Roy Jenkins

by John Campbell

  Jennifer was now sharing a flat, which made it easier for them to sleep together when Roy could get to London. But contraception was still a problem and Jennifer made a point of telling Roy about a friend who had got pregnant: ‘an unfortunate accident, which seems to emphasise the need for care!’74 More often she went to Bletchley, fitting in with his shifts, and stayed nearby at Woburn Sands. But she was becoming increasingly anxious that ‘as soon as there’s a chance of being able to live together we should get married. It would be so good to have somewhere of our own.’75 In July they finally came to ‘an important decision . . . which we have put off for so long’;76 but telling their parents was evidently still tricky. In August they managed a week’s holiday together, walking and cycling around Buckingham and Brackley, but it seems to have caused Jennifer some difficulty with her parents when she got home to Henley:

  I have had a fairly cool evening with the family not saying much and they’re not asking me about the holiday much! I feel that it is for my mother to take the initiative in effecting any reconciliation.77

  Arthur and Hattie were more amenable. Somehow Roy and Jennifer contrived another ten days’ leave in September, most of which they spent in Pontypool, before Jennifer went off to an agricultural camp helping to harvest oats and barley – curiously enough at Alton. ‘It was very mis saying goodbye at Newport, Darling,’ she wrote from the train:

  Still we ought not have to go on having these partings for too much longer. It was a very, very good leave, Darling, and I loved you so much. There were lots of good moments – playing tennis against the house, playing cricket, in the train to Newport and the [illegible] on the Sugar Loaf, on the river at Oxford.78

  Roy stayed another day and braved speaking to Hattie.

  I talked to my mother about the details of our wedding for a short time last night. You will be glad to know that she thinks you wd. be foolish to be married in white! . . . I think that she is now reconciled to our being married more or less any time in the next 6 months, whether the war is over or not. I think that I have really been v. courageous & efficient. I hope that you will be equally so, darling.

  I certainly love you more than ever.79

  ‘I certainly think you have been v. courageous and efficient viz a viz your parents,’ she replied. ‘I too hope that I shall be equally so viz a viz mine.’80 Roy also told her that he had been persuaded – presumably by his mother – to choose a china service, which they had meant to do together. He chose a tea and breakfast set that was said to be eighteenth-century.81 Jennifer thought he was ‘very brave to choose the china – is it hideous? Even if it is it will no doubt be v. useful as long as we don’t have to keep it in a glass cupboard.’ She was not sure that he should not have chosen the larger service. ‘Nevertheless if the other was more attractive you were quite right to choose it.’82

  Two weeks later she was able to tell Roy that her mother had greeted the news that they wanted to get married soon ‘with equanimity . . . Her main request was that we should give them due warning.’ She thought her mother would have liked a white wedding and considered a registry office – which she presumed the Jenkinses wanted – ‘rather dull’. But she also thought they should not wait too long: ‘that not many people fell in love at the age of 19 and then got married 4½ years later [and] neither of us showed much initiative in finding other people! I assume that she will tell my father.’83

  With the end of the war in sight, Roy was now looking seriously for a parliamentary seat to fight at the General Election, whenever it came. In uniform, but not abroad, he was better placed than many would-be candidates to pursue possible vacancies. Better placed certainly than Tony, who was stuck in the Mediterranean – moving between Italy, France and Egypt – and feared, as he wrote to Hattie in February 1944, that he might be in the Far East by the time of the election. (‘I wish . . . I was back in Pontypool,’ he added, ‘ruining the garden by playing cricket every day.’)84 He briefly had hopes of Henley or Luton; but soon recognised that he had no chance as long as he was overseas. Writing to Roy in September, he reflected that it would do him no harm to wait five years, but in the meantime he would have to earn his living. ‘Oxford and the Army give me no qualifications for anything at all: and while that is an undoubted advantage in politics, it is apt to be a drawback in other forms of life.’ But he thought Roy’s prospects were good.85 Roy’s first target was one of the Cardiff seats, where his father might be expected to have some influence. On the basis of what he told her, Jennifer was optimistic:

