Background
Hugh Jenkins was born on July 27, 1908, in Enfield, Middlesex, United Kingdom. He was the son of Joseph Walter Jenkins and his wife Florence Emily Gater.
Parsonage Ln, Enfield EN1 3SS, United Kingdom
Jenkins was educated at Enfield Grammar School.
Photo of Hugh Gater Jenkins
Photo of Hugh Gater Jenkins
Photo of Hugh Gater Jenkins
Hugh Jenkins was born on July 27, 1908, in Enfield, Middlesex, United Kingdom. He was the son of Joseph Walter Jenkins and his wife Florence Emily Gater.
Jenkins was educated at Enfield Grammar School.
Jenkins's first job was an insurance collector for Prudential Assurance Co., and he soon became active in his trade union and in the Labour Party.
Before the war, Jenkins volunteered for the Royal Observer Corps and was commissioned into RAF Fighter Command. In 1945 he was sent to Burma to run the Forces Radio Service in Rangoon. There he identified himself so passionately with the Burmese people that he took to wearing a native dress and calling himself Uyan Kin. It was not appreciated by the military, which consequently sent him back to England.
Having started an association with unions when he was with Prudential, he returned to his concern for trade unions when he took a job as a publicity officer, editor, and bank officer at the National Union of Bank Employees in 1947. This was followed by a post as assistant general secretary of the British Actors Equity in London from 1950 to 1964. That year, Jenkins was elected to Parliament as a Labour Party member representing Putney.
He was also made minister of the arts from 1974 to 1976. He was a vice-president of Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament from 1979 to 1981. Leaving Parliament in 1979, Jenkins continued to be involved in the arts as a director of the Theatres Trust from 1977 to 1986, where he was also named joint-life president in 1995; in addition, he was vice president of Theatres' Advisory Council from 1980 to 1995 and was president of Battersea Arts Centre from 1985 to 1988.
Named Baron of Wandsworth in 1981, Jenkins served in the House of Lords, where he continued to voice his opinions about the arts. His philosophy concerning the arts establishment is laid out in his The Culture Gap: An Experience of Government and the Arts (1979); he was also the author of Rank and File (1980) and the radio play Solo Boy (1982).
Jenkins became particularly well known for his advocacy of various positions concerning the arts. He supported commercial television and made his opinion known about the arts establishment, which he felt was elitist and which he called a "Snobocracy."
In 1936, Hugh married Marie Crosbie. Two years after Marie died in 1989, Jenkins married his second wife, Helena. This relationship ended in separation and, in 1994, her death. He left no children.