Roy Harris Jenkins, Baron Jenkins of Hillhead OM, PC (11 November 1920 – 5 January 2003) was a British politician. Once prominent as a Labour Member of Parliament (MP) and government minister in the 1960s and 1970s, he became the first (and so far only) British President of the European Commission (1977-81) and one of the four principal founders of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1981. In 1987, he was appointed as Chancellor of the Universit...
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Roy Harris Jenkins, Baron Jenkins of Hillhead OM, PC (11 November 1920 – 5 January 2003) was a British politician. Once prominent as a Labour Member of Parliament (MP) and government minister in the 1960s and 1970s, he became the first (and so far only) British President of the European Commission (1977-81) and one of the four principal founders of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1981. In 1987, he was appointed as Chancellor of the University of Oxford, a position he served until his death. During his lifetime, he was also a distinguished writer, especially of biographies. His nickname in Private Eye magazine was 'Smoothiechops'.
Born in Abersychan, Monmouthshire in south-eastern Wales, as an only child, Roy Jenkins was the son of a National Union of Mineworkers official, Arthur Jenkins. His father was wrongly imprisoned during the 1926 General Strike for his supposed involvement in a riot and later became Member of Parliament for Pontypool, Parliamentary Private Secretary to...
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