Roy Jenkins, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Roy Jenkins

British politician, historian and writer

Date of Birth: 11-Nov-1920

Place of Birth: Monmouthshire, Wales, United Kingdom

Date of Death: 05-Jan-2003

Profession: writer, politician, historian, biographer

Nationality: Wales, United Kingdom

Zodiac Sign: Scorpio


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About Roy Jenkins

  • Roy Harris Jenkins, Baron Jenkins of Hillhead, (11 November 1920 – 5 January 2003), was a British politician and the President of the European Commission from 1977 to 1981.
  • He was at various times a member of the Labour Party, Social Democratic Party and the Liberal Democrats. The son of a Welsh coal-miner and trade unionist, himself later a Labour MP, Jenkins was educated at the University of Oxford and served as an intelligence officer during the Second World War.
  • Elected to Parliament as a Labour MP in 1948, he went on to serve as both Chancellor of the Exchequer and Home Secretary under the Labour Governments of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan.
  • In his first period as Home Secretary he sought to build what he described as "a civilised society", with 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.
  • As Chancellor of the Exchequer he pursued a tight fiscal policy.
  • He was elected Deputy Leader of the Labour Party in 1970, but resigned in 1972 because he supported entry to the European Communities, which the party opposed.He later chose to leave British politics in 1976, being appointed President of the European Commission the following year, serving until 1981.
  • He was the first and only British holder of this office.
  • He returned to British politics in 1981; dismayed with the Labour Party's left-ward movement under Michael Foot, he was one of the "Gang of Four"—centrist Labour figures who formed the Social Democratic Party (SDP).
  • In 1982, Jenkins won a by-election to return to Parliament, taking the seat from the Conservatives in a famous result.
  • He was formally made Leader of the SDP ahead of the 1983 general election, during the SDP-Liberal Alliance.
  • However, after disappointment with the performance of the SDP, he resigned as leader. In 1987 he was elected to succeed Harold Macmillan as Chancellor of the University of Oxford following the latter's death; he held this position until his own death sixteen years later.
  • A few months after becoming Chancellor he was defeated at the 1987 general election by the Labour candidate, George Galloway.
  • Jenkins accepted a life peerage shortly afterwards, and sat in the House of Lords as a Liberal Democrat.
  • In the late 1990s he was an adviser to Prime Minister Tony Blair and chaired the Jenkins Commission on electoral reform.
  • Jenkins died in 2003, aged 82. In addition to his political career he was also a noted historian, biographer and writer.
  • His A Life at the Centre (1991) is regarded as one of the best autobiographies of the later 20th century, which "will be read with pleasure long after most examples of the genre have been forgotten".

Read more at Wikipedia

See Also