  South Cardiff sounds most hopeful and your meetings with all the ex-Lord Mayors very encouraging. If they choose Marquand or Thomas this time they will hardly be able to resist the glamour of a service candidate for East Cardiff.86

  But a few days later Roy was gloomy:

  My father says that the wretched Granville West, a most inferior man, seems to be making the most progress and is likely to beat Marquand. I shall be rather annoyed if he gets it. I had an illegible but, as far as I could tell, pleasant but non-committal letter from Jim Griffiths.87, fn8

  In fact Hilary Marquand, Professor of Industrial Relations at Cardiff University, got East Cardiff and George Thomas from Tonypandy (the future Speaker) got Cardiff Central, while South Cardiff chose a thirty-three-year-old Inland Revenue official, James Callaghan, who had served in the navy, but had no Welsh connections at all. All three were duly elected in 1945. Granville West, a Pontypool solicitor, got nothing for the moment but would cross Roy’s path again very soon. Jenkins was briefly excited to get a letter from Sowerby (in Yorkshire) inviting him to apply there, until he discovered that Asa Briggs had received the same letter and realised that they had circulated everyone on the Transport House list! He replied that he was very interested, but that travelling restrictions would made it difficult to get there – an odd argument since Yorkshire was not much further from Bletchley than South Wales.88

  His best opportunity came at Aston, in Birmingham. Jennifer was not keen, telling Arthur on the phone that ‘other chances equally good, if not better, are sure to come’. He thought she was probably right.89 Jennifer advised Roy to stick to Welsh seats. ‘Aston certainly seems to raise difficult problems. If you had a chance for either Monmouthshire or Newport it would be better to hang on, but neither of the latter seems to be very sure.’90 In fact Roy decided to go for Aston, was interviewed there in early October and made a good enough impression to be shortlisted. He gave Jennifer a graphic account of the interview. His first impression of Birmingham – ‘enormous and gloomy’ – was not favourable. But he felt he spoke reasonably well for twenty minutes (‘not exceptionally well, I thought, but quite moderately so’) before facing an hour of questions. ‘They were not difficult – much less so than I had expected – but as I had to talk and think at the same time almost continuously I was quite exhausted at the end.’ The first question, oddly, was about a united Ireland (‘It was comparatively easy to waffle on that’). Others sought his views on finance, trade unions, state control of industry and whether, if he lost Aston he would stay and nurse it (‘My reply to the last was a masterpiece of equivocation’).

  On the whole I should say that my chances were much better at the end than at the beginning. Unless finance weighs very heavily against me, or the two people today (young but unknown to me) are exceptionally good, I think that I can get it. There is going to be a final selection conference 5 weeks today and I think that we might both go to B’ham then. I am not sure that I wd not like it. It ought really to be winnable and might suit me better than Monmouth.91

  But one of his rivals was Woodrow Wyatt; and it was Wyatt who won the nomination and went on to win the seat. He subsequently attributed his success to the fact that he had stayed with the local party secretary ‘in a back-to-back house without indoor sanitation’, while Roy preferred to stay in a hotel. ‘It was the only time I ever did anything politically better than Roy.’92 If so, Roy retorted, ‘it was a considerable feat to lose to Woodrow Wyatt on
the ground of being too sybaritic’.93 In fact Roy too had stayed with the secretary on his first visit to Aston (though he did confess to Jennifer that ‘a hotel would have pleased me better’) and claimed that he only stayed in a hotel the second time – ‘the old LMS [London, Midland and Scottish] Queen’s Hotel, famous for the gleam of its chandeliers’94 – because Jennifer came with him. (The hotel apparently had no problem with this, even though they were not yet married.) At the time Roy felt that he lost out to Wyatt’s superior rank – at least that was how he rationalised his defeat, somewhat bitterly, to Tony:

  I was beaten by a candidate who was very much of my own type. He was a staff major called Wyatt, aged twenty-six, who was at Oxford . . . for the three years up to the beginning of the war. As far as I know his political conversion does not date back very far and I do not think that he was even a member of the Labour Club . . . [He] seemed to be quite intelligent, not very well-informed politically and possessed of a surprisingly affected manner . . . My final verdict . . . is that Wyatt won largely through being a major at 26 (they were very impressed by that) and having a better war record than I had. God knows, though, it was modest enough compared with yours!

