Roy Jenkins (Lord Jenkins), 1920-2003 · Liberal History By Stockley, Neil Roy Jenkins played a significant role in developing and articulating a new progressive vision of social, political and constitutional change. His reforms at the Home Office helped to transform Britain into a more modern, more civilised society. He was a successful, if orthodox, Chancellor of the Exchequer. He played an important and consistent role in taking Britain into Europe and, in doing so, did enormous damage to his own career. He was instrumental in founding the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and became its first leader. Although the SDP did not, in itself, break the mould of British politics, it helped to revitalise and develop the radical centre and to force the Labour Party to change itself. At his death, Roy Jenkins was a hero of the liberal and social democratic traditions – the great reformist Liberal Prime Minister Britain never had. Roy Harris Jenkins was born on 11 November 1920, in Abersychan, South Wales. His father, Arthur Jenkins, was an official in the South Wales Miners’ Federation who became MP for Pontypool and Parliamentary Private Secretary to Clement Attlee.

His mother, Hattie, came from a more well-to-do background. From his parents, Jenkins gained a sense of civic responsibility and a strong commitment to the pursuit of change through peaceful and democratic means. Jenkins received his formal education at Abersychan School, University College, Cardiff and Balliol College, Oxford. At Oxford, he was Secretary of the Union and Chairman of the Democratic Socialist Club, a group of moderates who had broken with the left-dominated Labour Club. In 1941, he gained a first in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, with little apparent effort. He joined the Royal Artillery and was seconded on intelligence work to Bletchley. In January 1945, Jenkins married Jennifer Morris and they later had two sons and a daughter. After the war, he worked in the City as an economist for the Industrial and Commercial Finance Corporation, a semi-philanthropic body which channelled finance into new businesses. He wrote a brief biography of Clement Attlee, published in 1948. That April, he held Southwark Central for Labour in a byelection and became the youngest MP in the House.

In 1950, the seat disappeared in an electoral redistribution and Jenkins became the MP for Birmingham Stechford; his political base for more than a quarter of a century. In Labour’s internal struggles between Bevanites and revisionists, Jenkins enlisted with the latter camp. His book Pursuit of Progress, published in 1953, was one of the first attempts to develop a revisionist case. In The Labour Case (1959), he described the party’s goal in decidedly non-socialist terms: a society in which everyone will have the opportunity for a full and satisfying life. Labour, he claimed, was a practical party, more concerned with ends than means. His elegantly written and sympathetic portrayal of Asquith, published in 1964, suggested that Jenkins was, at heart, a modern-day Whig rather than a doctrinaire socialist. He was a close friend and strong supporter of Hugh Gaitskell, though differed with him over Europe; in 1960, he quit the front-bench economic team to be free to campaign for Britain’s entry. When Labour returned to office in October 1964, Jenkins flourished.

He was a successful Minister of Aviation and, after just fourteen months, became Home Secretary. He embarked on a series of reforms that caught the mood of the swinging sixties. He secured parliamentary time for private members’ bills to liberalise the abortion law and legalise homosexual practices between consenting adults. He also set in train a strengthening of race relations legislation and the abolition of theatre censorship. In November 1967, following the devaluation crisis, Jenkins replaced Jim Callaghan as Chancellor of the Exchequer. His unenviable task was to restore a balance of payments surplus and a stable pound. Jenkins delivered two years hard slog. He started with swingeing cuts in public spending, with defence bearing the heaviest burden; taxation was increased sharply in successive budgets, bank lending limited and interest rates increased. By the 1970 general election, public finances and the balance of payments were both in surplus, and the economy and exports had grown strongly. Such was the basis of Jenkins’ reputation as one of the best post-war Chancellors. Yet his deflationary measures are now seen as too cautious and too late; they delayed the recovery and required him to take harsher measures later.

He also failed to control the inflation stemming from wage rises, not helped by the governments climb-down on its proposed trade union reforms (which Jenkins initially supported, then backed away from). In opposition after 1970, Jenkins gathered around him a coterie of close political supporters, including the sometime Labour MP, David Marquand, the former Treasury Minister Dick Taverne QC, the human rights lawyer Anthony Lester QC and Jenkins’ press aide John Harris. The Jenkinsites were attracted by, if not in awe of, his achievements as Home Secretary, his success at the Treasury, his steadfast support for the European cause, his stylish performances in the Commons, his mastery of television, his verbal and written eloquence, his broad perspective and clear vision, his grandness and sparkle. Jenkins also had a significant public following and enjoyed the support of such establishment papers as The Times. In July 1970, he was elected Deputy Leader of the Labour Party: many saw him as the probable successor to Harold Wilson as leader. However, over the next six years, Jenkins became more isolated within the party as it moved to the left. The issue of Europe, more than any other, led to his divorce from Labour.

When a special party conference voted, in July 1971, to oppose entry on the terms negotiated by the Conservative government, he was appalled. That October, in what many regard as his finest hour, Jenkins led sixty-nine Labour MPs to vote for the terms, in defiance of a three-line whip. In April 1972, he resigned the deputy leadership in protest at the Shadow Cabinet’s decision to promise a referendum on Britain’s continued membership of the EEC. In March 1974, he returned to the Home Office in Wilson’s new government, though he was unhappy with both Wilson’s leadership and the government’s overall direction. He soon faced mounting problems over security in Northern Ireland; in particular, new terrorist attacks on the mainland, which led to the introduction, in 1974, of the Prevention of Terrorism Act, which he intended as a temporary measure. Nevertheless, he brought in new legislation to outlaw discrimination on the grounds of gender, and introduced a measure of independence to police complaints procedures. During the 1975 referendum on Britain’s membership of the EEC, Jenkins headed up the successful Yes campaign, and thoroughly enjoyed working with pro-European politicians from all three parties.

When Wilson resigned in April 1976, Jenkins came a poor third in the subsequent leadership ballot, won by Callaghan. The vast political differences between Jenkins and most of the party, especially over Europe, were a major cause. Furthermore, many Labour politicians blamed Jenkins’ cautious economic management for the 1970 defeat. His personal style was too grand and aloof and he appeared too much of a bon viveur to lead the party of the working class. After Callaghan failed to offer him the Foreign Secretaryship, Jenkins left British politics to take up a four-year term as President of the European Commission. At first, he found the role difficult and the Commission’s machinery cumbersome. There were tensions in his relationships with some European heads of government. Jenkins overcame these obstacles and took a leading role in establishing the European Monetary System. In November 1979, he presented his Dimbleby lecture, Home Thoughts from Abroad, from which the birth of the SDP can be traced. He criticised the false choices, see-saw politics and broken promises of the two-party system and advocated electoral reform. Most crucially, Jenkins called for a new political grouping to strengthen the radical centre.

