Roy Jenkins

And a principled resignation, you might say, "Well, did that help the policy?" Maybe not, but the fact is that a person of such standing and such, uh, dignity was able to take that decision thinking the man at the top takes the blame for whatever it is, and he did.

And there are various other politicians who in themselves, Roy Jenkins, take him as a, you know, very, very dynamic politician who changed the face of Britain, and he wasn't prime minister at the time.

Uh, he was home secretary, and, uh, he did a lot.

And all these people, in their own right, were somebody you res- people you respected.

The best example is...

My play The Gang of Three goes up to the formation of the SDP by Roy Jenkins.

David Owen then became leader.

And then for some considerable years, the SDP and the Liberal Party formed an SDP-Liberal alliance.

Right.

Like h- Joel's gonna go do that, and he's gonna leave Roy Jenkins to it.

For me, it has to be a quick turnaround.

Yeah.

I thought you were gonna recommend a Churchill book.

Roy Jenkins's Chur- oh, what? My Ear-

No, but, but, no, but by Churchill.

My Early Life.

I've really loved it.

She is the director of a charity called Friends of Friendless Churches that was set up 70 years ago by people like – T.S. Eliot, John Betjeman, a young Roy Jenkins, to preserve these crumbling elements of our history.

And the point she makes, and she goes around visiting all these fascinating Saxon and Norman and Tudor churches, is that it's not so much about theology it's about history and above all it's about humanity that when you wander into a church you are seeing the porch step that's been worn down by thousands of feet over the years you're seeing the hard work of the craftsmen that built it you're actually seeing what makes man and particularly English man and English woman live and I've really enjoyed it so I recommend that heartily if you want something to lift your spirits well I hope they include the Northern Irish in that as well Patrick Oh, yeah, you have a different sort of church out there.

But

You get, you know, the Advantage Judicial Review.

You get, you know, all those Roy Jenkins private members bills.

You get lifting of censorship and, you know, a great liberalisation of the country, which, you know, obviously we would welcome.

And then in the 1980s, you get an equivalent with the economy.

It was a great book, actually, that book.

And interestingly, it was Roy Jenkins who possibly had the objectivity politically to write it, which is a good lesson for us all.

So going forward, you're now playing also a London role.

And I think that one of the things that I was really taken with Bexley was Bexley's cross-London contribution was tremendous.

He was not exactly wealthy by normal measurement.

of course lloyd george's way raised welsh he not only was raised as a welsh person but he was also in thought indeed in action a welsh language speaker he prayed in welsh and he thought in welsh The historian and politician Roy Jenkins, himself a Welshman, put it simply, quote, "...his whole culture, his whole outlook, his language was Welsh.

He went to the local school, which was an Anglican national school, and there as a boy he staged what he later called the first fight for religious freedom." organizing the pupils to refuse to recite the Anglican Creed when the vicar came to inspect.

The instinct was there from the very start, the Welsh nonconformist boy refusing to bow to the established church.

The German government were furious.

The Kaiser is said to have demanded his dismissal.

Now, historians argue, ever since, about exactly what the speech was meant to do, whether it was really aimed at Germany or more tangled than it looked.

And I'll point you to the debate rather than trying to pretend I have any idea about it and the reality that it's not settled seems obvious.

Dennis Healy had been the beach master in the landings of Salerno in Italy.

You know, Roy Jenkins had been a codebreaker at Blakesley Park.

They were big.

They had big life experiences.

Do you think that that is really the case? Or is it that we now live in a political culture where we rip them to shreds before they're off the...

Of the starting posts.

Well, I did know as a journalist and with Roy Jenkins, for instance, as a good personal friend.

You know, I knew Healy and met lots of them, Carrington Heath and so on.