I prefer to think of you in the House of Commons, not across the Channel. But equally, to be your own man in Brussels influencing the future of Europe, must be more attractive than being a prisoner in an uncongenial Cabinet . . . My conclusion is that while I – and many others – want you to stay, the logic (the logic of who you are and what you feel) may point the other way.85
That was Jenkins’ view too. Accordingly on 8 April he wrote formally to Giscard d’Estaing accepting the Presidency of the European Commission.86 ‘He realised it might be the end of his career in British politics’, Ronnie McIntosh wrote in his diary, ‘but he couldn’t see any future for himself in the Labour Party, as at present constituted, anyway.’87
His appointment was widely welcomed, both in Europe where it was hoped that a heavyweight politician might raise the profile of the Commission after a succession of rather dim bureaucrats like the outgoing French President, François-Xavier Ortoli, and in Britain where it was hoped that a British President would increase Britain’s clout in the Community – though there was some regret that Jenkins had taken the job only after he had missed out on the premiership, confirming ‘the popular view of the Commission as a well-paid grazing ground for played-out politicians’.88 It was almost universally assumed that there was no way back. ‘No previous incumbent has been wholly successful in managing a re-entry into national politics,’ The Times commented. ‘Certainly none has returned to a career of great eminence or distinction.’89 In his own mind, however, Jenkins always kept open the possibility that he might come back. To the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Gaston Thorn – who four years later was to be his successor – he wrote on 5 May that he regarded going to Brussels ‘not as the termination of my political life, but as its development in the most useful way that I could envisage for the next two years’. (The appointment was initially for two years, though he made it clear to Giscard that he expected to have four.) ‘The future beyond that I would leave entirely open, both in my own mind and in public statements.’90 And he received some support for this secret hope from John Grigg, who assured him that he could still become Prime Minister. ‘For one thing,’ Grigg wrote, ‘age is very much on your side.’ Callaghan and Foot were the two oldest candidates in the recent election, ‘so the Labour Party seems to be healthily biased towards the gerontocratic principle’. Moreover, by going to Brussels he would be absolved of responsibility for whatever Labour did in the next four years:
You will be making a success of yet another job (having never made a balls of any that you have done), and absence may very well make the hearts of your colleagues grow fonder. It seems to me that Providence may not have played you quite such a dirty trick after all in denying you the leadership now.91
Meanwhile he agreed to stay on for another few months as Home Secretary, while preparing for his new responsibilities. Having failed to get the job he wanted for himself, he did this time try – over a series of ‘bad-tempered’ telephone calls with Callaghan – to look after his supporters.92 In his own department he wanted Shirley Summerskill or Tom Bradley promoted in place of Alex Lyon, with Ian Wrigglesworth becoming an Under-Secretary. Callaghan made no difficulty about sacking Lyon, but proposed moving Bill Rodgers to the Home Office. Jenkins rejected this, saying that this would be no promotion and bad for Rodgers’ career. Callaghan then appointed Brynmor John – ‘something of a crony of his’ – without further consultation, and found no place for Wrigglesworth. He also ignored Jenkins’ urging of a job for David Marquand, who decided instead to give up his seat and follow Jenkins to Brussels.93 The reality was that Callaghan felt no need to do any favours for a defeated rival who was on the way out. But in the reshuffle that followed Jenkins’ final departure in September he did bring Rodgers into the Cabinet as Transport Secretary.
