Roy Jenkins

by John Campbell

  Meanwhile the most pressing question facing the new party was relations with the Liberals. Again, the four leaders fell initially into three camps. From the time of his first conversation with David Steel in 1979, Jenkins had always envisaged the closest possible cooperation: in his case, electoral realism – recognising that a fourth party would have no chance at all in competition with the third – was bolstered by his historical attachment to the Asquithian tradition and his close friendship with members of the Asquith family. There was some truth in the gibe that the only Liberals he actually knew were Bonham Carters and Grimonds. He would have had no difficulty joining the Liberals had he not judged that a new party would attract wider support; and even after the SDP was formed he would have been happy to allow joint membership of both parties. In a speech to the Gladstone Club just five days after the launch he acknowledged differences between the Liberal and social democratic traditions, but claimed to see no differences of substance and called for a ‘partnership of principle’ to seize the present opportunity.99 Rodgers and Williams started out with a much more typical Labour view of the Liberals as cranky and irrelevant: they shared none of Jenkins’ fondness for them – they both admitted that they had previously had very little to do with them – but quickly realised that there was no future in fighting them and came to see their positive qualities as campaigners on the ground. Owen was different again: he had made his career in the West Country where the Liberals were historically strong. He had fought his first election against Mark Bonham Carter at Torrington in 1964 and took an instant dislike to his superior Balliol manner.100 Since 1966 his marginal seat in Plymouth had been threatened by successive Liberal candidates who always won a vote bigger than his majority: he accordingly regarded them as unprincipled spoilers, and his view was shared by other recruits to the SDP – from both Labour and Conservative – who had spent years fighting the Liberals in their own areas and had no wish to get into bed with them now.

  These sharply contrasting views were impossible to reconcile. Just a week after Owen had warned his co-leaders that ‘David Steel is pushing us all the time, for obvious reasons, on his timetable . . . Nothing could be more damaging for us than to be forced into an Alliance before we are ready’,101 Jenkins was at the Gladstone Club openly calling for a ‘partnership of principle’. The first meeting of the SDP steering committee after the launch accepted the necessity of a pact, but betrayed the new party’s assumption of seniority by agreeing that they should ‘continue to show magnanimity’ towards the Liberals.102 This attitude was resented by many Liberals who felt that they had been building up their strength on the ground locally for years and did not take kindly to a few failed Labour grandees swanning in late in the day expecting to harvest the fruits of their hard work. The outspoken Cyril Smith (ex-Labour himself) spoke for many grass-roots Liberals when he called for the SDP to be ‘strangled at birth’.103 Bill Rodgers’ off-the-cuff suggestion that the two parties should fight ‘about half’ the seats each thus outraged the partisans on both sides equally. The Liberals thought he had a cheek expecting so much – even Steel initially only imagined the SDP fighting around 100 seats – while Owen thought he had fatally compromised the SDP’s identity by conceding the Liberals so many. In his memoirs Owen still maintained that the SDP could, and should, have established itself clearly as the third party, ahead of the Liberals, by taking them on and beating them in some early by-elections, before contemplating making an alliance with them.104 In practice Rodgers’ fifty:fifty division was quickly accepted as the obvious middle way; but it took a lot of hard negotiation over the next two years to nail down the detail, which went a long way to sour the willing union of hearts and minds that Jenkins had hoped for.