As intended, this caused great excitement amongst those disenchanted with both the Thatcher Government and Labour’s capture by the hard left but who did not see the Liberal Party, on its own, as a realistic vehicle for change. During 1980, Jenkins gradually enlisted Labour’s Gang of Three – Dr. David Owen, Shirley Williams and Bill Rodgers . The following March, they founded the Social Democratic Party, which formed an alliance with the Liberal Party and soon took a commanding lead in the opinion polls. Jenkins’ vision was of a centrist party that would appeal to all sections of society and bring the country together. The party would also take on a radical edge, with policies for devolution and partnership in industry. It would promote equality for women and environmental and third world concerns. Naturally, Jenkins wanted to lead the new party, but first he had to re-enter the Commons. In July 1981, he came a close second in the byelection at Warrington, a safe Labour seat. Then, the following March, he won the Glasgow Hillhead byelection. On both occasions, Jenkins sterling performances killed the myth that he was a poor grassroots campaigner.

In July 1982, he was elected as the first leader of the SDP. However, his tenure was not a happy one. As a natural man of office, he was ill-suited to leading a third party in opposition; he did not take well to the chaotic demands of party management and the need to maintain a high media profile. He found the House of Commons a far less congenial forum than before and he was now a diffident television performer. He did not establish a distinctive image for the SDP. For the 1983 general election campaign, Jenkins was made the Alliance’s prime minister-designate, whereas David Steel was its leader. This arrangement did not work: Steel was the superior performer and enjoyed better opinion poll ratings. At the Alliance’s infamous Ettrick Bridge summit, Jenkins was sidelined. It was agreed that Steel would, in effect, lead the campaign for the final ten days. The election saw only six SDP MPs returned. A weary Jenkins then resigned the leadership, in part due to pressure from Dr. Owen, who succeeded him. The result of the 1987 general election made it clear that the SDP had failed to replace Labour as the main non-conservative party.

Jenkins lost Hillhead to a Labour left-winger. He supported the subsequent merger of the SDP and the Liberals, seeing their political differences as being of little import. He accepted a peerage, as Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, and became Leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords, a position he held until 1998. Jenkins career had an intriguing afterlife. He was greatly enthused by Tony Blair’s election as leader of the Labour Party in 1994, and soon became one of his key confidants. He called on Labour and the Liberal Democrats to work together so that the progressive forces could establish a long-term ascendancy. Blair appeared to be the sort of Prime Minister that Jenkins would have liked to become. In 1998, he appointed Jenkins to head a commission on the voting system, offering one more chance to break the mould of British politics. Jenkins, whose well-written report brought a dull subject almost to life, recommended an alternative vote top-up system, which would have retained constituency MPs and used regional lists to achieve proportionality.

Jenkins was convinced that he had the Prime Minister’s support, and led a lively campaign for change, which included branding Labour opponents as know-nothing, do-nothing, think-nothing MPs. Later, Jenkins was forced to accept that the Government did not intend to act on his recommendations. In 1986, Jenkins was elected Chancellor of Oxford University. Between 1980 and 2003, he completed numerous books. These included a well-received autobiography, A Life at the Centre (1991), in which he described himself as a perpetual radical rather than an establishment Whig. His widely acclaimed Gladstone (1995) won the Whitbread Prize for Biography and Churchill (2002) was short-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize. Neil Stockley was the Liberal Democrats’ Director of Policy 1995-97. He was executive assistant to New Zealand Prime Minister, David Lange and subsequently, Director of the New Zealand Parliamentary Labour Research Unit.

Related People Obituary: Lord Jenkins of Hillhead | Politics | The Guardian Labour Lord Jenkins of Hillhead A towering figure of the radical centre, he brought reform to the Home Office and Brussels, and set the scene for New Labour's agenda Monday 6 January 2003 05.51 EST First published on Monday 6 January 2003 05.51 EST Share on Messenger Close The death of Roy Jenkins, at the age of 82, ends a career of classic distinction and manifold paradoxes. In Labour administrations, he held two of the three great offices of state; later, he became the first, and so far only, British president of the European Commission. He was the prime mover in the creation of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), and its first leader. He became chancellor of Oxford University, and was awarded the Order of Merit.

He was also an accomplished biographer and award-winning journalist: his mellow, reflective and often funny autobiography, A Life At The Centre (1991), will be read with pleasure long after most examples of the genre have been forgotten - of his biographies, the best remembered are likely to be Gladstone (1995) and Churchill (2001). In the phrase of his contemporary and rival Denis Healey, Jenkins was a politician with a hinterland. He liked good wine, good food, good talk, good books and fiercely competitive croquet - and he did not care who knew it. With his patrician manner and stylish epigrams, he seemed, by the end, to epitomise an easy-going whiggery and measured rationality that had almost vanished from the political culture. Yet this persona concealed at least two other Jenkinses, each more complex and less comfortable than the first. One was a mercurial, emotional, surprisingly vulnerable Celt.

It was this figure - the Jenkins of Abersychan and Pontypool - whose incandescent rhetoric at a never-to-be-forgotten meeting of the parliamentary Labour party in 1971 ripped apart the leadership's sophistries over entry into Europe; who seemed, for a brief but brilliant moment, to embody a rallying of defiant social democracy against a new dark age of ideological fundamentalism; and who inspired more loyalty and affection from his own circle - as well as more exasperated indignation from his enemies - than any recent left-of-centre politician, with the possible exception of Aneurin Bevan. Alongside that, however, ran a tough and dedicated professional, instinctively at home with the levers of power. The shifting combination of strong emotions and tough-minded professionalism holds the key to his contested place in history. As much as any aristocratic grandee, Jenkins had high politics in his blood. He was born in Abersychan, into what he once described as the "working-class squirearchy".

His father, Arthur Jenkins, was a Monmouthshire miner, who went down the pit at the age of 12, rose to the presidency of the South Wales Miners' Federation, and became MP for Pontypool and Clement Attlee's PPS. Jenkins himself went to Abersychan grammar school, studied for six months at University College, Cardiff, in 1937, and won a first in PPE at Balliol College, Oxford, in 1941. His war service in the Royal Artillery (1942-46) included a period as a Bletchley codebreaker. He stood unsuccessfully for parliament in Solihull in 1945, and, in 1948, was elected as Labour MP for Central Southwark, at the age of 28. From 1950 to 1976, he represented Stechford, Birmingham. Following Labour's return to power in 1964, he became aviation minister.

