The second, addressed to both Arthur and Hattie, was a serious account of how much he had learned from mixing with the ranks, and the urgent need for political education to make them understand what the war was about. Labour, he urged Arthur, needed to take more interest in the army, which was still dominated by regular army attitudes inappropriate to a conscript force. Nevertheless, he added, ‘I can assure you that the last few weeks have greatly strengthened my attachment to the L.P. [Labour Party] & I have moved even further away from “Left” intellectualism.’60
Meanwhile Roy was doing his bit in the form of a two-week forestry course in Shropshire with David Ginsburg and Anthony Elliott, at the end of which he contrived to meet Tony for dinner in Crewe. Finding himself in that part of the world again three years later, he dined in the same hotel and found it ‘pregnant with memories of Tony . . . It was there,’ he recalled cryptically, ‘that he gave me the orange tie – a very symbolic gift.’61 Symbolic of what? We can only guess. In the interval, Roy’s life had been transformed, because that August at Dartington he met Jennifer Morris.
* * *
fn1 The only substantial breach in Oxford’s near-monopoly was made by the post-Thatcher generation of younger Tories, almost all of whom – Kenneth Clarke, Michael Howard, Norman Lamont, Leon Brittan, John Gummer, Michael Portillo, Peter Lilley and David Mellor – went to Cambridge.
fn2 Reviewing Heath’s memoirs in 1998, Jenkins recalled the first time he ever saw ‘Teddy’, ‘60 years ago, leaning against the club fender of the Balliol Junior Common Room after breakfast and reading The Times with great seriousness’.11
fn3 Some, like Healey, had no time for all the dressing up: but Jenkins loved that side of it. He bought his Union tailcoat in Cardiff, and congratulated himself that he was still wearing it for state banquets sixty years later – ‘an evening coat having the advantage over a morning one that it does not have to be done up in the middle’.12
fn4 Seligman, McIntosh, Elliott, Ashcroft and Bruce all enjoyed Arthur and Hattie’s hospitality in Pontypool. ‘In the much less travelling world of the 1930s,’ Roy wrote with some exaggeration, ‘it was almost like being taken to visit a Druse stronghold in the Lebanon.’ The ‘sense of local power . . . was intriguing [to] conventionally-educated upper-middle-class boys from London or the Home Counties’.24 This is a very rare example of Jenkins playing up his roots to impress his friends.
fn5 ‘As we moved up through the Welsh marches on that short January day,’ Jenkins remembered at Pliatzy’s memorial service sixty years later, ‘Pliatzky and Crosland kept up their spirits by singing left-wing songs. I was not able to join in, not out of ideological disapproval, but because of an inability, despite my Welsh origin, ever to sing a note. But the recital left its mark on me, and nearly fifty years later I caused mild surprise by choosing the Soviet Airmen’s Song . . . as one of my choices for Desert Island Discs. It was really in memory of that day.’31
fn6 Jenkins at this period could never spell ‘disappointed’, but regularly spelled it and similar words with a double ‘s’.
fn7 The rump Labour Club unrepentantly denounced Labour for joining the government: ‘The Labour Party leaders now accept office under Churchill in order to bring even greater misery and destruction to the peoples of Europe.’52
fn8 The corner of this letter, including the ending, is torn off.