  That union was brought a great deal closer by a fruitful meeting between Rodgers and Shirley Williams, on the one hand, and Steel and Richard Holme (that year’s President of the Liberal party), on the other, when they all met at the annual Königswinter Anglo-German Conference in Bonn in early April. ‘Well away from the basilisk eye of the British media’, as Shirley Williams put it, they took the chance to discuss their future relationship and semi-formalised it in the form of a ‘Königswinter Compact’, written down by Richard Holme and initialled by the four of them.105 This was the first time Rodgers and Williams had properly talked with Steel and they got on like a house on fire. It could be said that he played them very skilfully. But in the enthusiasm of the moment they exceeded their authority, and at the next meeting of the steering committee, in Owen’s words, ‘all hell broke loose among the SDP MPs’ who demanded a special meeting the next day to discuss the matter.106 Practically every member of the now nineteen-strong committee spoke, and they divided almost equally. Rodgers and Williams defended what they had agreed, winning support from David Marquand, Tom Bradley and three or four others (Dick Taverne was absent); but Ian Wrigglesworth ‘felt very strongly that the Social Democrats were being constantly “bounced” by David Steel on all aspects of the Lib/SD relationship’: it was ‘nonsense’, he argued, to deal with the Liberals on a basis of equality when the polls showed far higher support for the SDP. Edward Lyons felt that ‘we were in bed with the Liberals far too early and this could damage recruitment’. Mike Thomas thought the public saw the Liberals as failures, the SDP as ‘new and positive’, and wanted no discussion of electoral arrangements at all for twelve to eighteen months. Even such a loyal Jenkinsite as Bob Maclennan, who had considered joining the Liberals himself if the SDP had not come about, backed the objectors. Owen and Jenkins spoke last. Owen accepted that they did not want an open dispute with the Liberals, but warned that they were in ‘a political bargaining situation’ with them. Jenkins, in the chair, was forced to agree that the two parties should retain their separate identities: ‘There was no idea of merger.’ He admitted the difficulty of negotiating with the Liberals, but was anxious that Steel’s determined support of the SDP should be reciprocated; in return he thought that Steel should be asked privately – presumably by himself – to halt the selection of Liberal candidates in winnable seats.107

  Owen thought Königswinter was where ‘relations with the Liberals went critically wrong’ and accused Rodgers and Williams of ‘selling the SDP down the river’.108 But he acquitted them of acting dishonourably: he believed they honestly changed their minds about the necessity of working with the Liberals. His lasting bitterness was reserved for Jenkins, who he believed had plotted with David Steel to amalgamate their two parties all along. ‘I find it impossible to escape the conclusion that Roy Jenkins misled me and some of the other MPs who left the Labour Party . . . about his real intentions,’ he wrote in his memoirs. ‘Roy used the SDP. It would have been more honourable to have joined the Liberals in 1981.’109 Jenkins’ denial in his own memoirs is unconvincing. It is clear from his Brussels diary that he did envisage a merger with the Liberals sooner rather than later. Of course he always wanted an organic union that would evolve naturally through cooperation on the ground – as to a great extent it did; but he was keen for that to happen as rapidly as possible. He was also probably right that under the first-past-the-post electoral system there was no room for two competing parties in the centre: the idea that the SDP could have simply brushed the Liberals aside underestimated their deep roots and resilience. Had the SDP really been able to take 90 per cent of Labour’s vote, as Bill Rodgers had once hoped, then indeed the Liberals might have been irrelevant; but it was already clear by the time of the launch that this was not the sort of party the SDP was, and it was not going to push Labour to the margin. It could be argued that without Jenkins the SDP might have made more appeal to Labour supporters and attracted more defectors. But in practice they had no option, as Rodgers and Williams quickly recognised, but to cooperate as harmoniously as possible with the Liberals. Jenkins achieved the sort of party he had wanted, and he soon got his alliance with the Liberals, which for a time was extraordinarily successful. His political judgement was better than Owen’s, whose independen
t SDP successfully fighting all three other parties at once was always a fantasy. In truth Jenkins’ view of the party’s ultimate future was never in much doubt. But to the extent that he claimed throughout the formation of the SDP and beyond that there was ‘no idea of merger’, it must be admitted that he did mislead Owen, Thomas, Wrigglesworth and the others who wanted no such thing.