The next year, at the age of 45, he was the youngest home secretary since Winston Churchill; at 47, he was chancellor of the exchequer - and the second most powerful member of the Cabinet. It is hard to recapture the excitement that Jenkins generated in the first of these two great offices, or the authority that enveloped him in the second. In part, they derived from a characteristic mixture of public flair and private assiduity. As a backbencher, he had not been a particularly outstanding debater. But he knew that the key to political power lay in mastery of the dispatch box; and, once a minister, he turned himself into the most accomplished and deadly gladiator on the Labour frontbench. Yet style was less important than substance. As home secretary, Jenkins epitomised the mood of 1960s Britain, in revolt against stuffy conservatism and insularity. No doubt, the decriminalisation of homosexuality and abortion - the two great 1967 reforms of his time in office - were bound to come. In any case, they were achieved through private members' bills, not government measures.

But without Jenkin's adroit and resolute support in the background, the bills would never have reached the statute book. The Treasury was a harder row to hoe. There, Jenkins's task was as simple as it was forbidding. After three years spent clinging to an overvalued exchange rate, the government had, in 1967, been forced to devalue. As Jenkins knew better than most, it had done so at the wrong time and in the wrong way. But that was now irrelevant; all that mattered was to make devaluation work - a task that required a policy of Crippsian austerity, followed with unyielding determination until the balance of payments moved into the black. The will was there; and, albeit with aching slowness, the balance-of-payments fruits came forth. When the government went to the country in the summer of 1970, "surplus Jenkins" was Labour's greatest electoral asset. The party lost, but when the new House of Commons assembled, he was triumphantly elected as Labour's deputy leader, under Harold Wilson. It seemed only a matter of time before he inherited the leadership, and after that, the prime ministership. It was not to be.

As things turned out, the 1970 deputy leadership election marked a watershed - not only for Jenkins, but for British politics in general. Hitherto, he had been an insider: a wielder of power and taker of decisions. But, unrecognised by him, the system was beginning to dissolve. The long, postwar boom was spluttering to an end. The Keynesian social-democratic consensus was beginning to fragment - and, in an extraordinary display of doctrinal recidivism, both great parties were retreating to the dogmatisms of the past. For Jenkins, the inside track was gradually closed off. To remain true to himself, he had to become an outsider, a radical rather than a whig. And to become an effective outsider, he had to unlearn the habits and assumptions of a political lifetime. His tragedy - and the tragedy of the British centre-left - is that he never quite completed the transition.

Yet, by one of the greatest paradoxes of his career, he was to become a more significant force in British and European politics in the unhappy, sometimes anguished, years when he was shifting to the outside track than he had been as the eagerly rising insider of the 1960s. The shift began with his defiant refusal to bow to the anti-Europeanism that engulfed Labour in the early 1970s. He saw that if he abandoned his European commitment, he would destroy the reputation for integrity that was his greatest political asset. He also saw that he would not be able to live with himself. Above all, he saw that he would betray his conception of political leadership, and deny the sense of history that underpinned it - that, in one of his favourite condemnatory phrases, he would be "falling below the level of events". So, in the decisive vote on the principle of British entry into Europe in 1971, Jenkins led 68 pro-European Labour MPs into the Conservative government lobby, defying a three-line whip and a five-to-one vote at Labour's annual conference.

It was the most spectacular party split since the second world war, but it gave the European cause a cushion of moral authority without which it would almost certainly have foundered. The sequel was sadly anti-climactic. In a moment of weakness, which he later regretted, Jenkins stood again for the deputy leadership. On the second ballot, he narrowly beat Michael Foot, only to resign six months later, in March 1972; he felt that the shadow cabinet's support for a referendum on Britain's European membership implied wings of the party campaigning against each other in the country, making life impossible for pro-European MPs. When Labour unexpectedly won the 1974 election, Jenkins returned glumly to the Home Office, but he felt increasingly out of place in a cabinet that seemed to him incapable of standing up to either the unions or the Labour left. In the summer of 1975, he led the "yes" campaign in the referendum on community membership to a two-to-one victory, but it was only a momentary shaft of light in the encircling gloom.

When Wilson retired from office in 1976, he came third in the first ballot for the leadership, behind Foot and James Callaghan: sensing that Labour MPs were in no mood to forgive the splitter of five years before, he then withdrew, and Callaghan won the second ballot. But Jenkins's consolation prize turned out to be more substantial than it seemed at the time. In January 1977, he left Westminster for four years as president of the European Commission in Brussels. Soon after arriving, he told me that he dreamed of the House of Commons every night, and I doubt he was ever at ease with the Byzantine politics of the Berlaymont building. Yet during his Brussels years, Jenkins left a more enduring mark on European politics than had any British politician since Ernest Bevin. Two achievements stand out. First, he slowly managed to reassert the political role of the commission and its president - reversing the slide in their authority which had continued since de Gaulle clipped the wings of the first president, Walter Hallstein, in the mid-1960s. This meant little to the general public, but was critically important for Europe's future.

European integration is a quintessentially political process; it cannot make progress without a strong and politically authoritative commission. Had Jenkins been content with the technocratic role of his immediate predecessors, the much more spectacular activism of the Delors presidency in the 1980s would have been impossible. Jenkins's second Brussels achievement was less arcane. With a mixture of boldness and adroit diplomacy, he put the project of European monetary union - moribund since the currency upheavals of the mid-1970s - back on the agenda. After much persuasion, an initially sceptical Helmut Schmidt was converted, not to fullscale monetary union, but at least to the creation of a zone of currency stability in Europe. The result was the European monetary system, which laid the foundations for the European Single Act of 1985, the European Union of the 1990s, and the single currency of today. Jenkins's commission stint had another result as well. From his Berlaymont eyrie, he could survey the British scene - and even take judicious soundings on the way in which it was developing - while preserving an enigmatic silence about his own intentions. He was increasingly appalled by what he saw.

A tide of sectarian bitterness seemed to be sweeping across British politics, engulfing the Labour party he had once hoped to lead, and endangering everything he stood for. Like a veteran warhorse scenting gunpowder, he slowly sensed there was a battle in the offing, from which he could not stand aside. He broke his silence in the 1979 BBC Dimbleby lecture, appealing to the "radical centre" to save the country from the sterilities of left and right. Few political speeches have had a more electric impact. Jenkins had thought the unthinkable - and said it. In doing so, he transformed the framework of Labour party debate and, still more, the framework of possibility within which its beleaguered social democrats imagined their future. For the first time since the 1931 split, a senior Labour politician had defied the taboo that made the very idea of secession to the centre inconceivable. And once the taboo was broken, others started to think the unthinkable as well. Like a slow-burning fuse, the lecture took time to produce results.