  Roy believed that Tony would have won the nomination easily, had he been able to go for it. He himself still hoped that his father’s standing with Attlee might yet secure him a winnable seat. When Labour’s deputy national agent, Dick Windle, encouraged him to settle for Monmouth he was disappointed. ‘Monmouth is certainly as good as I deserve for a first fight, but I was a little unsettled by having seen Clem only a few hours before, who had suggested far more ambitious things.’ Windle also told him that Attlee was keen to find Crosland a seat.95

  By this time Tony knew that Roy and Jennifer were planning to marry. His response was tolerant and amusing:

  I am very glad to know that you and Jennifer are going to get married this winter. I must confess that if I were (a) the marrying type, (b) engaged, (c) in love, (d) moneyed, (e) faithful, (f) at home: and if I had (a) any means of earning a living, (b) a tolerable home, (c) equanimity, (d) a set of green budgerigars, and (e) some idea of how to go through the wedding ceremony – I should do exactly the same in your position. And I do quite seriously think it is a very wise thing to do.

  He wished he could get home for the wedding, but there was no chance. After a lot of questions about the political situation (was it certain that Attlee would lead Labour into the election? Would the party consider pacts with the Liberals, Common Wealth or the Communists?) he ended:

  Tell Jennifer from me I am very glad she is getting married: and that I naturally think her lucky to marry the best friend I ever had.

  Wasn’t that nicely said?

  Write soon.

  Love, Tony96

  The wedding was set for 20 January 1945. It took place, rather grandly, in the Savoy Chapel with the reception afterwards in the Savoy Hotel. This was arranged by Sir Parker Morris, drawing on his contacts in Westminster – though he did consult Arthur Jenkins about whether such a smart venue might be used against Roy politically. He also produced, Jennifer told Roy, ‘an enormous list of guests, many of whom I don’t know. He may, however, decide not to ask all of them if your family want to ask a lot.’97 On the contrary, Roy’s mother thought that ‘very few people from P’pool would come to Henley or London’ – it was, after all, still wartime.98 In fact Jennifer’s recollection is that far more of his side attended than hers. But it is clear from an unusually bitter letter that Hattie wrote Roy in October that she felt that Jennifer’s family was taking over:

  So the Parker Morris’ really got down to business did they – what was it you said. ‘They were more businesslike than we were.’ What was it we lacked in sonny? You know that is one of the things with a son that perhaps hurts a bit, that one is only a looker on. Never mind that does not matter a scrap if we are only lookers on, if it is on your happiness we are looking, which I have no doubt it will be.99

  In Tony’s absence, Roy asked Ronnie McIntosh to be his best man; but he too was unavailable as he was in the merchant navy and his ship was sailing. (Hattie thought it should be delayed for her son’s wedding!)100 His third choice was Michael Ashcroft, with Asa Briggs, David Ginsburg and Ivor Bulmer-Thomas acting as ushers. Roy’s political pedigree was underlined by the presence of Attlee, who made the principal speech. V-2 rockets were still landing on London: one fell a mile away while the newly-weds were signing the register, and another uncomfortably close when Roy went back to Jennifer’s flat in the evening to collect some clothes. They spent their first night in the Savoy and the second in Cambridge, before going on to Edinburgh for a week’s honeymoon before Roy had to return to Bletchley and Jennifer to the Ministry of Labour.