  Despite their grumblings, the ‘Königswinter Compact’ led to the establishment of two joint working parties and a ‘Joint Statement of Principles’, which Steel and Shirley Williams unveiled in June, sitting together on the grass opposite Westminster Abbey like a pair of ‘superannuated student lovers’.110 But it was the momentum of events which really forced the two parties together. Politics is all about elections. The SDP decided early on that it was not ready to contest the local elections in May. But the leaders always knew that they must be ready to fight by-elections wherever they might occur. As it happened, the first came up in a constituency that they would not have chosen – the safe Labour seat of Warrington in Cheshire, where the sitting Member who had held the seat since 1961 resigned in late May to become a circuit judge. With a Labour majority of 10,000 and a Liberal vote of less than 3,000 to build on, Warrington was 550th on Matthew Oakeshott’s calculation of winnable seats.111 Nevertheless they knew they had to fight it and the immediate assumption was that Shirley Williams should be the candidate. The SDP needed to field one of its national figures to establish its credibility, and a traditional Labour seat was more obviously suited to her ‘demotic appeal’ – as Jenkins called it – than to his, especially as Warrington had a substantial Roman Catholic population.112 A Sun poll on 4 June suggested that she would win it easily.113 Had she done so it would have made her front-runner for the leadership; and she would very probably have been able to hold it at the General Election. But, for a combination of personal reasons, she declined.

  ‘If ever a constituency was made for me,’ she wrote in her memoirs, ‘this was it.’ Turning it down was ‘probably the single biggest mistake of my political life’.114 David Owen was appalled, believing that if she had taken it on and won, the whole history of the SDP would have been transformed. In an interview some years later she admitted, ‘I could kick myself . . . for not having fought Warrington.’ But she explained that she had commitments at Harvard to complete and a book to finish and was still not sure she wanted to go back into the Commons at all.115 In her memoirs she added that after her divorce in 1974 she was a single mother with a teenage daughter and no money; if she failed to win she would find herself without a job and damaged by a second defeat. ‘I did not dither,’ she insisted. ‘I quailed.’116 But she appeared to dither, and her standing in the party never recovered. The opportunity fell instead to Jenkins, whose standing conversely was hugely boosted by the way he accepted the challenge.

  Bill Rodgers thought that Jenkins only ‘stepped reluctantly into the breach’.117 (‘“I suppose I’ll have to fight it,” you said wearily when Shirley made clear she wouldn’t,’ he recalled in 1990.)118 David Owen, on the contrary, thought he was keen to stand. ‘He was like an old stallion, sniffing the smell of the racecourse, hoping that if the favourite withdrew he might take her place at the starting line.’119 The truth is that he was keen to show his paces, but knew that a bad result would set back both the fledgling party and his own chance of leading it. He also knew he had to gamble. Shirley Williams announced her decision to the steering committee on 1 June. The following weekend, to avoid publicity, Jenkins asked Jennifer to reconnoitre Warrington while he was speaking at a conference in Lausanne. It was actually a less grim prospect than it first appeared: unlike many declining manufacturing towns in the North-West, Warrington was not dependent on a single industry but still boasted a relatively mixed economy based on brewing, distilling (the famous ‘Vladivar vodka from Varrington’), detergents and light engineering. Unemployment was lower than on most of Merseyside: there was no inner-city blight, just sprawling council estates – rather like Stechford, in fact. Unlike Stechford, however, it had some history and a compact old centre with a covered market.120 Jennifer thought it would be ‘a hard nut to crack’, but it was not entirely unpromising territory.121

  Jenkins received plenty of advice. Jack Diamond urged that he must be prepared to ‘fight his way to No. 10’, not expect the others simply to concede the leadership to him;122 while the Guardian columnist Peter Jenkins – the extent of whose private commitment to the SDP might have surprised his readers – was equally sure that he was right to go for it, especially after Shirley Williams’ damaging refusal:

  There is everything to gain and nothing to lose. In your case, to be seen to be taking on the tough one is exactly right for the king returned from across the water . . . On the basis of the Observer poll I would say it is just winnable. The campaign is bound to generate intense media excitement and the Labour party is likely to do everything in its power to assist the SDP cause. We should throw everything we’ve got into the fight, cash in on the underdog status (how can one be a claret-drinking underdog?) and turn it into the most exciting and important by-election of the post-war period.123

  That was pretty much what Jenkins did. He announced his willingness to stand after the Monday meeting of the steering committee on 8 June and travelled up to Warrington on the 11th, where he was enthusiastically adopted by the small local SDP group and then met the local Liberals to ask for their support. They sought four assurances: that the Liberals should have first option at the next by-election; that they should have one of the two new seats when Warrington was split at the next election; that he should ‘affirm publicly the value of Liberal support’ during the campaign; and that he should describe himself as ‘Social Democrat with Liberal support’ on the ballot paper. ‘To each of these,’ the chairman reported to David Steel, ‘Mr Jenkins replied unequivocally and enthusiastically “Yes”.’

