Roy Jenkins, UK Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1960s Labour Government, looks back at his life and career in politics. BBC documentary written and presented by Michael Cockerell.
@Paul Gavin ????? He's actually saying quite the opposite. Do you know what a giveaway budget is? A bribe. He's saying the public are sceptical of being bribed. If anything, he's praising the public.
@@lewissmith3896 Maybe Ken Clarke or Heseltine, but even they're a generation too old now. Steve Richards has a video about Jenkins where he quotes (and agrees with) Jenkins telling him that it must have been terrible being a political reporter in the 90s "because all you have to talk about is Blaiw and Bwown."
As an American Socialist who can't either identity with either the Militant Tendency nor the "gang of four" from the early 1980's which led to the rise of the Social Democratic Party, the British Labour Party's civil war in the 1970's & 80's were most fascinating...
Labour's "soft left" has always been the better faction of the three. Not batshit crazy like the Militant types and not neoliberal sellouts like the third way.
He knew the right words to say polite conversations round the political tables. I became aware of his political longevity with a win in a political seat in Glasgow a number of years ago
"You had servants!" " No I ....Thirty years ago [When Jenkins was 17] Welsh miners' sons didn't live in houses with many servants as a mater of fact." ..... "The family now [When Jenkins was a schoolboy] had a live-in maid."
My grandfather was a village schoolmaster. My grandparents had a live in maid on his rather modest salary. This was not considered as “having servants”!
Haven't watched this yet but until now I would have known the name mostly as the author of perhaps the best one volume biography of Churchill ever written.
He's in many ways the man that created modern Britain. The decriminalisation of abortion, homosexuality and the modernisation of the Victorian divorce laws and penal system he inherited.
The highlight of this video is his grandson criticizing Tony Blair. I rather liked Roy Jenkins as I like a classy intellectual with a good sense of humor. He reminded me of my father. He would have made a fine PM.
It's hard to find anyone in any faction of politics who is even one-tenth of the calibre of Roy Jenkins (or Harold Wilson, Ted Heath, Margaret Thatcher, Tony Benn, Denis Healey, Michael Foot or any of his other contempories).
There's a bit at the very end of "Yesterday's Men" when Wilson's shadow cabinet goes into their meeting room, and just watching the folks around the table--Jenkins, Healey, Foot, Williams, Benn, Castle, Crossland, Callaghan, etc.--and then thinking of the government cabinet--with people like Thatcher, MacLeod, Joseph, etc.--regardless of your politics, that's an amazing collection of heavy hitters on both sides.
I sometimes wonder as a Labour member, how different would life in Britain been if Roy had won the Labour Leadership against Callaghan, or if the Falklands war didn't happen or failed to boost the popularity of Thatcher, which would have allow Jenkins to be Prime Minister either of those times... I seriously think Britain would have been better off with him than at any point under Thatcher, but I guess that for an alternate form of history
I think the left-right split was inevitable. I remember Hart speaking after Wilson’s resignation and stating that the party had to choose someone to unite the party. Dragon’s teeth had been planted.
I'm an American and I've been following British politics since the 90s, and as an outsider looking inward,, Roy Jenkins was an institutionalist who believed that's institutions were the center of human civilization and that anyone or anything outside those institutions had to put back into the sheep herd or get sent off the butcher shop.
Owen Smith was the new Roy Jenkins. When Corbyn was challenged for a re-election, I saw Roy Jenkins and Michael Foot. McDonnell as Benn.I realised Blair was following Gaitskell.Funny how history now has repeated. Starmer is Sir John Major of Labour no wonder Bercow likes him.
Roy Jenkins just did not have the ' common touch'. I recall seeing a bit of newsreel of him campaigning for election in some Scottish continuency by waiting outside a Bingo Hall to approach people as they exited. At a loss what to say, he took a leaf out of Her Majesty's book and asked " And have you come far ? "
Roy Jenkins is one of the greatest UK politicians of the 20th century, in my opinion. Just look at what he achieved as a liberalising Home Secretary in the late 1960s. Neither the legalisation of abortion nor the decriminalisation of homosexuality would have happened when they did without him. He wanted a more civilised, humane and equal society and took steps to achieve it.
chris holley Jenkins never claimed to working class and his reforms on legalizing homosexuality brought this country into the 20th Century instead of being stuck in a repressive, backward looking rut.
Mark Thirkell Yes, Jenkins may have never "claimed" to be working class, but he jolly well used a working class movement (The Labour Party) to further his own career. Roy would have been more suited to the Liberal Party. However, we know why he didn't join them...they would never have been to elected to government that's why!! So, he stuck his "sticky" paws into Labour instead!! Homosexuality?? Please don't make me laugh. Roy only changed the rules because he was "hanging out the back door" with Anthony Crossland. Yes, persecution of gays is not good. However, was it really worth all the hassle to "appease" 1% of the population, when "screwing" up the other 90 odd % in the process?? Divorces, abortions et al now leaves us living in a society every bit as immoral as the homosexual society Jenkins adorned! A "Doctor Frankenstein" of the highest order!!
When I was young, stupid and left wing I thought he was a disaster for splitting the left wing vote and allowing Thatcher in I now see that was the service he did the country
***** Can't remember What I had in mind in January . But he did help anchor Britian in Europe and he ensured that the Tories had big enouth majorities in the 1980's to do all the necessary reforms that I stupidly opposed at the time -
***** No I think Government's have no business running things like Airlines and telecom company's and when they do they do it badly and they provide a poor service and are a Drain on the productive parts of the economy. By selling them into the private sector they become more efficient provide better service and make profits so pay taxes and dividends . Shares on the stock exchange are mostly owned by my and your pension funds . If a foreign company purchases them the money is available for our funds to invest else where which is possibly going to be outside the UK - t took we many years to realise these fairly simple facts so I don't expect you to grasp it now- but if you are not wilfully stupid you will one day
***** That is possibly so However a government will force you to pay up or services it has decided to provide by force of law you can go to Gaol for not paying taxes. A corporation, say a privatised company like BT or BA must convince you, you want to pay them -if you don't care for what they offer you can go elsewhere or not bother at all ,so on balance you can use your limited power better if these companies are in the private sector
***** Last message because the Peado stuff is nuts. But you seem to have agreed that airlines and telecoms should be private- as for gas and electric before privatisation the government told you who you had to but it from and at what price. Now there are numerous companies you can choice from ,and if you dislike them or their price you can go elsewhere
Like Ian MacLeod, he was a smart man and a great socialite, but unlike e.g. Michael Foot, Enoch Powell, Winston Churchill, or Arthur Balfour, he was no intellectual.
That's ridiculous. What ever you may think of his politics, he was a principled man who sacrificed his standing in the Labour Party by resigning in 1972.
Bent...good timer...dodgy fecker...what a contrast to Tony Benn....a man straight and true and never caught averting his gaze in clear devious fashion like old bacon pig woy!
