Roy Jenkins

by John Campbell

  Despite their political differences, it was in this term and the next that Roy and Tony were at their closest. During the first seven months of 1940, Tony later wrote to Hattie, he and Roy enjoyed ‘an exceedingly close & intense friendship of a kind that neither of us are ever likely to experience again’:

  We used to spend practically the whole day together, we automatically did the same things, had the same friends, in fact practically shared our two lives, in complete mutual absorption and (as I then thought) complete mutual loyalty. The proof of our friendship was that during the whole period neither of us had any relations at all with members of the other sex – we were each too wrapped up in our own two interwoven lives.34

  As well as their own hopes, ambitions and emotions, they argued about life, politics and socialism. They started from utterly opposed directions. Though outwardly fiercely rational, Crosland once confessed to his friend Philip Williams that his socialism derived from ‘the emotional need for a God, a religion, a Heaven, for something to believe in that transcends the individual’.35 This quasi-spiritual need was quite unlike Jenkins’ wholly secular, humanist approach. In an obituary appreciation – written with the benefit of thirty more years’ acquaintance, but surely based on these early conversations – Roy contrasted Tony’s rigorous intellectualism with his own more pragmatic sense of history:

  He had a mind of high perspective, yet cared little in a personal, as opposed to an aesthetic sense, about the past. He had practically no sense of nostalgia. He believed in applying highly rational standards to decision-making (he always thought me hopelessly intuitive) but he was full of strong emotions.36

  During the Easter vacation Tony went again to Pontypool; but only after a prickly exchange of letters, of which only one, from Roy, survives. Its length and complexity vividly suggest the tortuous sensitivities of their relationship:

  My dear Tony,

  I will begin by countering the charges you directed against my letter. The statements that you made were quite correct, but the conclusions that you drew were all wrong. You said that it was hardly worth reading and that the only thing that it accomplished was that it made you change, or rechange, your mind about coming to P’pool. But that was the sole purpose of the letter. I had nothing of particular interest to tell you and I should not have thought of writing at that stage had I not been continually terrified by the thought that the great but temperamental Tony, the complex character, the difficult boy, would suddenly erect a façade of sulkiness and for some obscure but significant reason refuse to communicate with me for the rest of the vac., thereby infusing his whole being with a feeling of intense satisfaction . . .

  I did think at the end of last term that you really wanted to come to Pontypool, but the general effect of your letter that came this morning was to completely contradict this . . . I should hate you to feel that you were under any obligation to come down here. I should in fact be bitterly dissappointed [sic] if you did not arrive next week, but you need not feel that you have to carry out the task of amusing me for ten days or so.fn6 Finally, I hope that you will not be so foolish as to misunderstand this paragraph. I want you to come v. much indeed.

  The rest of the letter was concerned with politics and suggested that Roy was still very much under Tony’s influence. He hoped that Tony would introduce him to ‘some of your more eminent political acquaintances’ in London – it is not clear whom he meant – ‘or would a stooge make things difficult?’ Despite his speech criticising Soviet policy, he was still worried by Labour’s hostility towards Russia since the Nazi–Soviet Pact, and by the expulsion of the fellow traveller D.N. Pritt from the Labour Party for defending the invasion of Finland. ‘In all political matters,’ he admitted, ‘I am feeling very desperately the need for your guidance.’ He ended by asking Tony to telephone Pontypool to confirm when he was coming; and signed off ‘Love, Roy’.37

  But the influence was not all one-way, since it was in the course of their conversations at Pontypool that the two friends determined to break away from the Communist-dominated Labour Club and form a rival Democratic Socialist Club committed explicitly to the Labour party. Clearly they were swayed by ‘energetic’ discussions with Arthur, who warned them – Tony in particular – that the only road to socialism in Britain was through Labour. When they had returned to Oxford, Arthur wrote Tony an avuncular letter from the standpoint of a practical politician. Doubtless he had often spoken in similar terms to Roy.

  My dear Tony . . .

