Jenkins, Roy Harris

▪ 2004

Baron Jenkins of Hillhead 

      British politician and author (b. Nov. 11, 1920, Abersychan, Monmouthshire, Eng.—d. Jan. 5, 2003, East Hendred, Oxfordshire, Eng.), in a career that spanned half a century, was a leading figure in the Labour Party before breaking away in 1981 to help form the centrist Social Democratic Party (SDP). Jenkins was instrumental in liberalizing British society and in stabilizing the budget, promoting European monetary union, and championing British membership in the European Economic Community (EEC). Jenkins graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, in 1941. He was elected to Parliament in 1948, and in 1964 Prime Minister Harold Wilson appointed him minister of aviation. As home secretary (1965–67) Jenkins achieved the liberalization of laws banning homosexuality and abortion as well as those governing divorce and theatre censorship. In 1967, following the devaluation of the currency, he was made chancellor of the Exchequer, and, through a combination of budget cuts and tax increases, he achieved a surplus in the balance of payments by the end of 1969. In 1970 the Labour Party lost the general election, and Jenkins became deputy leader of the party. The following year Jenkins crossed party lines to vote with the Tories in favour of Britain's entering the EEC. When in 1972 the Labour Party supported a referendum calling for withdrawal from the EEC, Jenkins resigned his position. He was home secretary again when Wilson was returned to office (1974–76) and then became president of the European Commission, a position he held until 1981. That same year Jenkins joined with David Owen, Shirley Williams, and Bill Rodgers to launch the SDP. In 1982 he was elected to Parliament on the Social Democratic ticket, and thereafter he became party leader. In the 1983 elections the SDP won only six seats, and Jenkins stepped down as party leader. In the aftermath of the 1987 elections, in which he lost his seat, he was created a life peer, and in 1988 be became leader of the newly-combined Social and Liberal Democratic Party in the House of Lords, a position he held until 1997. His many well-received books included Gladstone (1995), which won the Whitbread award for biography, and Churchill: A Biography (2001). Jenkins was president of the Royal Society of Literature (1988–2003) and chancellor of the University of Oxford (1987–2003), and he was awarded the Order of Merit in 1993.

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