Hugh Jenkins, Baron Jenkins of Putney

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Hugh Gater Jenkins, Baron Jenkins of Putney (* 27. July 1908 in Enfield , Middlesex , † 26. January 2004 ) was a British politician of the Labor Party , which in the general election of October 15, 1964 the first Labor MP in the constituency Putney and represented him for fifteen years as a member of the House of Commons and from 1974 to 1976 Minister of State for the Arts in the second government of Prime Minister Harold Wilson and in 1981 when Life Peer became a member of the House of Lords under the Life Peerages Act 1958 . As minister of art, he abolished entrance fees for museums, advocated lowering subsidies for opera and ballet houses in order to give more support to mass entertainment institutions such as film and television, and tried to settle the difficult question of the public lending rights of authors, but was won by Wilsons in 1976 Successor James Callaghan sacked for his leftist views. Jenkins, who was involved in the peace movement throughout his life , was chairman of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) from 1979 to 1981 .

Life

Employment, World War II and the early post-war period

Jenkins, the son of a milkman and the daughter of a butcher, joined the Prudential Assurance insurer after attending the Enfield Grammar School in 1930 and worked for it until 1940. On September 12, 1941 he began his military service as a sub-lieutenant ( pilot officer ) with the Fighter Command of the Royal Air Force (RAF) and was mainly stationed at the air force base in Nottingham , where he worked as an air traffic controller and most recently as a captain ( flight lieutenant ) was promoted.

After the war ended, Jenkins was involved in the general election of July 5, 1945 for a new generation of Labor Party candidates such as George Brown , Philip Noel-Baker and Geoffrey Stanley de Freitas , especially for the votes of the Midlands miners , which he was referred to as "the real heroes of the war".

Shortly afterwards he was assigned to the government in Burma by the South East Asia Command (SEAC) , where he was tasked with setting up an English- language program for Radio Rangoon . In this program, he gave airtime to Burmese nationalist leader Aung San . This led to his being under surveillance by the British intelligence service , and after his return to Great Britain in 1947 he was denied employment as an employee of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC).

Union official and unsuccessful House of Commons candidates

Instead, Jenkins was an organizer for the union of bank employees National Union of Bank Employees and settled in Croydon , where he was elected as a candidate of the Labor Party as a member of the local council. In 1948 he was also the editor of the union newspaper The Bank Officer .

In the general election of February 23, 1950 , he ran in the newly created constituency Enfield West , but was defeated by the candidate of the Conservative Party , Iain Macleod . In the elections that followed on October 25, 1951 , he decided not to run again, especially since he had only recently started a new position as assistant secretary of the Equity Actors' Union .

Jenkins, who began his commitment to the peace movement in the mid-1950s and at that time had founded the disarmament initiative Mitcham Hydrogen Bomb Campaign Committee , ran in the general election of May 26, 1955 in the Mitcham constituency , but was defeated this time by his opponent from the conservatives Tories , Robert Carr .

He then became increasingly involved in the political left as chairman of the group Victory for Socialism , the successor organization of Keep Left , which played a key role in the left opposition during the Suez crisis in 1956. This organized a rally in Trafalgar Square , in which the leader of the Labor Party, Hugh Gaitskell, sharply criticized Prime Minister Anthony Eden's intentions to invade , thereby justifying the Labor Party's energetic resistance to the Suez campaign.

In 1958 and again in 1961, Jenkins was elected a member of the London County Council (LCC) and represented the constituency of Stoke Newington and Hackney North in this until 1965 .

Member of the House of Commons

Shortly before his participation in the Easter march in Aldermaston , Jenkins was nominated in the 1963 Putney constituency as a Labor Party candidate for the general election on October 15, 1964. The conservative wing of the party voted against his nomination because of its longstanding commitment to the peace movement before the founding of the CND and the Easter marches in 1957. After an investigation by the National Executive Committee of the Labor Party and after Richard Crossman and Anthony Greenwood had spoken out in favor of him, his candidacy was upheld.

