrenching spending and raising taxes. In the controversy over wage and price control which divided the Labour Party in 1969, Jenkins supported Prime Minister Wilson. In the general election of 1970, Labour was defeated, despite an economic upturn to which Jenkins' measures may have contributed. He lost his office but became deputy leader of the party in opposition.
Seemingly on the way to the party leadership and perhaps the prime ministry, Jenkins' career was sidetracked by his commitment to Europe and the Common Market, which Britain joined in 1972. When the Labour Party insisted on holding a referendum on British entry, Jenkins resigned as deputy leader. The referendum was held in 1975, after Labour had regained power. Though again holding cabinet office, Jenkins, as president of "Britain in Europe," led the pro-Common Market campaign, which triumphed.
When Labour returned to office in the general elections of 1974, Jenkins joined Harold Wilson's second ministry, once again as home secretary. Wilson's abrupt decision to retire in March 1976 opened a contest for the succession. Jenkins was a candidate, but he proved to have little support in the party. In the first ballot of the Labour members of Parliament, Jenkins came in third; he eventually dropped out, his votes mostly going to the winner, James Callaghan. Jenkins continued as home secretary, but he was glad to accept election, when Britain's turn came round, as president of the European Commission, the executive branch of the Common Market. A devoted Europeanist, Jenkins served as "President of Europe" from 1977 to 1981, holding a position of much prestige though limited power. Honors poured in on him from many countries.
Returning to British politics in 1981, Jenkins was dismayed by the leftward drift of his Labour Party, again out of office, and the absence of a credible opposition to Margaret Thatcher's Tory government. He became the senior leader in the formation of a centrist third party, the Social Democratic Party, drawing support mainly from disillusioned Labourites and agreeing to cooperate for electoral purposes with the small Liberal Party as the "Alliance." Jenkins contested the Warrington seat, unsuccessfully but credibly, in 1981. He was elected for Glasgow Hillhead in 1982 and became the first leader of the Social Democratic Party in Parliament. But in the general election of 1983, Margaret Thatcher, fresh from her Falklands victory, overwhelmed all opposition. Jenkins kept his seat, but he was ousted from the leadership of his small parliamentary party by the younger David Owen. Seven years after its founding, the new party collapsed without getting near power.
Soon after his parliamentary career ended, Jenkins, the coal miner's son, was elected chancellor of Oxford University and was named a peer. He also continued to write, and to proselytize for internationalist views.
Further Reading
As one would expect from a professional writer, Jenkins's autobiography, A Life at the Center: Memoirs of a Radical Reformer (1993), was a cut above most political memoirs. A Jenkins biography, Roy Jenkins, was published in 1983 just as the S.D.P. experiment was under way. Jenkins also was discussed in general works on the history or politics of the period, of which the best is Alfred F. Havighurst, Britain in Transition (1979).
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Roy Harris Jenkins Baron Jenkins of Hillhead
(born Nov. 11, 1920, Abersychan, Monmouthshire, Eng. — died Jan. 5, 2003, Oxfordshire) British politician. Elected to Parliament in 1948, he served in Labour Party governments (1964 – 70, 1974 – 76). A strong supporter of NATO and the European Community, he was president of the executive branch of the latter (1976 – 81). He resigned from the Labour Party, and in 1981, with other Labour dissidents, he formed the Social Democratic Party, which he led in 1982 – 83. After accepting a life peerage (1987), he became leader of the Social and Liberal Democratic Party in the House of Lords. He subsequently became chancellor of the University of Oxford.
For more information on Roy Harris Jenkins Baron Jenkins of Hillhead, visit Britannica.com.
Jenkins, Roy (1920-2003). Chancellor of the University of Oxford; previously deputy leader (1970-2) of the Labour Party and leader (1982-3) of the Social Democratic Party. Author, bon viveur, and quintessential establishment figure, he became Lord Jenkins of Hillhead in 1987. His political appointments included minister of aviation (1964-5), home secretary (1965-7, 1974-6), chancellor of the Exchequer (1967-70). From 1977 to 1981 he was president of the European Commission. His main political achievements were to facilitate the ‘moral revolution of the 1960s’ as home secretary (defending the ‘permissive society’ as ‘the civilized society’), to give strong support to the move into Europe, and to help keep the Labour Party out of power in the 1980s and 1990s.