  The Media were then allowed in and Mr Jenkins spoke for 10 minutes. His enthusiasm for a full Liberal partnership was so vigorous and persuasive that he cut a swathe through any Liberal doubts and he was adopted as candidate with total Liberal support.124

  There was much mockery of ‘Woy’ Jenkins, with his famous speech defect, fighting a seat he could not even pronounce – JAK in the London Evening Standard showed him arriving with his suitcases on a rainswept railway platform to be told by a porter: ‘No lad, this is Warrington, Wowington must be up near Rochdale’125 – and still more scepticism at the pampered Brussels fat cat descending to a gritty northern town that most metropolitan commentators had never visited. But in his adoption speech he rejected the suggestion that he would be out of his element:

  The idea that I have served my political life among rolling pastures or leafy suburban avenues . . . is ludicrous. I have represented one of the most industrial seats in Birmingham for 27 years. I believe I had happy relations with them. I certainly won nine elections there.126

  During the next fortnight he paid only two more short visits to the constituency, which led the Liberals to complain that the SDP lacked ‘a sense of urgency about this by-election’.127 But from 25 June he established himself with Jennifer at the Fir Tree Motel on the southern edge of the town, giving himself three weeks of solid campaigning before polling day on 16 July – which he described in his memoirs as ‘much the longest continuous series of nights in one place that I had spent for at least five, maybe ten, years past’.128 For the whole three weeks he denied himself both country weekends and London restaurants – though he did find an acceptable French restaurant in nearby Knutsford to which he escaped two or three times.fn12

  After a slightly nervous start he surprised himself by enjoying canvassing more than he had ever done in Stechford, and everyone else by the energy with which he threw himself into it, as his belief in what he was doing overcame his natural shyness. He had a lot of outside support. The other members of the Gang of Four, all the SDP MPs and David Steel came several times, as did other Liberals like Jo Grimond and Cyril Smith w
ho had been critical of the SDP, plus busloads of enthusiastic new SDP members from as far afield as Lincoln and Birmingham and experienced Liberal workers from Liverpool. George Brown came and did a breezy walkabout (making much more impact than Harold Wilson, who made a rather shamefaced appearance for Labour on the eve of polling day); while old friends like Ronnie McIntosh and Mark and Leslie Bonham Carter also came to help. Jenkins held relatively few public meetings, but mainly canvassed in the street and house-to-house and visited factories, talking personally to as many people as possible.fn13 The Times’ sketch-writer Frank Johnson wrote of an ‘Avalanche of Charm as Jenkins Sweeps In’. Johnson started out by mocking Jenkins’ incongruously patrician accent as he strolled around a shopping centre – ‘What did the people make of him, one wondered, as he bade them “good morning” and asked if they shopped here “orphan”131 – but by the second week he had changed his tune. He still wondered what the voters of Warrington thought of ‘the grand, stupendously distinguished but largely incomprehensible magnifico from another world who has been introducing himself with a courtly bow of his smooth shiny head to incredulous passers-by’, wooing them with ‘that incomparable voice, beside which Sir John Gielgud sounds like rough trade’; but concluded, to his surprise, that people really rather liked him.132 Others were impressed by the way Jenkins listened to their concerns and did not talk down to them. ‘Mr Jenkins is a famous and civilised man,’ The Economist commented after it was over. ‘He worked hard and argued seriously. Snobbish London journalists were wrong to suppose that working-class Warringtonians would not appreciate this . . . He got credit for putting Warrington on the map.’133