"THE
GOVERNMENT
IS THE SERVANT
OF THE PEOPLE
AND NOT ITS MASTER"
Winston
Churchill
Oslo 1948
A Tribute to Lord Jenkins
By Peter H. Russell, O.C.
Volume 15 Issue 1 Winter 2003
It was indeed sad to receive the news of Roy Jenkins’ death on January 5th of this year. He was so terribly disappointed, as were we, that a last minute flair-up of his heart condition prevented him from speaking to us at our Annual Churchill Dinner.
After the Dinner, I was in touch with Gimma Macpherson, Lord Jenkins’ Personal Assistant at the House of Lords, and she thought he was on the road to recovery. Just before Christmas, he wrote a short note of thanks for the Christmas plant I had sent on your behalf to his home in Oxfordshire. In that letter, he said that he was somewhat better. But, alas, it was not to be and the end came quite suddenly just ten days later.
John Plumpton who rose to the occasion so magnificently on November 26th captured the remarkable achievements of Roy Jenkins in the topic he chose for his address - “Two Great Men and Two Great Causes.” The great men, of course, were Churchill and Jenkins, and the two great causes they shared were parliamentary democracy and the writing of history.
Reading the obituaries in the British press brought home just how extraordinary were Roy Jenkins’ accomplishments in both departments. He was first elected to the House of Commons in 1948 and remained active in parliamentary politics right up to his death. He served in Labour Governments as Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer. He took a short leave from British politics in the 1970s to become President of the Commission of the European Community, returning in 1981 to be a founder of the Social Democratic Party. As a backbencher, journalists selected him as Parliamentarian of the Year in 1986. His last parliamentary post was leadership of the Liberal Democrats (a merging of the Liberals and the SPD) in the House of Lords. Outside of Parliament, from 1983 on, he served as Chancellor of Oxford University during the most successful fund-raising drive in the university’s history.
Now all of that would have been a very full life for any one. But somehow, all the way through this full and distinguished political career, Jenkins carried forward another career as a great writer of modern history – some twenty books in all, including biographies of Gladstone, Asquith, Baldwin, Truman and, of course, his last, Churchill. And as those of us who admired the elegance, verve and intelligence of his Churchill biography will testify, Jenkins’ writing was of the highest quality.
A paragraph in the Times obituary gives us a glimpse of the man and the woman behind this phenomenal record of public accomplishments:
Roy Jenkins was sustained through the achievements and vicissitudes of his life by his wife Jennifer, a woman of independent mind and great talent who succeeded in having a distinguished career of her own despite the demands of a husband who happily claimed that he did not know how to boil an egg. And, despite a style that was somewhat mannered and could lead to his seeming aloof, he had many warm friendships with both men and women, showing great loyalty towards those who worked with him and generosity towards those with whom he disagreed.
Our Society will recognize its affection for this great man, its gratitude for his courageous resolve to be our guest and our sorrow that, in the end, this resolve could not be fulfilled, by placing a commemorative plate in one of the major works in the Churchill Collection at Trinity College.