Many years ago, shortly after Roy Jenkins and his fellow conspirators left Labour to set up their own party, I was asked by the now defunct New Socialist magazine to write an in-depth profile of him. It was supposed to be a knocking job, but the more I read about his tenure as home secretary, chancellor and president of the European Union I began to realise that he was one of the most significant politicians of the postwar era. A reading of John Campbell's magnificent biography only confirms that impression.
To this day in many Labour circles Jenkins is regarded not only as a traitor to the cause but also as an out of touch, claret-swilling elitist, who had travelled a vast distance from his boyhood in the Welsh valleys, and whose inability to get his tongue around the letter R made him the butt of endless mockery.
As Professor Campbell concedes, there is some truth in this caricature, but it is only a small part of the big picture. Despite his love of wining and dining, often in the company of Tory grandees, Jenkins throughout his life continued to espouse the values of liberal social democracy, including the redistribution of wealth, better public services funded by higher taxation for the wealthy – a philosophy that put him well to the left of New Labour. He even questioned the need for a new generation of nuclear weapons and – although by and large an admirer of Tony Blair – he opposed the Iraq war from the outset. "My view," he said in his last speech in the Lords, "is that the prime minister, far from lacking conviction, has almost too much … I am in favour of courage, but not of treating it as a substitute for wisdom."
This is an official biography, but not a hagiography. Despite owning up to having been "an enthusiastic foot soldier of the SDP" and a lifelong admirer of his subject, Campbell, a professional to his fingertips, has left no stone unturned and the result is an objective and compelling account of a remarkable life. Although he never met his subject, Campbell has had the co-operation of friends and family and access to a trove of hitherto private papers and correspondence which are especially illuminating about Jenkins's early life.
His working-class origins can be exaggerated. True, his father and grandfather were Welsh miners, but by the time young Roy, an only child, came along, his father, Arthur, was a full-time union official and a county councillor. The family had a live-in maid and the use of a motor car and were living in a substantial house some way up the hill from the terraced cottages of the pit villages.
In 1935, when Roy was 15, his father was elected to parliament and served throughout the war as parliamentary private secretary to Clement Attlee. The Attlee connection was to come in handy in kick-starting Roy's political career.
At Oxford he came under the spell of Tony Crosland with whom he appears to have had a homosexual dalliance. He remained an admirer of Crosland all his life, despite Crosland's later resentment when Jenkins's career leap-frogged his own.
Elected to parliament, aged just 28, first for Southwark and later for the Birmingham seat of Stechford, Jenkins became one of that group of bright, upwardly mobile young men around Hugh Gaitskell who argued that, if Labour was ever to hold office again after the defeats of 1951 and 1955, it had to abandon its obsession with nationalisation, accept the mixed economy and concentrate instead on appealing to the aspirant middle classes by focusing on issues such as greater equality, the breakdown of class barriers and wider opportunities for personal fulfilment.
In his two spells as home secretary Jenkins presided over a social revolution, seeing onto the statute book the decriminalisation of homosexuality, abortion law reform, the abolition of censorship and the first steps to outlaw discrimination on grounds of race or sex. All of these reforms have stood the test of time. He was also probably Labour's most successful chancellor, nursing the economy back to health after the 1967 devaluation.
Second only to Edward Heath, he played a leading part in taking Britain into the European Economic Community, leading a rebellion of 69 Labour MPs which tipped the balance in favour of entry. It was his lifelong enthusiasm for Europe that sowed the seeds of mutual disillusion between Jenkins and the Labour party and ultimately led to his defection, although ironically Labour today is much keener on the European Union than the Tories.
The final part of his legacy is more controversial. In 1981, along with three colleagues (Shirley Williams, David Owen and Bill Rodgers, the so-called Gang of Four), he attempted to break the mould of British politics by leaving Labour and setting up the Social Democratic party. His critics would say that the only effect of this failed experiment was to split the opposition down the middle and guarantee Margaret Thatcher a decade of untrammelled power. His friends would say that, on the contrary, he was the godfather of New Labour and that it was the trauma of the SDP's defection that forced Labour to make itself electable again. There is truth in both arguments.
One sometimes hears it alleged that Jenkins was lazy but, as Campbell conclusively demonstrates, nothing could be further from the truth. Jenkins had a gargantuan appetite for work. As well as being a major figure on the political landscape for more than 30 years, he found time to write 22 books, including bestselling biographies of his political heroes Asquith, Gladstone and Churchill. This was in addition to an extraordinarily active social life which, despite an apparently strong marriage, included a number of affairs – several of which are documented here. He was also a bon vivant extraordinaire. In his entire adult life, there is scarcely a day when he did not find time for a leisurely lunch or dinner, often accompanied by a considerable quantity of alcohol, in the company of one or more of his wide circle friends.
By any reckoning this was a remarkable life, to which Campbell has done full justice. Jenkins was blessed, too, with a good death. Not for him the long decline into senility and incontinence that awaits so many of us. He died on January 5, 2003, just a few pages short of completing a biography of President Roosevelt. His last words to Jennifer, his loyal and tolerant wife of 62 years, was to ask for "two eggs, lightly poached". When she came back with them, he was gone.
Chris Mullin is a former Labour minister and the author of three volumes of political diaries.
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