Columbia Encyclopedia: Jenkins of Hillhead, Roy Harris Jenkins, Baron,
1920–2003, British politician, b. Abersychan, Wales; grad. Oxford Univ. He entered the House of Commons in 1948 as a Labour member and soon became one of the most formidable debaters in Parliament. When the Labour party returned to power (with Harold Wilson as prime minister) in 1964, Jenkins became minister of aviation. As home secretary from 1965 to 1967 he worked for broader laws against racial discrimination and played a large part in liberalizing laws on abortion, homosexuality, divorce, and censorship. As chancellor of the exchequer (1967–70) he instituted a program of austerity in an effort to solve Britain's financial crisis. In 1971, in defiance of the Labour party majority, he supported Britain's entry into the European Community (now the European Union). He resigned (1972) as deputy opposition leader, but again served as home secretary (1974–76) under Harold Wilson until he resigned to become president of the European Commission (1977–81). In 1981 he cofounded the Social Democratic party as a moderate alternative to Labour and Conservative extremism. He returned to Parliament in 1982 but lost his seat in 1987. He was created a life peer in 1987 and became chancellor of Oxford Univ. the same year, serving until his death. His historical writings include Truman (1986), Baldwin (1987), and Churchill (2001).
Bibliography
See his memoirs (1991); biography by J. Campbell (1983).
| The Rt. Hon Roy Jenkins | |
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| In office 16 July 1988 – 4 May 1997 |
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| Preceded by | Position Created |
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| Succeeded by | William Rodgers |
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Leader of Social Democratic Party |
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| In office 22 November, 1979 – 4 May 1983 |
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| Preceded by | Party created |
| Succeeded by | David Owen |
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| In office 18 August, 1977 – 12 January 1981 |
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| Preceded by | François-Xavier Ortoli |
| Succeeded by | Gaston Thorn |
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| In office 5 March 1974 – 10 September 1976 |
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| Preceded by | Robert Carr |
| Succeeded by | Merlyn Rees |
| In office 23 December 1965 – 30 September 1967 |
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| Preceded by | Frank Soskice |
| Succeeded by | James Callaghan |
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| In office 19 June 1970 – 7 April 1972 |
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| Preceded by | George Brown |
| Succeeded by | Edward Short |
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| In office 30 November, 1967 – 19 June 1970 |
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| Prime Minister | Harold Wilson |
| Preceded by | James Callaghan |
| Succeeded by | Iain Macleod |
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| Born | November 11 1920 Abersychan, Monmouthshire, Wales |
| Died | 05 January 2003 (aged 82) Oxfordshire, England |
| Political party | Labour Party (1945 - 1979), Social Democratic Party (1979 - 1988) and Liberal Democrats (1988 - 1997) |
Roy Harris Jenkins, Baron Jenkins of Hillhead OM PC (11 November 1920 – 5 January 2003) was a British politician. Once prominent as a Labour Member of Parliament (MP) and government minister in the 1960s and 1970s, he went on to be President of the European Commission (1977-81) and one of the four principal founders of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1981. 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 Labour 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 was twice defeated for the Presidency of the Oxford Union but took First Class Honours in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE). His university colleagues included Tony Crosland, Denis Healey, and Edward Heath and he became friends with all three, although he wasn't ever particularly close to Healey. During World War II he served with the Royal Artillery and then at Bletchley Park, reaching the rank of captain. He married Jennifer Morris (later Dame Jennifer Jenkins) on 20 January 1945 towards the end of World War II.
Member of Parliament and Cabinet Member
Having previously failed to win in Solihull in 1945, he was elected to the House of Commons in a 1948 by-election as the Member of Parliament for Southwark Central, becoming the "Baby of the House". His constituency was abolished in boundary changes for the 1950 general election, when he stood instead in the new Birmingham Stechford constituency. He won the seat and represented the constituency until 1977.