There were no more major terrorist incidents in these last few months, but there were a number of racial flare-ups – riots in Southall in June after an Asian man was stabbed, and trouble at the Notting Hill Carnival in August – leading to questions about the policing of black communities. Jenkins still had to see his Race Relations Bill onto the Statute Book in July. He also had to secure Cabinet approval for two new bills for the 1976–7 session: a Conspiracy and Criminal Law Reform Bill, and another Criminal Justice Bill, both of a fairly technical nature.94 He set up a Royal Commission to look into the law on gambling, chaired by Lord Rothschild (the former head of Ted Heath’s think tank). Beyond these departmental responsibilities he tried again to advance some of his own pet reforms before he left. He had another go at trying to get electoral reform considered by a Speaker’s Conference, but did not press the matter;95 and he had another try at liberalising the Official Secrets Act, but was thwarted on this occasion by Tony Crosland who – to Donoughue’s disgust – simply read out his Foreign Office brief against any relaxation.96 Jenkins joined forces with Tony Benn in refusing to sign a restrictive undertaking about publishing ministerial memoirs.97 He published a Green Paper, written by Anthony Lester, backing the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into British law; but this too ran into opposition and was quietly buried for another twenty-two years.98 In an interesting echo of an old controversy that came to Cabinet in May he also argued strongly against a proposal by the Education Secretary, Fred Mulley, that in ratifying the UN Covenant on Human Rights the government should reserve the right to outlaw independent schools. The freedom to choose private education, Jenkins now insisted, was itself a human right: the government could still squeeze the public schools, but threatening to abolish them would simply stir up a lot of trouble to no benefit. No other country was thinking of such a thing. Strong views were expressed on both sides, but Callaghan summed up against making such a reservation.99
One major issue on which Jenkins changed his view between 1974 and 1976 – one that was to be unexpectedly important for his future – was devolution. The Scottish Nationalists had won their first seat at a by-election in 1967, but had only become a serious force when they won seven seats in February 1974 and eleven in October, taking 30 per cent of the vote in Scotland. (Plaid Cymru meanwhile won three seats with 10 per cent of the Welsh vote.) Fuelled by the discovery of North Sea oil and the heady slogan ‘It’s Scotland’s Oil’, the SNP’s advance posed a potentially mortal threat to Labour’s dominance in Scotland, without which it could never hope to form a government in the United Kingdom. In a desperate effort to defuse this challenge the government had hastily committed itself to introducing some form of devolution to allay nationalist sentiment some way short of independence, and put Ted Short in charge of framing it. When Short first brought his ideas to Cabinet in July 1974 Jenkins, as Barbara Castle recorded, ‘clearly disapproved of the whole business: “I am horrified at the idea of rushing into a decision in the last fevered weeks of July which could affect the shape of Great Britain for a hundred years.”’100 A week later he supported Healey and Crosland in arguing that they should put the brakes on: ‘We should announce the minimum commitment and announce that we will deal with this properly after the election.’101 Even then, when the SNP had gained another four seats, he still thought devolution ‘a most frightening prospect’ and passed a note to Crosland in Cabinet committee blaming Willie Ross – a longtime opponent of devolution who had now decided that it was irresistible – and particularly Short (‘the revered headmaster’) for ‘approaching it with a lack of imagination or ability + knowledge . . . which would be a severe disadvantage to drawing up a school curriculum, let alone a new constitution for the U.K.’ (‘I agree,’ Crosland wrote back.)102 At Chequers in January 1975 Jenkins again ‘spoke long and impressively. He said frankly he was a “go-slower” because he “didn’t like the look of the destination”. He was “afraid of the slippery slope of separatism”. He saw no reason to rush things and exposed some inconsistencies in Short’s arguments.’ According to Donoughue, Jenkins took the lead, supported by Crosland, Prentice and Benn, in stopping Wilson from railroading it through.103 In June Jenkins,
Crosland and Healey were still leading ‘a big move to retreat’ on the issue.104
Yet by September 1975 he was beginning to be converted. He was still not happy with the proposals on the table, warning that retaining a power for Westminster to ‘override’ the devolved assemblies would be ‘meaningless’ and would ‘frighten Westminster more than the Scots’.105 But characteristically, if there was going to be major constitutional reform, he wanted to do it by all-party agreement – arousing equally knee-jerk opposition from Michael Foot and Barbara Castle:
Mike and I both said ‘no’ in a loud voice. I said our interests and the Tories’ in this matter were diametrically opposed, while Mike pointed out that it would hardly do our cause any good in Scotland to be advocating a consensus policy.
