Roy Jenkins Roy Jenkins Roy Harris Jenkins, Baron Jenkins of Hillhead, (11 November 1920 – 5 January 2003) was a British Labour Party, SDP and Liberal Democrat politician, and biographer of British political leaders. The son of a Welsh coal-miner and trade unionist (later a Labour MP and government minister), Roy Jenkins was educated at Oxford University and served as an intelligence officer in the Second World War. Elected to Parliament as a Labour MP in 1948, he went on to serve in two major posts in Harold Wilson's first government. As Home Secretary from 1965 to 1967, he sought to build
Roy Jenkins they were defying a three-line whip and a five-to-one vote at the Labour Party annual conference. Jenkins' action gave the European cause a legitimacy that would have otherwise been absent had the issue been considered solely as a party political matter. At this stage, however, Jenkins would not fully abandon his position as a political insider, and chose to stand again for deputy leader, an act his colleague David Marquand claimed he later came to regret. Jenkins narrowly defeated Michael Foot on a second ballot. Six months later, however, he resigned both the deputy leadership and his shadow cabinet position