Page "Roy Jenkins" Paragraph 14

Roy Jenkins is often seen as responsible for the most wide-ranging social reforms of the late 1960s, with popular historian Andrew Marr claiming ' the greatest changes of the Labour years ' were thanks to Jenkins.

He refused to authorise the birching of prisoners and was responsible for the relaxation of the laws relating to divorce, abolition of theatre censorship and gave government support to David Steel's Private Member's Bill for the legalisation of abortion and Leo Abse's bill for the decriminalisation of homosexuality.

Wilson, with his puritan background, was not especially sympathetic to these developments, however.

Jenkins replied to public criticism by asserting that the so called permissive society was in reality the civilised society.

For some conservatives, such as Peter Hitchens, Jenkins ' reforms remain objectionable.

In his book The Abolition of Britain Hitchens accuses him of being a " cultural revolutionary " who takes a large part of the responsibility for the decline of " traditional values " in Britain.