The death of a singularly civilised man: Lord Jenkins of Hillhead (1920-2003)

It is comparatively easy, even in such a rich career lived for so long at the centre, to discern Roy Jenkins' greatest contribution. As Home Secretary in the 1960s he liberalised the statute book as no one has before or since, with the legalisation of homosexual relationships, and the relaxation of the laws on divorce and abortion being his outstanding achievements.

It was nothing less than a social revolution and it took great determination. That was Roy's strength. He always had a very clear sense of direction.

Some say that I was Roy's rival, but I don't think so. Roy and I were friends, although not close, and we worked well together. But he could never have become leader of the Labour Party. He was always really a liberal, whichever party he happened to be in. I could see this plainly from when we were students at Oxford in the 1930s (he was two years younger), through to when we served in Cabinet in the 1960s and 1970s, and to the SDP split in the 1980s and after. He also had a brilliant mind, put to excellent use cracking German codes during the war, and was the best biographer of his generation. It is interesting to note that so many of his heroes were liberals.

The problem Roy had as a politician was that his judgement was not as sharp as his intellect, and that for him so many issues were matters of principle. He was not a party man, like those other historical figures about whom he wrote so splendidly, such as Lloyd George and Winston Churchill. Party politics, as such, didn't suit him.

He also always preferred to be on top, whether as leader of the SDP or President of the European Commission. For all his reputation as a centrist, he actually found it difficult to compromise. I saw this when he resigned as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party in 1972 over Europe, and again in 1981, when he formed the Social Democrats on the issues of Europe and unilateral nuclear disarmament.

Although I sympathised with Roy, I thought then, as I do now, that he made a disastrous error in leaving the Labour Party. For he took too many sensible MPs and party members with him into the SDP, which never got anywhere. So far from dragging the Labour Party back to sanity, it shifted the balance of power in the party to the left, and made its recovery much more protracted. The SDP did not create New Labour: it delayed it. It was also a disaster for me, as his actions made it less likely that I could have become leader, although that didn't spoil our friendship.

Was Roy Jenkins the best prime minister we never had? Probably not. Roy would never have made it, as his poor showing in the leadership election after the resignation of Harold Wilson in 1976 showed. Whether Wilson was correct when he said that such an Asquithian figure as Roy was too leisurely to have been prime minister in the modern world, I'm not sure. More important, Roy would not have known how to work with the unions or the left of the party as Wilson and Jim Callaghan did.

It may well be that Roy will be best remembered for creating what was called "the permissive society". I know that Roy always believed that what he was dedicated to was the building of a "civilised society". He was right about that, and it serves as a fitting epitaph for such a singularly civilised man.

Lord Healey was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labour government of 1974-79 and deputy Labour leader from 1980-83.