The explosion came in 1981, when Jenkins and the so-called "Gang of Three" - Shirley Williams, David Owen and William Rodgers - set up the SDP, and ushered in a decade of party turbulence unequalled since the 1920s. In a sensational byelection that summer, Jenkins narrowly missed capturing Warrington, one of Labour's safest seats, for the new party. In March 1982, he was elected for Glasgow Hillhead, after a campaign of packed public meetings reminiscent of the age of Gladstone and Lloyd George. At the beginning of July, he defeated David Owen for the SDP leadership by 26,300 votes to 20,900. The veteran insider, it seemed, had become an even more successful outsider. As so often in Jenkins's career, appearances were deceptive. Even before Hillhead, the SDP had passed its zenith.

In April 1982, the outbreak of the Falklands war gave an immense boost to Mrs Thatcher and her government, and did commensurate damage to all the opposition: in May 1983, at the start of the general election, the SDP-Liberal Alliance stood at only 17.5% in the Gallup poll, against the Conservatives' 49% and Labour's 31.5%. Against that background, its campaign, in which the two parties' candidates avoided standing against each other, was triumphantly successful. It emerged with slightly more than 25% of the popular vote - the highest third-party share for 60 years. (By contrast, Labour's 28% represented its lowest share since 1918.) In its first real test, Jenkins's "radical centre" had done better than anyone could reasonably have expected. But in politics - in the politics of the outside track, at any rate - reasonable expectations do not count. For the SDP, if not for the Liberals, any result short of a breakthrough was a failure - and, in the Commons, it had only six seats out of the Alliance's skimpy 17.

Henceforth, its trajectory could only point down. Whether Jenkins saw this, I do not know; if he did, he never said so. What is clear is that he emerged from the campaign tired, ill and demoralised. No sooner were the votes counted than David Owen threatened to force a leadership election unless Jenkins gave it up forthwith. With an almost audible sigh of relief, he resigned. Henceforth, the history of the SDP was the history of David Owen's demonic energy, unsleeping will and strangely unrooted radicalism. Shirley Williams and William Rodgers had lost their seats, and Jenkins and Owen were the only two of the old Gang of Four still sitting in the Commons. But Jenkins sat as an elder statesman, not as a political force. Owen dictated policy, and personified the SDP in the eyes of the public. As much as Williams and Rodgers, Jenkins was sidelined. He was alarmed by Owen's drift to the right on economic policy, and appalled by his brusque contempt for the party's Liberal allies, but, in public, he permitted himself only the occasional, heavily coded warning. In the 1987 election, he, too, lost his seat.

In the bitter and destructive split over relations with the Liberals that followed, he was the leading champion of merger between the two parties the following year. After the inevitable translation to the Lords, he became leader of the Liberal Democrat peers. He made some notable speeches, and continued to champion the European cause; after the fourth consecutive Conservative victory in 1992, he also championed closer relations between the Liberal Democrat and Labour parties. But the non-political hinterland - writing, the Oxford chancellorship, family and friends - loomed ever larger. For all practical purposes, his career as a political mover and shaker had ended. It remains an unusually difficult career to assess; and when the would-be assessor is proud to have been a Jenkinsite, the difficulties are all the greater. On four points, however, the verdict of history seems plain. As home secretary, Jenkins did as much as any other single person to make Britain a more tolerant and civilised country to live in. As leader of the Labour Europeans, he played an indispensable part in taking Britain into what is now the European Union. As president of the European Commission, he played an equally indispensable part in overcoming the forces of monetary disintegration that threatened to wreck the community.

With the SDP, he failed in his stated aim of breaking the mould of British politics. But the territory he staked out in his Dimbleby lecture is the territory New Labour came to occupy 15 years later. Though there can be no proof, it is hard to believe that this would have happened without the shock of the 1983 result. The SDP's purpose was to create a broad-based social-democratic party, capable of speaking to middle England. In that, at least, it succeeded. The fact that the party was called the Labour party does not detract from the achievement. Jenkins is survived by his wife, Dame Jennifer, whom he married in 1945, their sons Charles and Edward, and daughter Cynthia. · Roy Harris Jenkins, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, politician and writer, born November 11 1920; died January 5 2003 Roy Jenkins - IMDb IMDb Actor Roy Jenkins was born on November 11, 1920 in Abersychan, Monmouthshire, Wales as Roy Harris Jenkins.

He was an actor, known for A Very Social Democrat: A Portrait of Roy Jenkins (1996), Question Time (1979) and Election 92 (1992). He was married to Jennifer Morris . He died on January 5, 2003 in East Hendred, Oxfordshire, England. See full bio » Born: Do you have a demo reel? Add it to your IMDbPage How much of Roy Jenkins's work have you seen?

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ISBN 0812966414 See more » Publicity Listings: 1 Portrayal | See more » Alternate Names: Lord Jenkins of Hillhead | Lord Jenkins | Rt Hon Lord Jenkins | Rt Hon Roy Jenkins | Rt. Hon. Roy Jenkins | Roy Jenkins MP Did You Know? Personal Quote: "He has an avuncular persuasiveness, flavoured with a dash of menace." (Commenting on the British Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan) Trivia: Elected a Labour Member of Parliament in 1948. See more » Nickname: Royal Society of Literature » Roy Jenkins (The Rt Hon Lord Jenkins of Hillhead) Home > RSL Fellows > Roy Jenkins (The Rt Hon Lord Jenkins of Hillhead) Roy Jenkins (The Rt Hon Lord Jenkins of Hillhead) b. 1920 – d. 2003 Roy Jenkins was heavily involved in politics throughout his life, overseeing the reform of laws concerning capital and corporal punishment, homosexuality, divorce, abortion and race relations during his time in parliament. He is, to date, the first and only Briton to be head of the European Commission.

Jenkins wrote a great many biographies of politicians; his own autobiography, A Life at the Centre is widely thought to be one of the best of the late 20th Century. He was appointed to the Order of Merit in 1993 and continued working until his death in 2003. Roy Jenkins (The Rt Hon Lord Jenkins of Hillhead) remembered – by Giles Radice President of the RSL Roy Jenkins was an exceptional man. Though he never became Prime Minister, he was one of the outstanding British politicians of the second half of the twentieth century. As the first British President of the European Commission and a fervent advocate of the European cause for nearly 50 years, he was recognized across the continent as a great statesman. A renowned President of the Royal Society of Literature, Chancellor of Oxford, and holder of the Order of Merit, he was also the nation’s leading political biographer. To those close to him, he was a wonderfully stimulating companion with a priceless gift for friendship. Unlike many politicians, Jenkins had what his former Labour colleague and rival Denis Healy called ‘hinterland’.