While admitting to her diary that ‘the implications of devolution are worrying’, Mrs Castle considered that Labour had no alternative and thought it ‘a bit much for Roy Jenkins and co. to express their alarm at the break-up of the unity of the UK when they have done so much to destroy its sense of sovereignty by impaling us on the horns of the EEC.’106
By the beginning of 1976, however, Jenkins was fully persuaded. After due consideration he now believed that the demand for devolution reflected ‘a firm change in Scottish opinion’ – less so in Wales – and that to resist it would be to ignore the lessons of history (specifically Irish history) and carry a greater risk of breaking up the United Kingdom than would be run by acceding to it. The important thing was to establish clear lines between devolved and UK functions. He was afraid that the government’s White Paper, published in March, was too centralist and would create a recipe for endless friction between Edinburgh and London, which could only lead to separation; he wanted a process of judicial review, on the US model, to resolve disputes. On 26 March – ten days after his withdrawal from the Labour leadership contest – he made a long-gestated speech in Greenock (Dickson Mabon’s constituency) announcing his view. He did not go into detail about precisely what powers should be transferred, but declared his support for ‘a coherent and enduring constitutional framework which recognises the legitimate demands for Scottish control over Scottish affairs with the equally legitimate requirements of democratic and effective United Kingdom government’.107 Four days later he astonished Barbara Castle by the vehemence of his position: ‘I am absolutely convinced now that we must go ahead with our devolution policy. There can be no going back whatsoever.’ For a day or two he played with the suggestion that if he could not be Foreign Secretary, he might take over responsibility for devolution. Mrs Castle was horrified. ‘We should end up with PR, a written constitution and a Bill of Rights.’108 The idea foundered when Jenkins decided that he would take the Foreign Office or nothing. But he had reason to be grateful that he had put his support for devolution firmly on record six years before he ever imagined that his comeback to British politics would depend on fighting a Scottish seat.
He made his last Commons speeches as Home Secretary before the House rose for the summer recess. First, on 5 July, he had to defend the government’s policy on admitting the dependants of immigrants in an adjournment debate opened by Willie Whitelaw: he promised to close loopholes and root out abuses, but refused to do anything to endanger good race relations: ‘We cannot afford not to make a success of the multiracial society.’ The Tories officially abstained, but a number of diehards – including Norman Tebbit, Nicholas Ridley and Alan Clark (but also, oddly, Douglas Hurd) – forced a vote and were defeated by 68:18.109 Three days later he had to speak and vote several times during an all-night sitting on the Race Relations Bill, before it was finally carried with just three dissenting votes at lunchtime on 9 July. These were to be his last speeches from the government front bench. He attended what turned out to be his final Cabinet on 3 August before his usual month-long summer holiday, divided between Italy (staying with the Gilmours) and France (staying with Jacques and Marie-Alice de Beaumarchais). He missed Cabinet on 9 September because he had gone to Paris for the day (lunching with Nicko Henderson at the British Embassy), came back the next day for what he thought was going to be a meeting about the seamen’s strike, but was upset by Callaghan rushing the reshuffle and left without the graceful exchange of compliments he would doubtless have liked. ‘I watched him go out for the last time,’ Donoughue wrote, ‘after his interview with the P.M., head down, arms swinging, somehow not happy.’110 Merlyn Rees took over as Home Secretary and Jenkins’ ministerial career was over.
There remained only his farewells to Stechford, where he stayed on as MP until the end of the year. At the time, and later, he always maintained that leaving Stechford was a greater wrench than leaving the House of Commons. Though he never felt much love for Birmingham as a city, nor for Stechford as a particularly characterless slice of it, he had over nearly twenty-seven years forged warm relationships with a good many individuals in the local party – Joe Balmer, George Canning, Dink Hitchman (Austin had died in 1965) and Dennis and Alannah Brennan – real friendships, which he kept up for years after he left the constituency. Nevertheless Stechford, like other constituency Labour parties, had changed in recent years as younger militants moved in and pushed out the old loyalists. Jenkins had not hitherto faced the sort of open hostility that Dick Taverne had provoked in Lincoln or Reg Prentice in Newham; but by 1976 his support was rapidly eroding. In his contemporary notes he described an unpleasant meeting of the general management committee in April – just after the leadership election – at which Alannah Brennan was elected secretary (temporarily replacing her husband who was ill) only by Canning’s casting vote as chairman:
The room was divided into two parts in a way I had never known it before. The youngish middle-aged in the party seemed to have disappeared. There was a young group of IS [International Socialists], aggressive, completely without warmth or sentiment towards me, and the older group, sad, disillusioned, bitter, hating this invasion and talking a great deal about moving out of the party. Perhaps from the point of view of the end of a long marriage it was depressing but salutary.
