Arthur Jenkins

Arthur Jenkins (3 February 188225 April 1946) was a Welsh coal-miner, trade unionist and Labour politician who served as vice-president of the South Wales Miners' Federation and MP for Pontypool. He was the father of the Labour (and later Liberal Democrat) politician Roy Jenkins. Early life and education Jenkins was born at Varteg, near Abersychan in Monmouthshire to Thomas Jenkins and his wife, Eliza Perry. He left school at the age of 12 to work in the coal mine at Viponds, where he became actively engaged in trade union work. He attended night school, learning enough to gain a scholarship from the Eastern Valley Miners educational group to attend Ruskin College. In 1909 he went on strike over the dismissal of the militant Marxist teacher Dennis Hird. Partly in disgust at the way socialists were treated in higher education, he transferred to the Central Labour College, and from there to the campus in London. He had not completed his studies at Ruskin when he left for Paris to continue his studies there, at the Sorbonne. In 1910 he returned to Wales to work as a miner and teach evening classes in the village of Garndiffaith. Family On 2 October 1911 Jenkins married Hattie Harris (1886–1953), the daughter of a local steelworks manager from Blaenavon who worked in a music shop in Pontypool.