He was a distinguished journalist and reviewer, winning a Granada Award of the Year for his Observer articles on the failed ICI takeover of Courtaulds. In 1948 he wrote his first book, Mr Attlee, an interim biography of his party leader which showed his potential to be a serious writer. His breakthrough book, published in 1954, was Mr Balfour’s Poodle, a well-researched account of the struggle between the House of Lords and Asquith’s Liberal Government which is still in print today. Its success led to a suggestion by Mark Bonham Carter, the Liberal politician and publisher who worked for Collins, that he should write a book about Sir Charles Dilke, the Victorian radical whose political life was destroyed by a sensational divorce case. Roy’s career as a political biographer was launched. His three best-known biographies are his lives of Asquith, Gladstone and Churchill. His Asquith, which made extensive use of the letters between Asquith and his friend Venetia Stanley, was published in 1964 and helped pay for the purchase of the Jenkins’s vicarage at East Hendred, Oxfordshire.

Gladstone, published in 1995, and Churchill, published in 2001, were the late flowering of a writer at the height of his powers. Neither claimed to be based on original research, but they are distinguished by shrewd judgement and political insight. Churchill proved to be a triumphant best seller, selling half a million copies on both sides of the Atlantic. Roy Harris Jenkins was born at Abersychan in Monmouthshire on 11 November 1920. His father, Arthur, was a Welsh miner and trades-union official who became MP for Pontypool and Clement Attlee’s Parliamentary Private Secretary. Roy’s mother, Hattie, was also an influential local figure. Both parents had lofty ambitions for their son, who after secondary education at Abersychan Grammar School and six months at University College, Cardiff, went up in 1938 to Balliol College, Oxford– where, perhaps on account of his upper-class drawl, members of the Senior Common Room referred to him as ‘nature’s Old Etonian’.

Contemporaries in what has been called the most political generation in Oxford history included Denis Healey and Edward Heath from Balliol, and Tony Crosland, who became an inseparable friend, from Trinity. Jenkins showed his promise by getting a First in PPE and becoming elected President of the Junior Common Room, though he was defeated by five votes for the presidency of the Oxford Union. With Crosland, he left the Communist-dominated Labour Club in 1940 and formed a breakaway democratic socialist group which quickly supplanted the former. Unlike Healey and Crosland, Jenkins never came under fire during the War. He served first as a regimental artillery officer, and from 1944 at Bletchley Park decoding German ciphers. He was elected to the Commons (his ambition at an early age) as Labour MP for Central Southwark in 1948, moving, when his first seat was redistributed, to the Stetchford division in Birmingham in 1950. After a brief flirtation with Aneurin Bevan, he became – with Crosland – an acolyte of the modernising Hugh Gaitskell, who was elected leader of the Labour Party in 1955.

Roy was closely involved in all the controversies of Gaitskell’s leadership (even opposing him over Common Market entry in 1962) and was devastated by Gaitskell’s tragic death in January 1963 – so much so that he nearly left politics to become editor of the Economist. Paradoxically, it was under the leadership of Harold Wilson – Gaitskell’s successor, whom Jenkins had opposed – that Roy’s political career really took off. When Labour won the 1964 election, Wilson to his credit first made Jenkins Minister of Aviation and then, in December 1965, brought him into the Cabinet as Home Secretary, after Jenkins had had the temerity to turn down the job of Education Secretary (which went to Tony Crosland). With a clear idea of what he wanted to achieve, Roy proved to be the most radical Home Secretary of the century, supporting a raft of liberal reforms, including changes to the laws on divorce, abortion and homosexuality, which helped make Britain a more tolerant and civilised society. As Jenkins pointed out, though these changes were later much criticised by the popular right as leading to ‘the permissive society’, none of them were reversed.

It was in recognition of his growing reputation and debating skills that Wilson made Jenkins Chancellor of the Exchequer in November 1967 (following devaluation) in preference to Tony Crosland, who desperately wanted the job and never forgave Roy his promotion. Jenkins proved to be a courageous Chancellor, bringing the balance of payments back into surplus, and if Labour had won the 1970 election instead of losing it, would have been in a good position to succeed Wilson as Prime Minister. In the 1970s Jenkins became disillusioned with Labour, especially over Europe. In 1971, though he had become Deputy Leader, he led 69 Labour pro-Europeans into the lobbies in support of British membership of the European Community against a three-line whip, and in 1972 resigned the deputy leadership, thus destroying his chances of ever becoming leader.

Although he became Home Secretary again after Labour unexpectedly won the 1974 election, he was semi-detached from the Government; and when he only came third in the leadership election following Wilson’s resignation, and the new leader Jim Callaghan made Tony Crosland, not Jenkins, Foreign Secretary, Roy decided to accept an invitation to become President of the European Commission. After a shaky start, he settled into the job and helped establish the European Monetary System which eventually led to the creation of the euro. At the end of his term, instead of retiring to East Hendred to write, Jenkins came back to British politics at the age of 60 to help found a new party (with Shirley Williams, David Owen and Bill Rodgers) after Labour’s lurch to the left following Mrs Thatcher’s victory in the 1979 election.

For a while the Social Democratic Party (SDP), boosted by Government unpopularity and civil war inside the Labour Party, soared in the polls; Jenkins, belying his undeserved reputation as an effete élitist, proved to be an energetic campaigner, finishing a good second in the Warrington by-election and winning Glasgow Hillhead in March 1982, after which he became SDP leader. However, despite achieving the best third-party result since the 1920s in alliance with the Liberals, the party failed to ‘break the mould’ of British politics and Jenkins resigned as leader. In 1987, he was made a life peer and became leader of the Liberal Democrats (as the new merged party was called) in the Lords. He was appointed President of the RSL the following year, and in 1991 his autobiography A Life at the Centre was published to much acclaim. To his death he remained an influential elder statesman, acting as adviser to the Liberal Democrat leaders Paddy Ashdown and Charles Kennedy, and, intriguingly, striking up a friendship with the Labour leader Tony Blair (‘I think Tony treats me as a sort of father figure in politics,’ he remarked).

He was working on the final pages of a short biography of Roosevelt on the night before he died. I salute Roy Jenkins as a great statesman and a gifted writer, and, above all, as a generous and warm human being who enlivened a room or a lunch table by his presence. TRIBUTES TO LORD JENKINS RONALD HARWOOD I was deeply saddened by the death of Lord Jenkins. I did not really know him very well, but he made a profound impression on me and I was devoted to him. He had presence and authority and could be wonderfully superior, yet seemed at times surprisingly vulnerable for someone who had reached such heights in politics, literature and academe. This arose, I think, from his sense of humour, which could be both brusque and uncertain; he did not always seem confident that he understood a joke or, indeed, if a joke had actually been made. Having read many of his splendid books, I noted his odd obsession with the ages people were when they first achieved success of any kind.