3
The Gate at Dartington
JENNIFER WAS THE daughter of Parker Morris, Town Clerk of Westminster, a somewhat austere public servant who had enjoyed a meteoric career in local government, rising from deputy Town Clerk of Salford to Town Clerk of Chesterfield and thence, aged only thirty-eight, to the pinnacle of his profession in 1929. He was knighted in 1941 for his civil defence work in London, but is best remembered today for chairing a committee for the Macmillan government which recommended minimum standards for floor space, ceiling height and so on. ‘Parker Morris standards’ were made compulsory for new homes in 1969 and are still the benchmark in debates about housing to this day. Jennifer – born in Buxton in January 1921 and thus just two months younger than Roy – fully inherited both her father’s ability and his devotion to public service, plus a strong feminist commitment from her mother, who had been one of the first women journalists on the Manchester Guardian during the First World War. She was tall, slim, elegant and serious-minded, something of a bluestocking. After boarding school at St Mary’s, Calne, she went on to read history at Girton College, Cambridge, where by the end of her first year she was already chairman of the Labour Club. In this capacity she attended the Fabian summer school at Dartington (in south Devon) in August 1940 with her friend Jane, daughter of G.D.H. and Margaret Cole, then the leading Fabian couple. These summer schools were a combination of serious political discussion with rather self-consciously hearty relaxation. Roy wrote that it was a mixed cricket match on the fifth day that incongruously threw him and Jennifer together. ‘Inspired by some exhilaration of attraction, I captained one side, performed unusually well and lost some inhibitions in the flush of victory.’1 In that moment – sanctified in their private memory as ‘The Gate at Dartington’ – their lives were changed for ever. As Jennifer wrote in 1942:
Before it we were just interested in each other and might easily have said goodbye without ever seeing each other again and without thinking much of each other – at least after a week or two had passed. And then the Gate came – almost like a miracle. After that, even tho’ we still didn’t know each other v. well everything was completely changed. After that we always expected each other to want to see one and to spend all possible time with one.2
When the summer school ended the next day they left together – she to a fruit-picking camp near Evesham, he back to Pontypool – travelling together as far as Bristol. From Evesham, Jennifer wrote Roy the first letter in what was to become an immense (and immensely revealing) correspondence over the next five years. This letter, Roy confessed in 1942, he knew almost by heart, ‘because I read it so often in vain searches for any signs of special affection. I was much too stupid, or perhaps merely too unconfident, to realise that its having been written on the Saturday evening was a much more important sign than anything I could hope to find inside.’3 He was so besotted that when he went to London a few days later – while Jennifer was still in Evesham – he went up to Hampstead to gaze at the house where she grew up.4 Over the following weeks they met again several times in London, where Roy had got a temporary job with the Fabian Society, and were caught up in one of the first air-raids. (Arthur wrote to Tony that Roy was ‘caught in a cinema during an air-raid warning’ – he did not yet know about Jennifer – ‘and was there till 4 a.m.’)5 Roy was also invited one weekend to Henley, where Parker Morris had evacuated his family for the duration of the war.
Jennifer visited Roy in Oxford at least once during the following term and they both declared their love after spending some more time together in early December, before returning to their families for Christmas. ‘My darling Roy,’ Jennifer wrote, ‘You know I think I’ve loved you ever since that gate at Dartington – it was quite surprising how much I missed you at Evesham.’ She had been reading a Chinese philosopher called Lin Yutang who taught that detachment was a protection against being hurt, but believed that ‘it must also prevent you from feeling so intensely happy as we’ve been the last week’. She thought that instinct and emotion were more important than intellect. ‘I don’t know that you agree, I know I go too far the other way, and am very bad at analysing and thinking clearly . . . You think of things and analyse things I have never thought of.’ ‘Darling I do love you,’ she concluded. ‘Very very much love, Jennifer.’6
Roy wrote to her the same day. ‘We were so close together during the last week and you almost seemed to have become so much a part of me that I just can’t realise that we won’t see each other again for nearly four weeks.’7 But it took her letter – ‘by far the most exciting letter that I have ever received’ – to impel him t
o a similar, but characteristically qualified, declaration: ‘I’m glad that you think you loved me ever since the gate at Dartington; I’m practically certain that I’ve loved you ever since then.’ He thought ‘the philosophy of your Mr Lin Yutang . . . a little muddled’; but ended with the assurance that ‘I love you too’.8
This was to be the character of their letters over the next four years: Roy always trying to analyse, quantify and date their love, his every expression of happiness at being together or misery at being apart carefully weighed against previous occasions that were happier or less happy, more or less miserable, expressing his mania for precise calibration even in matters of love; Jennifer by comparison more spontaneous and occasionally irritated by his qualifications. But from now on neither of them had any serious doubt that their lives were totally bound up in one another.
