Roy Jenkins by John Campbell

Author:John Campbell [John Campbell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2014-03-27T04:00:00+00:00

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fn1 Norris was hurt by Jenkins’ description in his memoirs and wrote to protest, leading Jenkins to apologise. All he had meant, he explained tactfully, was that ‘at that stage my interest was much more on general Cabinet politics than on the Home Office, and that yours was the reverse . . . I must have been very difficult to work for in the spring and summer of 1974, owing to my generally downbeat mood and the fact that, for the first few months at least, I did not do my job at all well.’ Norris thanked him for the clarification, insisting that he had enjoyed working for him and did not share Jenkins’ recollection of his own performance.2 He retired in 1997 as Director of Finance in the Prison Service.

fn2 The sisters were released under the Royal Prerogative in 1980. Dolours then married the actor Stephen Rea, who later voiced the words of Gerry Adams when he was banned from the airwaves by Mrs Thatcher. Both sisters remained unrepentant Republicans who opposed the Good Friday Agreement and were linked to bombings carried out in 2009–11 by the ‘Real IRA’. Marian was sent to prison again in 2011–13. Dolours died in 2013.

fn3 Reviewing Garret FitzGerald’s memoirs in 1991 he confessed that his prejudices were ‘much more green than orange. I am a poor Unionist, believing intuitively that even Paisley and Haughey are better at dealing with each other than the English are with either.’26

fn4 Two of the Balcombe Street gang had earlier carried out the murder of the journalist Ross McWhirter, co-author of the Guinness Book of Records, who had offered a reward for information leading to the arrest of IRA terrorists. McWhirter was shot on his own doorstep in North London. Such incidents meant that Jenkins and other ministers dealing with Northern Ireland now had to be heavily guarded wherever they went.

fn5 ‘Ricky’ Tomlinson, as he was now known, later achieved fame as an actor in the TV series The Royle Family.

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