So it was that when I succeeded Michael Holroyd as Chairman of the RSL, and Lord Jenkins invited us to lunch with him at his club, I asked him over coffee and the last of the claret at what age he had become Chancellor. He looked beadily at me and said, ‘Of Oxford or the Exchequer?’ I shall miss him. JOHN MORTIMER Roy Jenkins is irreplaceable. He was that rare thing, a politician who cared deeply for literature, and a fine writer who was also a powerful politician who civilized our society. We owe to him, as our best Home Secretary, the facts that we have sensible laws on abortion and no longer hang people or imprison gays. He also introduced the defence of literary merit into the law on obscenity. He cared as deeply for the RSL, he said, as he did for Oxford, where he was Chancellor. His presence at meetings was always a joy. His life of Dilke is one of the most entertaining biographies, and his great life of Churchill was written in his 80th year. He loved gossip, jokes, good wine and the company of women. A great and kindly light has gone out, and made these dark days seem even darker.

CLAIRE TOMALIN How lucky we were to have Roy Jenkins as President of the RSL. He brought in a breath of the world, and he also knew about the problems of writers, being himself possessed of the rare ability to command the political heights and at the same time produce weighty, witty and illuminating books – something shared with his last biographical subject, Churchill. His inside knowledge of political process gave a precious extra dimension to his biographies. He was a prodigious reader too, something he got from his father, who had gone down the mines at twelve, become a mature student at Oxford, taken himself to Paris to learn French, and become an MP. Roy followed proudly in his footsteps, to Oxford and into Parliament, and served the idea of a European community all his life. The first time I heard him speak at a literary gathering he told a story inspired by his double life as writer and politician. He’d noticed, he said, that even with a hangover you can still gather your strength to run a government department or attend a Cabinet meeting effectively. But if your morning-after task is to write a few pages of your current book, it is simply no good. A hangover makes writing impossible.

From this he concluded, with a twinkle in his eye as he spoke, that governing a country is an easier task than writing a book. Twinkle or no, it goes down very well with writers. DAVID HUGHES For any writer Lord Jenkins was a most disturbing figure, if also an inspiration. It seemed he could do anything with grace and liberality. His manners were spot-on, his accents refined into a magnificent drawl from good Welsh roots, his syntax more than challenging most of ours, his choice of subject deftly grand, his concentration total, his way of life as leisurely as it was luxurious as it was demanding: in measuring him up, the mind stole to Roman emperors, none of whom quite matched him in the personification of non-barbarian values. In his years as President of our Society he was as rotund in physique as orotund in manner, and the two happily blended: he spoke fine wine and stood like great prose. I cannot pretend I envy him in death, however notable, but I did (and do) his life.

He worked out for himself a dozen careers of a most particular distinction, beyond just writing a good book or two, which is most that we Fellows whom he lead with such good-hearted relish ever hope for. Vale, Roy bach. MAGGIE FERGUSSON Fear grew into great fondness over the ten years that I knew Lord Jenkins. One of the first times we met, he arrived at Hyde Park Gardens late for the AGM, after a battle with the Bayswater traffic, handed me a bunch of keys and asked me to park his BMW. But he then presided over the evening, as over all the Society’s more august gatherings, with such a perfect balance of gravitas and subtle drollery that I couldn’t help but warm to him. He never interfered, but whenever we needed him he was ready to help, not just by putting his weighty signature to important correspondence, but by offering his time, advice and, on occasion, great personal generosity. In 1995, we invited Fellows to send in items for an auction to raise money for the refurbishment of Miss Almedingen’s cottage.

By return of post came a hefty package from the President: hundreds of pages of thick, laid, House of Lords writing-paper, closely covered with practically uncorrected tiny blue Biro handwriting – the manuscript of Gladstone. On almost his last visit to the Society, rushing straight from a tranastlantic flight to present scrolls to new Companions of Literature, Lord Jenkins became hopelessly lost in the warren of corridors that runs beneath the east wing of Somerset House. When, three quarters of an hour late, he finally emerged, he was justifiably furious with Julia Abel Smith and me for not having given him better directions. Next morning, I sat down to write a letter of apology. I had hardly begun when two envelopes – one for Julia, one for me – were delivered from the House of Lords. On that thick, familiar paper, he asked each of us with great sweetness to forgive him for having lost his temper. We admired him hugely for that. GIMMA MACPHERSON Lord Jenkins made it very clear to me, his secretary, that in his later years there were only two vitally important organisations with which he was proud to be associated and about which he felt passionately.

They were, of course, the Royal Society of Literature and the University of Oxford. Apart from his fascination with all things literary, Lord Jenkins felt that by nominating him as President of the Society his fellow writers had recognized him as an author of some merit. They might have been surprised to know just how much this meant to him. Support Roy Jenkins, 82, Dies; Helped Start Centrist British Party - The New York Times The New York Times World |Roy Jenkins, 82, Dies; Helped Start Centrist British Party Search Continue reading the main story Correction Appended Roy Jenkins, a Welsh miner's son who became a Socialist cabinet minister and president of the European Commission in Brussels and then tried to break the mold of British politics by creating a new governing party of the center, died yesterday at his home in Oxfordshire, his family said. He was 82. A lifetime of public service left Lord Jenkins covered with honors. Made a life peer in 1987, taking the title Baron Jenkins of Hillhead, he was elected chancellor of Oxford University the same year.

In 1993, Queen Elizabeth II appointed him to the Order of Merit, an exclusive body of just 24 distinguished practitioners of the arts and sciences. In Lord Jenkins's later years, the New Labor Party of Prime Minister Tony Blair espoused many of the moderate policies Lord Jenkins favored but which the Labor Party of his day would not accept. He was a man of intellectual distinction, who graduated from Oxford with the highest honors, worked during World War II as a top secret code breaker and published more than 20 books, including studies of Asquith, Gladstone and Truman and most recently, Churchill (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001). Continue reading the main story But despite many successes, Lord Jenkins never achieved his principal goals. Called by some Britons ''the best prime minister we never had,'' he was frequently urged to challenge Harold Wilson directly for the Labor Party leadership. But he held back, sensing he was not a person the party of his day could accept as leader.