Roy returned to Oxford in October with ‘a singularly well-timed injection of confidence and optimism’.9 He did not live in college this year, but took over Crosland’s former digs at 2 St John Street, sharing them with ‘Shy’ Halevy and another man. He was elected president of the Balliol Junior Common Room – a post previously held by both Ted Heath and Denis Healey – a measure of his growing confidence and popularity: another freshman who came up that year remembered ‘a slim young man with no signs of greatness but bursting with Welsh charm’.10 But he still devoted most of his energy to the OUDSC and the Union. The OUDSC continued to thrive, with an impressive programme of speakers for the autumn term including Harold Laski, Ellen Wilkinson and the publisher of the Left Book Club, Victor Gollancz. Jenkins continued as treasurer for this term, before succeeding Durham as the third chairman in January. Unusually, he also made a second bid for the presidency of the Union. He spoke twice in October – against Labour remaining in coalition with the Conservatives after the war, then in favour of abolishing the House of Lords – before his second presidential debate on 21 November on the motion ‘That this House does not wish to hear of the Conservatives again’. The guest speakers were Aneurin Bevan, then the most prominent Labour left-winger, on Jenkins’ side, and a little-known Tory MP called Samuel Hammersley on the other.fn1 Jenkins mounted a sweeping attack on the Tories, inviting the House to vote ‘on the past deeds of the Conservative Party’ rather than on his Tory rival’s aspirations:
The past deeds conclusively showed that twenty years of virtual power had only succeeded in destroying post-war hopes of better things to come. Conservative power began with victorious Britain and ended, he hoped never to be resurrected, with a Britain discredited and distrusted in the world. At home their idea of justice was the Means Test; abroad, the strengthening of their potential enemies. Mr Jenkins was, as usual, sincere and impressive, and he concluded by addressing what was almost a personal appeal to the Treasurer [Roger Gray, later a QC] to jettison the vanquished Conservatives and take his true place with the victorious progressives.11
Arthur came up to Oxford to hear the debate and was delighted by Roy’s performance, as he wrote proudly two days later:
Your speech pleased me more than I could tell you. It gave me one of the best thrills I ever had . . . You opened so well that I felt you could not keep it up, but you did, in voice, manner and deportment, if that is the correct word. It was first-rate, the star of the debate.12
Jenkins and Bevan duly won the debate, by 118 votes to 80; but Jenkins had directed his fire at the wrong target. In the presidential vote Gray, the Tory, was eliminated on the first ballot; but most of his redistributed votes went – perhaps on imperial grounds – to Bahadoor Singh, an Indian from St Catherine’s (later an Indian diplomat) who comfortably beat Jenkins on the second ballot by 123:96. Roy took this second defeat more philosophically than the first. The Union remained the centre of his life for the rest of his time in Oxford. He continued to attend and occasionally speak in debates ‘in what I juvenilely imagined was an elder-statesman sort of way’;13 he lunched, read the papers and did much of his work for his finals (known as ‘Schools’) there. But the double failure to win the presidency never ceased to niggle him.
Meanwhile Roy’s new love for Jennifer was causing acute jealousy to Tony, who sensed the difference in his friend almost immediately. As early as 8 October he was complaining like a jilted lover that ‘after a very long interval’ he had received just ‘a brief type-written note’ and suggesting bitterly that ‘the problem of our correspondence will soon solve itself as you will soon be able to get everything you have to say on the back of a postage-stamp’. Roy had evidently told Tony something about Jennifer, since he sent her his love.14 A fortnight later Roy had obviously confessed rather more, since Tony now turned sarcastic. ‘I was particularly interested to hear some details of your amour – I had not quite realised how far Jennie was leading you on; weekends at Henley must have been tremendously thrilling. It makes me very happy to think that despite my absence our friendship has remained so close & our mutual confidence so great.’ This letter was coolly addressed to ‘Dear Roy’ and signed ‘Yrs, Tony’.15
Tony got his commission in November and was posted to Barmouth on the mid-Welsh coast for his OCTU. His billet was quite comfortable, he told Roy, but he was having to share a double bed with another young officer (‘I can assure you he is quite safe as yet’).16 In two further letters from Barmouth he addressed the question of their relationship. Of one, only the last paragraph survives:
You may have thought the whole thing out more carefully than I & decided that it’s not worth trying. But if you haven’t, I suggest you might come & spend a night (or even a weekend when the Menace is available) at Highgate some time after Christmas. Then, without indulging in any unnecessary recrimination or undesirable introspection, we could see how we got along together, and decide accordingly whether to let the thing slide completely into oblivion, or whether to try to recapture at least a fraction of our former intimacy. It would at any rate be convenient, to put it no higher, to know where we stood. What do you think?