  I think I can understand the struggle you are having with yourself, and the reason for it. I have a feeling that you have been living alongside, a sort of neighbour of, the real Labour movement. You are, I am certain, in deadly earnest to do the right thing. That is the quality that will put you right in the end. What you have lacked, and do not misunderstand when I say it, is experience of the average working man and woman . . . Oxford is a first-rate place for a Socialist if it can be joined to experience of the South Wales coalfield, or a similar industrial district. Perhaps a pure Oxford socialist is like pure gold, too soft to stand the wear and tear of usage! But you are blessed with a faith in the future of Labour that will urge you to gather experience of the real world, and when you have got that you will have one political god, and not several . . .

  Yours very sincerely,

  A.J.38

  Tony wrote to Philip Williams that ‘Papa’ (as he called Arthur) was ‘practically neurotic on the subject of the Left, with a very marked anti-middle-class intellectual bias’.39 Nevertheless he took his advice. In years to come, when Crosland had become Labour’s leading intellectual, he never forgot the importance of staying close to the Labour movement and the unions, investing his Grimsby constituents with a simple wisdom that Roy and others thought sentimental, if not positively phoney. In this respect Arthur could be said to have had, in the long run, more lasting influence on Tony than he had on Roy.

  The split in the Oxford University Labour Club (OULC) was precipitated by the National Executive’s decision to disaffiliate the ULF. At first, when some moderates began to talk of a breakaway, Roy and Tony were against it. Roy wrote a piece in the Bulletin arguing that a splinter club would not attract enough support to be viable (it had been tried at Cambridge): the moderates, he urged, must just work harder to counter the Communist influence. ‘It is by attempting to get more control of the existing organisation and not by wrecking everything that has been built up, that we can best hope to propagate the Labour Party line’40 – exactly the argument, ironically, used by Labour loyalists against the SDP in 1981. In February the OULC again debated Finland. Pliatzky again defended the Soviet action; Crosland – ‘with his customary suavity and self-assurance’ – now condemned it; but Denis Healey scornfully dismissed his apostasy, proposing a new version of Marx’s slogan: ‘Workers of the World unite! You have nothing to lose but your Liberals, and possibly your Social Democrats!’41 One wonders if he remembered this in 1981.

  Over Easter, Labour finally voted to disaffiliate the ULF (‘So the blow has fallen,’ Crosland and Jenkins wrote jointly in the Bulletin).42 At a packed meeting in the first week of the summer term they and a trade union-funded mature student called Ian Durham moved a proposal to sever the club’s connection with the ULF and reaffiliate with Labour. It was rejected by 182 votes to 108. But the rebels – or loyalists – were ready. ‘The following day,’ the Oxford Magazine reported, ‘leaflets were in circulation announcing that a new body had been formed under the logical, if ill-omened, title of the Democratic Socialist Club, and had already been recognised by the Labour Party.’43 Crosland was the first chairman, Durham was secretary and Jenkins treasurer; David Ginsburg and Anthony Elliott were also on the committee. G.D.H. Cole had agreed to be president and Patrick Gordon Walker senior treasurer, and they already had two messages of support, one from Attlee and another from ten leading dons including Sandy Lindsay, Dick Crossman, Frank Pakenham and A.L. Rowse (later joined by A.J.P. Taylor). An impressive programme of s
peakers was announced, including Herbert Morrison, Hugh Dalton, Cole and Crossman. It was an extremely well-organised coup. The printed membership card stated the formal objects of the new club:

  The Club stands for a policy of Democratic Socialism. It associates itself with the struggle of the Labour Party and the Trade Union movement to win Socialism by democratic methods, and it asserts its solidarity with the forces of Democratic Socialism throughout the world.44

  The leaflet gave a more colloquial version of its raison d’être:

  Who and What We Are

  Following the disaffiliation by the Labour Party of the old University Labour Federation . . . on the grounds that it was a Communist organisation whose whole policy was contrary to that of the Labour Party, we, the supporters of the Labour Party in Oxford have set up a NEW and BETTER Socialist Society.

  Under Entirely New Management

  We don’t like Hitler and we’re rather coy with Stalin. So we have NOTHING in common with the Stalinist anti-war policy of the old ‘Labour’ Club.

