Mr Balfour's Poodle, a short account of the House of Lords crisis of 1911 that culminated in the Parliament Act 1911, was published in 1954.
Roy Harris Jenkins, Baron Jenkins of Hillhead, (11 November 1920 – 5 January 2003) was a British politician who served as President of the European Commission from 1977 to 1981.
His father was imprisoned during the 1926 General Strike for his alleged involvement in disturbances.
Through the influence of his father, in April 1944 Jenkins was sent to Bletchley Park to work as a codebreaker; whilst there he befriended the historian Asa Briggs. ==Early political career (1945–1965)== Having failed to win Solihull in 1945, after which he spent a brief period working for the Industrial and Commercial Finance Corporation, 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".
Arthur Jenkins later became President of the South Wales Miners' Federation and Member of Parliament for Pontypool, Parliamentary Private Secretary to Clement Attlee, and briefly a minister in the 1945 Labour government.
Through the influence of his father, in April 1944 Jenkins was sent to Bletchley Park to work as a codebreaker; whilst there he befriended the historian Asa Briggs. ==Early political career (1945–1965)== Having failed to win Solihull in 1945, after which he spent a brief period working for the Industrial and Commercial Finance Corporation, 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".
He won the seat, and represented the constituency until 1977. In 1947 he edited a collection of Clement Attlee's speeches, published under the title Purpose and Policy.
Initially elected as MP for Southwark Central in 1948, he moved to become MP for Birmingham Stechford in 1950.
Through the influence of his father, in April 1944 Jenkins was sent to Bletchley Park to work as a codebreaker; whilst there he befriended the historian Asa Briggs. ==Early political career (1945–1965)== Having failed to win Solihull in 1945, after which he spent a brief period working for the Industrial and Commercial Finance Corporation, 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".
Attlee then granted Jenkins access to his private papers so that he could write his biography, which appeared in 1948 (Mr Attlee: An Interim Biography).
Initially elected as MP for Southwark Central in 1948, he moved to become MP for Birmingham Stechford in 1950.
His constituency was abolished in boundary changes for the 1950 general election, when he stood instead in the new Birmingham Stechford constituency.
The reviews were generally favourable, including George Orwell's in Tribune. In 1950, he advocated a large capital levy, abolition of public schools and introduction of a measure of industrial democracy to nationalised industries as key policy objectives for the Labour government.
In 1951 Tribune published his pamphlet Fair Shares for the Rich.
Jenkins argued that the Labour leadership needed to take on and defeat the neutralists and pacifists in the party; it would be better to risk a split in the party than face "the destruction, by schism, perhaps for a generation, of the whole progressive movement in the country". Between 1951 and 1956 he wrote a weekly column for the Indian newspaper The Current.
He later described this "almost Robespierrean" pamphlet as "the apogee of my excursion to the left". Jenkins contributed an essay on 'Equality' to the 1952 collection New Fabian Essays.
In 1953 appeared Pursuit of Progress, a work intended to counter Bevanism.
Mr Balfour's Poodle, a short account of the House of Lords crisis of 1911 that culminated in the Parliament Act 1911, was published in 1954.
Jenkins argued that the Labour leadership needed to take on and defeat the neutralists and pacifists in the party; it would be better to risk a split in the party than face "the destruction, by schism, perhaps for a generation, of the whole progressive movement in the country". Between 1951 and 1956 he wrote a weekly column for the Indian newspaper The Current.
After a suggestion by Mark Bonham Carter, Jenkins then wrote a biography of the Victorian radical, Sir Charles Dilke, which was published in October 1958. During the 1956 Suez Crisis, Jenkins denounced Anthony Eden's "squalid imperialist adventure" at a Labour rally in Birmingham Town Hall.
Three years later he claimed that "Suez was a totally unsuccessful attempt to achieve unreasonable and undesirable objectives by methods which were at once reckless and immoral; and the consequences, as was well deserved, were humiliating and disastrous". Jenkins praised Anthony Crosland's 1956 work The Future of Socialism as "the most important book on socialist theory" since Evan Durbin's The Politics of Democratic Socialism (1940).
After a suggestion by Mark Bonham Carter, Jenkins then wrote a biography of the Victorian radical, Sir Charles Dilke, which was published in October 1958. During the 1956 Suez Crisis, Jenkins denounced Anthony Eden's "squalid imperialist adventure" at a Labour rally in Birmingham Town Hall.
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. In July 1959 Penguin published Jenkins' The Labour Case, timed to anticipate the upcoming election.
In the long run these things will be more important than the most perfect of economic policies. In the aftermath of Labour's 1959 defeat, Jenkins appeared on Panorama and argued that Labour should abandon further nationalisation, question its connection with the trade unions and not dismiss a closer association with the Liberal Party.
At the 1961 Labour Party conference Jenkins spoke in favour of Britain's entry. Since 1959 Jenkins had been working on a biography of the Liberal Prime Minister, H.
Jenkins later called it a "good radical programme, although...not a socialist one". In May 1960 Jenkins joined the Campaign for Democratic Socialism, a Gaitskellite pressure group designed to fight against left-wing domination of the Labour Party.