Advertisement Continue reading the main story Neither did the Social Democratic Party, which Lord Jenkins founded in 1981 with David (later Lord) Owen, Shirley Williams and William Rodgers, ever become the natural governing party of the center, as intended, by fusing leftist Conservatives, rightist Laborites and the small Liberal Party. In the end it was Lord Jenkins's inability to replace Britain's electoral system with one based on proportional representation that prevented him from breaking the mold of British politics and creating a new centrist majority. Roy Harris Jenkins was born Nov. 11, 1920, in Abersychan, a mining town in South Wales, the son of an unusual coal miner. Although the father, Arthur Jenkins, had been down the in pits, he had also been briefly imprisoned for union activism, had studied in Paris and Oxford, had become a Labor member of Parliament and had served as parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister Clement Attlee. From Abersychan grammar school, Roy Jenkins also went on to Oxford University, winning a place at Balliol College. At Oxford he met Jennifer Morris, a Cambridge graduate, who became his wife of more than 50 years. They had two sons and one daughter. His wife and children survive him.

In 1948 he entered Parliament as the Labor member for Southwark, in South London, and quickly fell under the spell of Hugh Gaitskill, the party's rightish leader. Redistricting forced him to switch seats in 1951 to the Birmingham division of Stechford, which he represented for over 25 years. During these years of opposition, Mr. Jenkins consolidated his reputation as a diligent backbencher, emerging as an avid supporter of British membership of the European Common Market, a cause unpopular with most of his party. Mr. Gaitskill's sudden death in 1963 and his replacement by the left-leaning Mr. Wilson appalled Mr. Jenkins, and he came close to leaving politics altogether when he was offered the editorship of The Economist. In his autobiography, Lord Jenkins speaks of his ''revulsion for the prospect of a Wilson leadership'' and says there was ''neither friendship nor trust'' between them. Despite this relationship, Mr. Jenkins became minister of aviation when Labor was returned to power in the 1964 election. In 1965 he became home secretary, responsible for law and order.

He showed himself a notable social reformer by legalizing abortion and homosexuality, easing divorce and ending theater censorship. Advertisement Continue reading the main story After Britain's mounting economic problems forced Labor to devalue the pound in November 1967, Mr. Jenkins replaced James Callaghan at the treasury as chancellor of the exchequer and took on the task of turning the stricken economy around and making the new exchange rate stick. He succeeded in saving the pound through what he called ''two years of hard slog,'' introducing vast cuts in public spending, increasing taxes and winding up Britain's last imperial commitments by closing its military bases east of Suez. Though admired, his austerity budgets contributed to Labor's surprise defeat in the 1970 election. The opposition years that followed were marked for Mr. Jenkins by growing disillusionment with Labor's leftist drift, and especially its hostility to Common Market membership and support for unilateral nuclear disarmament. He resigned as deputy leader after the party demanded a national referendum on the Common Market entry terms that had been agreed upon by Edward Heath's Conservative government, and he joined the Labor rebels in refusing to vote against membership. After Labor returned to power in 1974, Mr.

Jenkins went back to the Home Office, where he enacted a strict Prevention of Terrorism Act to counter a surge of violence by the Irish Republican Army. But his energies went mainly into leading a cross-party pro-European movement that secured a substantial majority for staying in the Common Market in the 1975 referendum. This campaign helped convince him that a new centrist majority, capable of governing the country, could be assembled in Britain. In 1976 Prime Minister Wilson offered him the presidency of the European Commission, which it was Britain's turn to fill. But before he could take up the appointment, Mr. Wilson unexpectedly resigned and Mr. Jenkins finally tried to win the party leadership. He came in third, behind Michael Foot and Mr. Callaghan, who became prime minister. Mr. Jenkins assumed the European Commission presidency in 1977. After four years in Brussels, Mr. Jenkins returned home in 1981 to find British politics polarized between an unelectable Labor Party controlled by the hard left and an ultra-right Conservative government dominated by Mrs. Thatcher. Advertisement Continue reading the main story He immediately set about creating the Social Democratic Party, which attracted considerable public support.

It quickly scored an impressive number of by-election victories, with Mr. Jenkins returning to Parliament in March 1982. But these early successes were deceptive. Victory in the Falklands bolstered the Conservatives. The economy was reviving. The Social Democrats' ideology often seemed confused and their middle-class, intellectual image held little appeal for working-class voters. The Conservatives emerged victorious in the 1983 elections. But with 26 percent of the vote, the Social Democrat-Liberal alliance was only a whisker behind Labor's 27.6 percent share. Mr. Jenkins resigned the party leadership and was succeeded by Lord Owen. Despite his claim to be the real author of Mr. Blair's 1997 electoral victory, Lord Jenkins was snubbed at the end of his life by the man he had helped bring to power. Asked by New Labor to examine the case for changing Britain's electoral system, Lord Jenkins duly produced an elegant report in late 1998. But by then Mr. Blair's enthusiasm for electoral reform had cooled and the report sank without trace. Britain's electoral system survived Lord Jenkins.

Correction: January 8, 2003, Wednesday An obituary on Monday about Roy Jenkins, British cabinet minister and political innovator, misspelled the surname of the Labor Party leader who influenced him early in his career. The leader was Hugh Gaitskell, not Gaitskill. Lord Jenkins of Hillhead OM PC Lord Jenkins of Hillhead OM PC Finest Hour Lord Jenkins of Hillhead OM PC Finest Hour 118, Spring 2003 Page 09 Our distinguished honorary member Roy Jenkins died on January 5th at the age of 82. The most important postwar British politician not to become prime minister, he came from the South Wales mining region, the son of a leading Labour MP who had been Parliamentary Private Secretary to Clement Attlee and a junior minister in the closing stages of Winston Churchill's wartime coalition government. Young Roy obtained a first class degree at Oxford and then joined the Army, where he worked for a time among the Bletchley Park code-breakers. He was elected to Parliament in 1948, but had to wait until Harold Wilson's Labour government in 1964 before achieving office.

Briefly Minister of Aviation, he was promoted to the Cabinet as Home Secretary and became an avid liberal reformer, notably in the field of homosexuality and abortion laws which were central to the permissive society (which he termed the "civilised society"). He then became Chancellor of the Exchequer and was successful in steering the economy from crisis to calmer waters, an achievement which gave him a good chance to succeed Harold Wilson. But his party lost the 1970 election and the opportunity was lost with it. Although he returned to office as Home Secretary in 1974, he left the government for a four-year term as President of the European Commission. He worked energetically and was determined to be recognised everywhere as a head of state, as his fascinating book, European Diary, makes clear. The book contains at least one hilarious story. Following a European summit meeting in London, all the heads of government attended a Buckingham Palace reception. Jenkins found the Queen talking (in French) to President Giscard d'Estaing and joined the conversation. After a while the Frenchman drifted away and Jenkins and Her Majesty continued to talk to each other in French for several minutes before they both realised the absurdity of the situation.