  Labour supported the war, the leaflet affirmed, but ‘WE ARE NOT CHAMBERLAIN’S STOOGES!’ Chamberlain must be replaced if the victory was to be for democracy. ‘THE DECKS ARE CLEARED FOR THE WAR ON TWO FRONTS! NAZISM MUST BE DESTROYED! CHAMBERLAIN MUST GO!’ The leaflet included an application form. ‘We welcome as members all those interested in democratic socialism.’45

  The new club quickly attracted 400 members, not just defecting members of the OULC, but others previously alienated by its hard-left line. It was an uncanny anticipation, on a miniature scale, of the SDP breakaway from Labour in 1981 in which Jenkins again played a leading part – though more successful, since the OUDSC did succeed in trouncing the old Labour Club. Eventually the two were reunited, but the breakaway was to be repeated at regular intervals by future generations, with more premonitions of the SDP: by Bill Rodgers, Shirley Williams and Dick Taverne in 1950, and by Alec McGivan and Matthew Oakeshott – with Jenkins’ support – in 1967. The fault line between the far left and centre left remained astonishingly persistent over forty years. Among those who stuck with the pro-Soviet OULC in 1940 were Healey (‘more from inertia and indifference than from conviction,’ he claimed in his memoirs),46 Edmund Dell (another member of the Callaghan Cabinet in the 1970s who would join the SDP in the 1980s) and Leo Pliatzky. Another unrepentant Stalinist was Iris Murdoch, treasurer of the OULC. As her opposite number in the OUDSC, Jenkins had to wrangle with her over the division of assets and liabilities. ‘Both our different ideological positions and the arm’s length nature of our negotiations,’ he recalled, ‘were indicated by our respective salutations. “Dear Comrade Jenkins,” she began. “Dear Miss Murdoch,” I replied.’47 Forty-two years later the now-celebrated novelist made amends by joining the SDP.

  No sooner had the OUDSC been launched than the ‘Phoney War’ ended with the German invasion of the Low Countries on 10 May, Chamberlain’s replacement by Churchill, the British evacuation from Dunkirk and the collapse of France. During these critical weeks, to his subsequent shame, Jenkins was more exercised by his campaign for the presidency of the Union than by the cataclysmic events across the Channel. In his anxiety he spoke almost every week. On 25 April – the day after the Labour Club vote – he had the support of two prominent MPs, Beverley Baxter (Conservative) and Harold Nicolson (National Labour) in moving ‘That . . . German aggression has left no place for neutrality’. His opening speech was ‘at once a direct attack on neutrals and a sidelong attack on the Government’. But in a packed House he only just prevailed by 237:221.48 On 2 May – a week before the House of Commons debate that toppled Chamberlain – he supported a motion ‘That HMG is incapable of winning the peace’, which was carried by 81:48. (‘The Librarian’ – as Roy now was – ‘advocated a Socialist peace effectively’.)49 On 9 May Jenkins and Crosland both successfully opposed the motion ‘That this House dislikes Signor Mussolini less than it does M. Stalin’. (‘The Librarian desired at least a pact of non-aggression with Russia’.)50 But on 16 May, in a poorly attended debate after Labour had joined the government, they differed again. Roy loyally supported the motion ‘That this House has confidence in Mr Churchill’s coalition’. But Tony declined to do so, on the ground that several of the discredited appeasers remained in office.51, fn7

  Two weeks later came the presidential debate, on the motion ‘That without a great growth of Socialism, this war will have been fought in vain’. Jenkins had hoped to secure Attlee – now deputy Prime Minister – as his guest speaker, but had to make do with the editor of the New Statesman, Kingsley Martin, and the Labour MP (and leading internationalist) Philip Noel-Baker. His opponent was James Comyn, an Irishman from New College, later a judge, who was supported by a Liberal barrister, A.S. Comyns-Carr, KC. Jenkins’ speech, the Oxford Magazine reported, was ‘fluent and well-prepared’. ‘Nazism,’ he argued, ‘was a religion.’

  We too must fight inspired by belief in a new world order. The League of Nations had failed because of Capitalism’s inherent tendency towards war . . . A Socialist Germany was vital for European peace. The power of the international financier must be destroyed if social justice was to be won.53

  Comyn made the case for liberalism against socialism. Jenkins comfortably won the debate by 104 votes to 68; but he lost the presidency the next day by five votes, 117:112.