  On 6 February – just seventeen days after the wedding – Jennifer wrote her new husband a devastating letter:

  My darling Roy,

  I’m afraid that our married life is not starting as well as it might. Ever since the day we were married you have been full of grievances against me. On January 20th you were thinking that I ought to give up the M/L and come to live at Bletchley; on January 29th you were thinking the same thing, with the additional grievance that if I couldn’t or wouldn’t give up the M/L now I should at least give it up as soon as possible after the war; on February 4th you were angry because I didn’t come to meet you, on February 5th you were angry because I didn’t come to Euston with you and wasn’t in when you phoned. Behind all these grievances is the feeling that I don’t love you as much as you love me – if I did I would show it by coming to Bletchley and finding a part-time job. It makes it all the more sad as I do love you with all my love. If my love is inadequate you shouldn’t have married me. You have known what it is since August 1940 and in the last year you have begun to complain that it is insufficient. I’m afraid that one’s love is like one’s nose – it is there and there is nothing one can do about it if one doesn’t like it. But if you don’t like it you shouldn’t have married me.

  The other thing is the M/Labour. You know well that I’m not the kind of person who would be satisfied with housekeeping and cooking. You should also know that it is very difficult for a woman (merely because she is a woman) to get an interesting job except teaching. I shan’t remain in the M/L after the war because of the marriage bar, but during the war, while I am obliged to have a job, even though I am married, I should like to remain. You also knew that before we were married, and if you didn’t like it you should have said so.

  It should be unnecessary for me to have to defend my love. I have loved you since August 1940, and since then I have never looked at anyone else, never kept anything secret from you and I have devoted as much time as was humanly possible to being with you. This winter I have had the misfortune to be ill, which irritates you because I can’t be with you and devote as much energy to you as I otherwise should.fn9 Instead of thinking of this as outside my control you attribute it – consciously or unconsciously – to my fault I think and say that it means I don’t love you as much.

  You may feel miserable when you accuse me of not loving you enough, but it makes me feel equally miserable when you so accuse me.

  I don’t know whether you will get this before you leave tomorrow, but I hope so.

  With all my love

  Jennifer101

  How had it come to this? Had they really not talked before the wedding about what they would do afterwards? Even in the surviving letters Jennifer made it very clear that she was not going to be a conventional domestic wife. How could Roy have imagined that she would give up her job to look after him? Anyway it is clear that he was already coming to London the next day, a Wednesday. They had a sleepless night – not surprisingly – presumably talking the problem through, since the next day she was very tired at work; but then she had a better night (alone) and got into work late on Friday morning, from where she wrote to him again:

  My Darling

  I am keeping my second promise and writing to you this mo
rning. After our somewhat disturbed night, I felt too tired yesterday evening to do anything but lie in a chair and read, I can’t think how you managed to work – if you did . . .

  Darling, I love you more than ever and hope you haven’t started feeling aggrieved again. I too would love us to live together, and want to do so more and more. Last night, I felt very lonely without you – more than ever.

  All my love Darling

  Jennifer102

  One must assume that an accommodation was reached, and that Roy gained a better understanding of the calibre of woman he had married. Jennifer did give up her full-time job at the end of the war; but she never became just a housewife. She subordinated herself loyally to his career; but even when she had young children she always maintained a career of her own – eventually a very distinguished one. These letters, which recall her worries about her ‘independence’ at the very beginning of their relationship, are the only surviving evidence of a tension that remained at the heart of what was nevertheless an extraordinarily successful fifty-six-year marriage.

  * * *

  fn1 ‘We are awfully distant on the phone, aren’t we Darling?’ Jennifer wrote in 1941. ‘Especially when one is limited to three minutes we don’t really talk about anything in case the pips go . . . I think of all the things we do, telephone calls are the only things that are disappointing.’16

  fn2 The English Miss, by R.H. Mottram, was a book they had both read and mocked the previous year.

  fn3 Jennifer was always trying to get Roy to smoke less – she thought even six to eight a day ‘quite a lot’22 – and so did his parents, though his letters are studded with requests for cigarettes. In June 1944 he suddenly announced that he had given up. ‘I started 2½ days ago . . . and since then no nicotine has besmirched my lips. I think that I do feel slightly better as a result and I am quite intoxicated by the financial saving that will be involved. I think that I will endeavour to smoke nothing for a month and then to revert to as many cigars as I can get without paying for them.’23 But he evidently did not keep it up, since later in the year Jennifer was again promising him ‘a very good prize if you don’t smoke until Friday week’.24