If this was the modern Labour party, he reflected, maybe he was lucky not to have been elected leader.111
Announcing his resignation in July when his appointment to Brussels was formally confirmed, he urged the local party to select as his successor a candidate ‘with broad appeal to the electorate’, not a narrow left-winger.112 They actually took his advice by choosing a local businessman, Terry Davis, who had briefly been MP for Bromsgrove between 1971 and 1974. In the grim political climate of the time, however, after Denis Healey was forced to seek an emergency bail-out from the IMF in October, Davis was unable to defend Jenkins’ nearly 12,000 majority and lost the by-election the following March.fn10 Jenkins kept up his constituency surgeries on the third Friday of every month over the autumn until he bowed out with a farewell party on 10 December. He had not spoken in the House, and rarely attended, since July; but he cast his last vote four days before Christmas at the end of an adjournment debate on the economy on which the Labour left rebelled, but the Tories abstained, giving a government majority of 219:51. He did not stay for another vote on tobacco duties, but slipped away for what he must have thought would probably be the last time.
Franklin, Sun, 20.12.76 (British Cartoon Archive, University of Kent)
There was a round of valedictory lunches and dinners, both private and public. Bill Rodgers organised a dinner for his supporters at the House on 29 November. The Parliamentary Press Gallery gave him a lunch on 8 December at which he looked forward to the new challenge facing him in Brussels, but also back over his twenty-eight years at Westminster. Deploring the increasingly ‘gladiatorial’ conduct of politics and ‘the utopianism of opposition’ – the belief that all problems could be solved by a change of government – which was strangling rational debate, he warned that without greater independence of speech and probably greater freedom of voting ‘the strains will build up to an extent that will burst the banks of our present parliamentary sy
stem’.113 This was now almost explicitly his hope. Interviewed on Panorama in October, he had hinted as never before at the desirability of coalition; and privately he wondered ‘a little wistfully . . . whether he had been right to leave British politics at this time’.114 When the Daily Telegraph misreported his Press Gallery speech as a definitive farewell, he wrote quickly to correct it: he ‘could not guarantee that Parliament had seen the last of me’.115 Distinguished friends who begged him not to burn his boats included Jeremy Hutchinson, QC – ‘Nobody knows more about the extraordinary twists of politics than you, and it may well be that the 1980s will hold all manner of surprises . . . I sincerely hope you won’t become a Lord!’116 – and Hugh Thomas, who looked forward to him returning from Brussels in four years’ time, still much younger than General de Gaulle in 1958, and suggested setting up some sort of shadow party to prepare for the moment.117
But the Establishment world in which he now largely moved was best typified by the dinner given by a group of his closest male friends on 13 December. It was hosted by Jakie Astor and Victor Rothschild, and the other guests were Ian Gilmour and Mark Bonham Carter, John Grigg and Woodrow Wyatt, Noel Annan, David Harlech, Claus Moser (head of the Government Statistical Service since 1967 and chairman of the Royal Opera House) and Robert Armstrong (just about to take over, on Jenkins’ recommendation, as Permanent Secretary at the Home Office and, within three years, as Cabinet Secretary). There was only one ex-Labour man among them! They drank Château Lafite Rothschild 1945 and Quinta do Noval port, also 1945. It was an aptly symbolic way to say goodbye to Labour politics.
Roy Jenkins Page 62