In July 1960 Jenkins resigned from his frontbench role in order to be able to campaign freely for British membership of the Common Market.
At the 1960 Labour Party conference in Scarborough, Jenkins advocated rewriting Clause IV of the party's constitution but he was booed.
The Act was also designed to lower the prison population by the introduction of release under licence, easier bail, suspended sentences and earlier parole. Immigration was a divisive and provocative issue during the late 1960s and on 23 May 1966 Jenkins delivered a speech on race relations, which is widely considered to be one of his best.
When Harold Macmillan initiated the first British application to join the Common Market in 1961, Jenkins became deputy chairman of the all-party Common Market Campaign and then chairman of the Labour Common Market Committee.
At the 1961 Labour Party conference Jenkins spoke in favour of Britain's entry. Since 1959 Jenkins had been working on a biography of the Liberal Prime Minister, H.
On the election of Harold Wilson after the 1964 election, Jenkins was appointed Minister of Aviation.
Kenneth Rose, Michael Foot, Asa Briggs and John Grigg all favourably reviewed the book when it was published in October 1964.
After the 1964 general election Jenkins was appointed Minister of Aviation and was sworn of the Privy Council.
In January 1965 Patrick Gordon Walker resigned as Foreign Secretary and in the ensuing reshuffle Wilson offered Jenkins the Department for Education and Science; however, he declined it, preferring to stay at Aviation. ==Home Secretary (1965–1967)== In the summer of 1965 Jenkins eagerly accepted an offer to replace Frank Soskice as Home Secretary.
His visit to Chicago in September (to study their policing methods) convinced him of the need to introduce two-way radios to the police; whereas the Metropolitan Police possessed 25 radios in 1965, Jenkins increased this to 2,500, and provided similar numbers of radios to the rest of the country's police forces.
He also redesigned his office, famously replacing the board on which condemned prisoners were listed with a fridge. After the 1966 general election, in which Labour won a comfortable majority, Jenkins pushed through a series of police reforms which reduced the number of separate forces from 117 to 49.
The Act was also designed to lower the prison population by the introduction of release under licence, easier bail, suspended sentences and earlier parole. Immigration was a divisive and provocative issue during the late 1960s and on 23 May 1966 Jenkins delivered a speech on race relations, which is widely considered to be one of his best.
In this role, Jenkins embarked on a major reform programme; he sought to build what he described as "a civilised society", overseeing measures such as the effective abolition in Britain of both capital punishment and theatre censorship, the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality, relaxing of divorce law, suspension of birching and the liberalisation of abortion law. After the devaluation crisis in November 1967, Jenkins replaced James Callaghan as Chancellor of the Exchequer.
His Criminal Justice Act 1967 introduced more stringent controls on the purchase of shotguns, outlawed last-minute alibis and introduced majority verdicts in juries in England and Wales.
He gave strong personal support to David Steel's Private Member's Bill for the legalisation of abortion, which became the Abortion Act 1967, telling the Commons that "the existing law on abortion is uncertain and...harsh and archaic", adding that "the law is consistently flouted by those who have the means to do so.
Throughout his time at the Treasury, Jenkins oversaw a tight fiscal policy in an attempt to control inflation, and oversaw a particularly tough Budget in 1968 which saw major tax rises.
As a result of this, the Government's current account entered a surplus in 1969.
After Labour unexpectedly lost the 1970 election, Jenkins was elected as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party in 1970.
He resigned from the position in 1972 after the Labour Party decided to oppose Britain's entry to the European Communities, which he strongly supported.
When Labour returned to power following the 1974 election, Wilson appointed Jenkins as Home Secretary for the second time.
Roy Harris Jenkins, Baron Jenkins of Hillhead, (11 November 1920 – 5 January 2003) was a British politician who served as President of the European Commission from 1977 to 1981.
He won the seat, and represented the constituency until 1977. In 1947 he edited a collection of Clement Attlee's speeches, published under the title Purpose and Policy.
Roy Harris Jenkins, Baron Jenkins of Hillhead, (11 November 1920 – 5 January 2003) was a British politician who served as President of the European Commission from 1977 to 1981.
In 1982, Jenkins won a by-election to return to Parliament as MP for Glasgow Hillhead, taking the seat from the Conservatives in a famous result.
He became leader of the SDP ahead of the 1983 election, during which he formed an electoral alliance with the Liberal Party.
He subsequently lost his seat in Parliament at the 1987 election, and accepted a life peerage shortly afterwards; he sat in the House of Lords as a Liberal Democrat. He was later elected to succeed former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan as Chancellor of the University of Oxford following the latter's death; he would hold this position until his own death sixteen years later.
In the late 1990s, he served as a close adviser to Prime Minister Tony Blair and chaired a major commission on electoral reform.
Roy Harris Jenkins, Baron Jenkins of Hillhead, (11 November 1920 – 5 January 2003) was a British politician who served as President of the European Commission from 1977 to 1981.
Jenkins died in 2003, aged 82. ==Early life (1920–1945)== Born in Abersychan, Monmouthshire, in southeastern Wales, as an only child, Roy Jenkins was the son of a National Union of Mineworkers official, Arthur Jenkins.
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