Clive Jenkins leaves the rostrum for the last time

Home back 4 October 1999

Clive Jenkins, Port Talbot boy and former union leader, political fixer and millionaire, died on 22 September aged 73. His spent virtually his entire adult life within the trade union movement. In Who's Who, he listed his hobbies as "organising the middle classes" and he saw his union (ASTMS, Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staff - now MSF) grow from 20,000 to 500,000 members. Long before the commentators and sociologists woke up to it, he argued that white collar workers were just as in need of unions as the traditional industrial working class. He was a witty speaker but his high opinion of himself required him to be more than a conference favourite. He needed to be seen to be a real political fixer. It was him who effectively clinched Neil Kinnock's leadership of the Labour Party after the 1983 defeat, so he'll have a lot to answer for at the Pearly Gates. He was at home with the media, and the industrial correspondents liked him (not surprising really, judging by the fond memories of boozy chats regaled by the hacks in the obituary columns recently). He was adept at using the media but his huge ego sometimes got the better of him. Towards the end of Franco's fascist reign in Spain, his union was offering members Spanish holidays. Paul Foot at Private Eye asked whether the union would have offered holidays in Germany during the Nazi period and Jenkins promptly sued Private Eye. On another occasion, he raised the possibility of transferring the union's annual conference from Blackpool or Bournemouth to Majorca, on the grounds that block bookings would make it cheaper even if the flight price was included. Needless to say, this didn't take place. But although the industrial correspondents may have liked him, the editors and owners of the media didn't see an exceedingly rich and highly paid union official who liked to patrol the corridors of power. They and the Tory leaders simply saw another dangerous leftie and he was vilified for spreading the cancer of trade unionism into private sector white collar work.