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David Clive Jenkins (2 May 1926 – 22 September 1999) was a British trade union leader. "Organising the middle classes", his stated recreation in Who's Who,[1][2] sums up both his sense of humour and his achievements in the British trade union movement.
Jenkins was born at 4, Maesycwrt Terrace, Port Talbot, Glamorgan, Wales, to David Samuel Jenkins and Miriam Harris, née Hughes.[3] His father worked as a clerk for the Great Western Railway; the family lived in "austerity" in "a small terraced house with an outside toilet and 'no carpet, just coconut matting'"- it was only after his paternal grandfather died, leaving £40, that the family gained hot water and a bathroom, having previously shared the water used in an old zinc tub placed in front of the fire once a week.[4][5] Jenkins's brother, Tom, became leader of the Transport Salaried Staffs' Association. On leaving Port Talbot County School in 1940 at the age of 14, when his father died, he started work in the laboratory at a metalworks and continued his education by taking evening classes at Swansea Technical College.[6] Three years later, he was in charge of the lab. Two years after that, he was a night shift foreman.
Jenkins had early involvement in his trade union, the Association of Scientific Workers (AScW), and become a lay official in 1944, when he was elected as secretary of his branch. In 1946, at the age of 20, he left Port Talbot to become a full-time official at the Birmingham office of the Association of Supervisory Staff, Executives and Technicians (ASSET), where he was appointed assistant divisional secretary. He was at that time a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain.
In 1951, he organised his first major national dispute, a strike at Heathrow Airport that caused British European Airways to cancel more than 800 flights.[6]
Moving almost immediately to the head office, he received rapid promotion: as national officer in 1954, deputy general secretary in 1957, and general secretary in 1961.[1]
Then, ASSET had 23,000 members, which later increased to 50,000 by 1969, when ASSET merged with AScW, to form ASTMS (the Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs). ASSET and Jenkins were the senior partner. In the new union, he was joint general secretary (with John Dutton) of AScW, but by 1970, he was sole general secretary with a vision of what "his" union could become.
By the use of advertising (billboard posters were previously unheard of in the movement), he brought trades unionism to the middle classes. Within 15 years, ASTMS grew from an initial membership of 65,000 to a figure approaching 500,000.[7]
Jenkins kept himself (and ASTMS) in the public eye, with frequent appearances on television chat shows and his own regular newspaper columns. His wit and turn of phrase ensured that even his opponents would certainly remember him.
However, his brash character ensured that more staid trade union leaders kept him off the General Council of the TUC.[citation needed] until 1974. He even became its chairman, from 1987 to 1988.
A Labour government, under Harold Wilson, was elected in 1974. Jenkins was then appointed to the National Research and Development Council (NRDC), from 1974 to 1980. He sat on the committee that produced the Bullock Report (Industrial democracy) (1975–1977) as well as on the board of the British National Oil Corporation (1979–1982).
During the 1975 referendum on Britain's membership of the EEC, Jenkins campaigned for Britain to leave the EEC.[8]
Following the Labour Party's heavy defeat in the 1983 election, Jenkins was instrumental in getting Neil Kinnock nominated to the leadership of the party. In 1988, shortly after ASTMS merged with TASS (the Technical, Administrative and Supervisory Section) to form MSF (Manufacturing, Science and Finance), Jenkins unexpectedly announced his retirement. He wrote an autobiography, All Against The Collar (1990).
In 1963 Jenkins married Moira McGregor Hilley; they had a son and a daughter before their divorce in 1989.[9][10]
Upon retiring, Jenkins- by then having divorced- went to Tasmania with "a beautiful girl friend" to run a hotel and restaurant, which proved "a foolish decision" as "within a year, the business and the affair collapsed" leaving him "back in London trying to pick up the threads of his life." He subsequently bought a house in the Cotswolds, but "maintained his villa in Tasmania".[11][12]
| Trade union offices | ||
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| Preceded by | General Secretary of the Association of Supervisory Staff, Executives and Technicians 1961–1969 |
Succeeded by Position abolished |
| Preceded by New position |
General Secretary of the Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs 1969–1988 With: John Dutton (1969–70) |
Succeeded by Position abolished |
| Preceded by | Technical, Engineering and Scientific Group representative on the General Council of the TUC 1974–1982 With: Ken Gill |
Succeeded by Council reorganised |
| Preceded by New position |
General Secretary of the Manufacturing, Science and Finance Union 1988 with Ken Gill |
Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | President of the Trades Union Congress 1988 |
Succeeded by |
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