My regards to Jennifer, please.
Yrs, Tony17
Unfortunately we do not have Roy’s side of this correspondence – this was exactly the moment when he was declaring his love for Jennifer; but he evidently invited Tony to Pontypool a few days after Christmas. Tony’s cautious (but fractionally warmer) acceptance was postmarked 23 December:
My dear Roy . . .
I’m getting increasingly sceptical about how much there is left to be salvaged from the wreck of our strange bizarre relationship, attacked as it is so violently on all sides, but at least I should like to see you before we make up our minds; anyway, I still think there’s a chance I may be wrong, tho’ all the evidence points in the other direction.
At all events, I’m very much looking forward to seeing you!
Much love, Tony18
This Christmas visit evidently reassured Tony that he had not lost Roy entirely. In January 1941 he wrote again, approving in an elder-brotherly way of Roy’s decision to join the Royal Artillery when he was called up (‘You will certainly have a very much easier and more comfortable time, physically and psychologically, than if you had gone into the Infantry’) and ending confidently: ‘Very much love, my pet, Tony. N.B. I agree with you entirely about the 3 days at Pontypool – I have no fears at all for the future.’19
His next surviving letter, dated 26 January, was mainly about OUDSC affairs, advising Roy again with an elders authority about meetings and speakers and how to handle the committee:
I got the impression on my last leave that you were tending to exaggerate the degree of domination . . . which you had achieved last term . . . I didn’t say anything because I think it’s frightfully important that you should acquire this self-confidence; but beware of getting it prematurely – it’s the worst position of all. I have complete faith in your being able, during the course of this term, to establish yourself completely; but you may find it a more uphill task than perhaps you realised. So don’t be put out if people seem a bit over-critical at first;
I know that you’ll be able to deal with them quite satisfactorily.
But he ended in the language of a lover: ‘I am very lonely for you, & longing to be with you again, darling. Very much love, Tony.’20
In a considerable coup, obviously arranged by Arthur, Roy had managed to book Attlee to address the first OUDSC meeting of the new term. A few days later he reported to Tony at length about how it had gone. His typed letter conveys a vivid flavour of their political discussions and shows Roy still clinging to some startlingly left-wing attitudes:
In some way the Attlee meeting was a big success. We managed to get it quite well publicised in the City and the Union was very full (probably about 1000). A crisis arose about an hour before the meeting when he suddenly announced that he couldn’t possibly be expected to answer questions at a public meeting! Only herculean efforts and a good deal of subtle flattery from my father . . . succeeded in making him change his mind to the extent of agreeing to answer four. This wasn’t very satisfactory . . . but at least it was something.
From a purely oratorical point of view (if one can apply that criterion to Attlee) his speech was a good deal better than I had expected. It was very well received throughout and he got the most colossal applause when he sat down. It wasn’t particularly right-wing . . . but it left me feeling vaguely unhappy and for the last week I have been more politically depressed than for a long time past . . . You may remember how, a little over a year ago, you completely changed my political outlook by making me accept the class struggle as the fundamental tenet. In the period immediately after this I think that we both suffered (if you don’t mind being coupled with me) from a too rigid adherence to this doctrine . . . Since then our move to the right has, I’m sure, been mainly the result of an increasing distrust of the a priori, although aided and caused by external circumstances, of course. But even now our (insert ‘my’ instead, if you like) political outlook starts off from a fundamental belief in class antagonism . . . Attlee, on the other hand, starts from exactly the opposite direction. His a priori proposition is that most men, particularly if they happen to be members of the British House of Commons, are fundamentally good and right-hearted . . . I don’t suppose that this is of great practical importance, but it makes me feel that I could never feel any real spiritual unity with him; and this depresses me. Also the complete lack of interest . . . that he showed in the affairs of the Club didn’t have the most inspiring effect on the Standing Committee.fn2
Roy Jenkins Page 7