Jenkins was principal sponsor, in 1959, of the bill which became the liberalising Obscene Publications Act, responsible for establishing the "liable to deprave and corrupt" criterion as a basis for a prosecution of suspect material and for specifying literary merit as a possible defence. Like Healey and Crosland, he had been a close friend of Hugh Gaitskell and for them Gaitskell's death and the elevation of Harold Wilson as Labour Party leader was a blow.
At first Minister of Aviation in the Wilson government elected in the 1964 general election, he was Home Secretary from 22 December 1965 to November 1967. At the age of 45 he was made the youngest member of the cabinet. In this position he is often seen as responsible for the most wide-ranging reforms that the 1960s Labour governments would enact. Jenkins 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 European Economic Community (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 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 Michael 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.[1] Jenkins remained in Brussels until 1981, contemplating the political changes in the UK from there.
The Social Democratic Party
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 problems associated with 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 Social Democratic Party (SDP) in January 1981 with David Owen, Bill Rodgers and Shirley Williams.
He attempted to re-enter Parliament at the Warrington by-election in 1981 but Labour retained the seat with a small majority. He was more successful in 1982, being elected in the Glasgow Hillhead by-election as the MP for a previously Conservative-held seat.
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; the Liberal leader David Steel was considered to have a greater rapport with the electorate.
He led the new party from March 1982 until after the 1983 general election, when Owen succeeded him unopposed. Jenkins was disappointed with Owen's move to the right, and his acceptance and backing of some of Thatcher's policies. At heart, Jenkins remained a Keynesian. He continued to serve as SDP Member of Parliament for Glasgow Hillhead until his defeat at the 1987 general election by the Labour candidate George Galloway.
In the House of Lords
A Retrospective, 2004
From 1987, Jenkins remained in politics as a member of the House of Lords as a life peer with the title Baron Jenkins of Hillhead, of Pontypool in the County of Gwent. Also in 1987, Jenkins was elected Chancellor of the University of Oxford. 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 a Government-appointed 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 at 9 a.m. on 5 January 2003. He earlier underwent heart surgery in November 2000, and postponed his 80th birthday celebrations, by having a celebratory party on 7 March 2001.
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 Jenkins not survived the 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 U.S. President John F. Kennedy.
Death
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 some conservatives, such as Peter Hitchens in The Abolition of Britain, he was a "cultural revolutionary" and takes a large part of the responsibility for the decline of "traditional values" in Britain.
References
- Rosen, Greg (2001) Dictionary of Labour Biography, Politicos
Selected bibliography
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Wikisource has original works written by or about:
Books by Roy Jenkins:
- (2001) Churchill : a biography. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 0-374-12354-3.
- (1995) Gladstone : a biography. Macmillan. ISBN 0-8129-6641-4.
- (1991) A life at the centre. Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-55164-8.
- (1989) Gallery of 20th century Portraits and Oxford Papers. David and Charles. ISBN 0-7153-9299-9.
- (1986) Truman. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-015580-9.
- (1984) Baldwin. Collins. ISBN 0-00-217586-X .
- (1964) Asquith. Collins. ISBN 0-00-211021-0 . , revised edition 1978
- (1958) Sir Charles Dilke: A Victorian Tragedy. Collins. ISBN 0-333-62020-8.
- (1954) Mr. Balfour's poodle; peers v. people. Collins. OCLC 436484.
- (2005) Roosevelt. Pan Macmillan. ISBN 0330432060 .
Books about Roy Jenkins:
- Andrew Adonis & Keith Thomas - Editors (2004). Roy Jenkins: A Retrospective. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-927487-8 .
- Giles Radice (2002). Friends and Rivals: Crosland, Jenkins and Healey. Little, Brown. ISBN 0-316-85547-2 .
- John Campbell (1983). Roy Jenkins, a biography. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 0-297-78271-1.
External links
Offices held
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