  He was bitterly disappointed by his failure. His friends had urged him to make more of his working-class background, but he refused. ‘The poor are poor,’ he told them. ‘You don’t want any sob-stuff on that.’ David Ginsburg thought that this fastidiousness cost him the presidency. ‘The grand effete manner of Roy Jenkins,’ he told the Sunday Express in 1972, ‘is nothing new.’54 In fact he probably failed because he was not quite enough of a personality. He was still seen as worthy, shy, diligent, but a bit dull: Tony Crosland’s sidekick, his speeches highly competent, but not brilliant. Alternatively the members may simply have had enough of Balliol treating the presidency as its exclusive preserve.

  Crosland still had a year of his four-year ‘Greats’ degree to go. He could have stayed on to finish it, but he was nearly twenty-two and, in the crisis of 1940, fighting Hitler seemed more urgent than Greek philosophy, so he decided to volunteer at once. While awaiting the call he stayed again with Roy at Pontypool – a period that he was soon recalling as an idyllic interlude, his normal cynical insouciance dented by the harsh prospect suddenly before him:

  The summons came as a bit of a shock, as I was not expecting it so soon, & at odd intervals during the day I felt rather like bursting into tears, particularly at moments when my thoughts turned to some of our happy moments together at Pontypool.55

  He was posted to the Royal Welch Fusiliers – ‘whoever they might be’ – based at Northwich in Cheshire. The day before leaving (from London) he wrote to Roy that he had been to see the film Black Velvet again. ‘But I didn’t enjoy it a tenth as much as when we saw it together & I thought of you all the time.’ He mentioned that he had booked Roy a place at a Fabian Society conference at Dartington in the first week of August, and signed off ‘Love from a very dismal Tony’.56 His journey north was a further shock, the Oxford Marxist suddenly finding himself thrown in with a lot of working-class cockneys with whom he felt nothing in common. ‘I spoke to nobody and was quite literally on the verge of tears the whole time.’ He hoped to be sent to officer training in about two months, ‘For which thank God. One day’s democracy is quite enough for me. I’ve never been so miserable & sick for f . . . [friends?] in my whole life.’57, fn8

  A week or two later Tony wrote again, thanking Roy for his letters, which unfortunately do not survive. He was settling down now, gradually discovering the more educated men in his company and even getting on better with the cockneys, who regarded him as a complete ‘cissie’ because he swore only moderately and did not perpetually make crude jokes:

  The lack of political consciousness is almost incredible . . . Seen from this close proximity to a cross
-section of the young British working class an awful lot of the N.S. [New Statesman] & Tribune appears even bigger balls than it did before . . . The only political issue in which these people are at all interested is the question of duty-free cigarettes for the troops.

  Meanwhile he had managed to spend an afternoon’s leave in Northwich, having ‘a beautiful long bath & a glorious tea’ in an expensive hotel. ‘It was exactly the sort of afternoon which we used to spend so blissfully together.’ He signed off with an extraordinarily fond endearment, which leaves little doubt of his feelings for Roy: ‘Well, my angel, I envy you your Dartington holiday sincerely. Love, Tony.’58

  Tony also wrote twice to Arthur and Hattie, letters which reflect his close relationship with the family. The first, to Hattie alone, thanked her for sending him socks: ‘It was very kind of you to remember the lost (and black?) sheep of the family!’

  I’m afraid the Army is having the effect of increasing violently all those bad characteristics of mine to which you used to draw attention, particularly the intolerance & the bitterness.

  As to the general morale & feelings of the men, their attitude to the army & the wider question of the war, it seems to me a political question of vital & urgent importance. But I won’t say anything about it, because if I did I’m quite certain Mr Jenkins would disbelieve it, & put it down to my Leftist deviations & general political unreliability . . .

  He was not sure he could get through the period till his OCTU (officer training) ‘without running mad and murdering an officer or two’. Meanwhile, he concluded, ‘I only wish I could have got leave from here to come down to Pontypool, as the wise, peaceful & philosophic atmosphere of Greenlands is just what I need at the moment. Please give my respects to Mr Jenkins. Yrs affectionately, Tony.’59