In the general election on October 15, 1964, Jenkins was able to prevail surprisingly clearly against the long-time previous constituency holder of the Conservative Party, Hugh Linstead , with a majority of 1307 votes: While Jenkins received 24,581 votes (44.9 percent), Sir Hugh Linstead received only 23,274 votes (42.54 percent). His election thus contributed to the narrow government majority for the Labor Party, which, in Harold Wilson, was able to provide a prime minister for the first time in thirteen years.

In the House of Commons, Jenkins became an active member of the Democratic-Socialist Tribune Group , and as such was involved against nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War . In his constituency he spoke out against aircraft noise and the intention to build a motorway. He also pressed for the protection of child actors in television advertising and called for a ban on the sending of dancers to Arabia by unlicensed agencies.

Minister of State for the Arts

In 1973, Jenkins was appointed opposition spokesman for the arts by Harold Wilson, who was now the leader of the opposition after the Labor Party's defeat in the general election of June 18, 1970 , after previous spokesman Andrew Faulds had to resign because he was a pro-Zionist Labor MP had mocked that they would speak in the House of Commons as they would before the Knesset .

After the Labor Party won the February 28, 1974 elections and Prime Minister Harold Wilson formed a new government, Jenkins was appointed Minister of State for the Arts .

Immediately after his appointment, he abolished museum fees and tripled the grants for museum councils. In 1975 he requested an increase in membership for the Arts Council by five million pounds sterling . Most of the problems he had with his public lending rights law, which was undermined by civil servants and unsupported by party leaders, eventually became the target of attacks by frustrated and angry writers.

In this context, his intention to democratize the Arts Council was rejected by the Secretary of State for Education and Science , Frederick Mulley . After Wilson was replaced as Prime Minister by James Callaghan on April 5, 1976, Jenkins was dismissed as Secretary of State for the Arts and replaced by Jack Donaldson .

Election defeat and member of the House of Lords

In the general election of May 3, 1979 , Jenkins suffered an electoral defeat against his challenger from the Conservative Tories, David Mellor : while Mellor received 23,040 votes (46.8 percent), he received only 20,410 votes (41.49 percent), so that he lost with 2630 votes and thus had to give up his mandate after fifteen years.

Shortly thereafter, he became in 1979 president of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament ), whose vice-president he was since 1,981th

By a letters patent dated May 14, 1981, Jenkins was elevated to the nobility under the Life Peerages Act 1958 as a life peer with the title Baron Jenkins of Putney , of Wandsworth in Greater London, and was a member of the House of Lords until his death on.

Its official launch ( House of Lords ) took place on 13 May 1981 with the support of David Kenworthy, 11th Baron Strabolgi and Fenner Brockway .

In the House of Lords, Baron Jenkins, who was the first member of the House of Lords to call for the Elgin Marbles to be returned to Greece , continued his commitment to nuclear weapons disarmament and, in 1982, advocated the abandonment of US nuclear bases in Great Britain. In the wake of the Spycatcher scandal at the end of the 1980s, he advocated the establishment of a body to monitor intelligence services such as the Security Service , Secret Intelligence Service and Government Communications Headquarters and supported the 1993 draft law.

Publications

  • Essays in Local Government Enterprise. , 1964.
  • The Culture Gap. , Autobiography. 1979.
  • Rank and File. , 1980.
  • Solo boy. , Radio play. 1983.
  • When You and I Were Seventeen. , 1985.
  • A Day In September. , 1986.
  • In Time of War. , 1986.
  • Last Tune From Rangoon. , 1987.
  • View To a Death. , 1989.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ London Gazette . No. 35319, HMSO, London, October 21, 1941, p. 6117 ( PDF , accessed February 27, 2014, English).
  2. ^ London Gazette  (Supplement). No. 48581, HMSO, London, April 13, 1981, p. 5513 ( PDF , accessed February 27, 2014, English).
  3. ↑ London Gazette . No. 48615, HMSO, London, May 19, 1981, p. 6951 ( PDF , accessed February 27, 2014, English).
  4. ↑ Entry in Hansard (May 19, 1981)
personal data
SURNAME Jenkins, Hugh, Baron Jenkins of Putney
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jenkins, Hugh Gater, Baron Jenkins of Putney (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British (Labor) politician, Member of the House of Commons and trade unionist
DATE OF BIRTH July 27, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Enfield , Middlesex
DATE OF DEATH January 26, 2004