Back home Jenkins became disillusioned by Labour's lurch to the left and hostility to Europe; he and three other prominent Labour figures (Shirley Wiilliams, David Owen and Bill Rodgers) formed the breakaway Social Democratic Party. Although he was eventually elected under the SDP banner in the Glasgow constituency of Hillhead, and became party leader, the SDP was weak and felt obliged to fight the next election in an alliance with the Liberal Party, later merging with it, eventually to become today's Liberal Democrats. By this time Jenkins had (in 1987) been defeated and was elevated to the peerage as Lord Jenkins of Hillhead; in this capacity he became party leader in the House of Lords, a role he filled for the next nine years. In 1987 he was elected Chancellor of Oxford University, a post he held until his death and which gave him the greatest satisfaction; and in 1993 was appointed to the Order of Merit. Throughout his career he was a regular author of political biographies and other major studies, notably on Gladstone, Asquith and Attlee. It was felicitous that his last major work was Churchill, published to great acclaim in 2001.

(See his account of writing the book in FH 113 and our review in FH 114.) Finest Hour's editor said he didn't think there had been a Churchill biography remotely close to Jenkins's special vantage point and understanding. This made the book an invaluable contribution to the whole picture. An eminent Churchillian indeed. —Paul H. Courtenay Roy Jenkins' male lover Tony Crosland tried to halt his marriage - Telegraph Culture Roy Jenkins' male lover Tony Crosland tried to halt his marriage A new biography, Roy Jenkins: A Well Rounded Life, by John Campbell, reveals how the former Labour chancellor and Home Secretary had a homosexual affair with his close friend Tony Crosland, who he met at Oxford University From left: Roy Jenkins, Anthony Crosland Photo: PA, Rex By Keith Perry 2:30PM GMT 10 Mar 2014 Former Labour chancellor and Home Secretary Lord Jenkins of Hillhead once had a passionate fling with Tony Crosland, who later became a close Cabinet colleague, a new biography reveals.

Lord Jenkins, formerly Roy Jenkins, who died in 2003 aged 82, oversaw the decriminalisation of homosexuality and was dubbed "the father of the permissive society". But the new book reveals how Jenkins had a homosexual affair himself with his close friend Crosland after meeting at Oxford University. Jenkins arrived at Oxford in 1938 from humble roots - he was the son of a miner who attended Abersychan County School in South Wales. However, he was quickly enchanted the wealthy and public school educated Crosland, who he described as 'the most exciting friend of my life'. Crosland, who drove a sports car at the time, was 15 months older than Jenkins and a year ahead of him at Oxford. Related Articles Lord Jenkins dies at 82 06 Jan 2003 Jenkins recalled: "Tony was immensely good-looking and elegant. He wore a long camel-hair overcoat, and drove a powerful MG sports car known as the Red Menace. "I found him rather intimidating, until he came to my rooms on some minor Labour Club business and remained talking for nearly two hours.

Thereafter, I saw him nearly every day." Details of the extent of their relationship have now been revealed in a new biography, Roy Jenkins: A Well Rounded Life, by John Campbell, which is being serialised in the Daily Mail . While at Oxford, Crosland was openly gay and years later Jenkins confessed that Crosland had seduced him more than once. As Home Secretary in the Sixties, Jenkins was the driving force behind the decriminalisation of homosexuality, but he himself was not a homosexual and even had a string of mistresses. But he was said to be bewitched by Crosland. In one of their first letters, when both were at their respective homes in Pontypool and Sussex for Christmas, Crosland compared his ‘boy friend’ to Beau Geste. The relationship between the two men became so intense that at one point Jenkins was unable to bear being apart from Crosland. He was at home at the time and begged Crosland to phone him in Pontypool where ‘I am feeling very desperately the need for your guidance’. He signed off ‘Love, Roy’. By 1940, the two friends were drawn apart by the onset of war.

At 22, Crosland was called up and posted to an Army camp in Cheshire. He wrote to Roy that ‘I felt rather like bursting into tears when my thoughts turned to some of our happy moments together’. He signed off, ‘Love from a very dismal Tony’. But the pair grew increasingly apart after Jenkins met Jennifer Morris, the daughter of the town clerk of Westminster and a feminist mother, who had been one of the first women journalists on the Manchester Guardian. Morris was the same age as Jenkins, and was reading history at Cambridge, where she was chairman of the Labour Club. In this capacity she attended a political summer school at Dartington in south Devon, which Jenkins also attended. The couple hit it off and Morris wrote to Jenkins from her home in Evesham. Jenkins acknowledged that he knew her first letter almost by heart, ‘because I read it so often in vain searches for any signs of special affection’. Over the following weeks they met several times in London, and were caught up in one of the first air-raids. She later visited Roy in Oxford and they both declared their love. Apart with their families for Christmas, she wrote to ‘my darling Roy’ that she felt ‘intensely happy’.

He replied that she was already ‘so much a part of me’ and assured her that ‘I love you too’. The new romance made Crosland intensely jealous, who, though away in the Army, sensed the emotional distance in his friend. But then Crosland came to Oxford at the same time as Jennifer and they met for the first time. For the next two years, Jenkins saw both Morris and Crosland as often as he could, but Morris resented the fact that Jenkins still felt obliged to see Crosland whenever he was on leave, sometimes ahead of her which led her to write: ‘We are an awkward trio.’ Crosland once became so desperate to get Jenkins back, and he poured out his heart in a letter to Jenkins’ parents, to whom he had become close over the years, bemoaning the loss of Jenkins to a woman. Roy and Jennifer married in January 1945. Crosland was still on active service overseas and could not get home for the wedding, but he wrote that he was ‘very glad’ for them. ‘Tell Jennifer from me that I naturally think her lucky to marry the best friend I ever had. Wasn’t that nicely said?

Love, Tony.’ Seven years later, Crosland himself married, possibly attempting to shake off his youthful homosexuality. It ended in divorce and he then went through a string of glamorous girlfriends before he married a new wife and settled down. Like Jenkins, he became a successful Labour politician, becoming education secretary, president of the Board of Trade, local government secretary and foreign secretary. Jenkins and Crosland did eventually manage to have a more normal pattern of friendship — but it was never entirely easy, given how close they had once been.

Question: When Roy Jenkins became a Lord, where did he become Lord Jenkins of?
Answer: HILLHEAD