Gifted playwright Shirley Jenkins who dedicated her life to social justice

Published: September 1, 2011

SHIRLEY Jenkins, who has died aged 81, will be remembered for her tireless back room help and support for the Camden Labour Party.

But as well as dedicating her life to the political causes she believed in, she was a celebrated author of radio plays whose works were greatly admired by the iconic actress Marlene Dietrich.

Dietrich appeared in two of Shirley’s radio plays – The Mirror and The Child, the latter a semi-autobiograph­ical, work – and the pair formed a friendship that would last until Dietrich’s death.

The actress, when in London to record Shirley’s play at Broadcasting House in the 1960s, gave all press the cold shoulder, saying instead: “I will only speak through my author” – referring to Shirley.

It was the start of a life-long friendship with the eccentric actress, which would later include phone calls from Dietrich’s refuge in Paris. From there she would bemuse Shirley’s children by asking to speak to her in that recognisable pan-European drawl, and then revealing herself to be the famed star when asked to leave a message.

Shirley started writing in the late 1950s, a time when she not only had her first child but was active in the newly formed CND, marching from Trafalgar Square to Aldermaston.

She was born in Swansea in 1930. Her father Harold came from a big mining family, but as a young man had been blacklisted by pit foremen after he refused to clamber inside a boiler plant and scrub its filthy, soot lined insides. It meant he was forced to go back to school.

He went on to work as a teacher, eventually becoming a headmaster.

Harold had a love of Welsh poetry and plays, a fact that greatly influenced Shirley and encouraged her to write.

During the war, Swansea and its industrial might was targeted by German bombers: Shirley’s father’s school was evacuated en masse to the mountains of Caernarvonshire, and while it offered an escape from the nightly terrors of high explosives, Shirley had rheumatic fever and did not speak good Welsh like her classroom contemporaries. It meant her schooling during the war was not a happy time.

When hostilities ended she went to study English and History at Swansea University and then did a teacher training course. While studying English, Kingsley Amis was a tutor. His lively lectures, pre-Lucky Jim days, were renowned and another influence on her. It was here also that she met her husband Ieuan, a physicist.

The couple, who married in 1955, lead a semi-nomadic life through the late 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, moving from Wales to Essex, Hertfordshire, Hampshire and East Sussex as they took up various different teaching jobs. They had two children Rachel and Harri.

Both Shirley and Ieuan were politically motivated: coming from the Labour heartlands of South Wales, where they had been brought up to admire community figures such as Nye Bevan and his protégé Michael Foot. It was only natural they would become involved in local Labour Party work.

In the early 1980s, after Ieuan took early retirement, the pair moved to Albert Street in Camden Town and with extra time on their hands began actively working for the Holborn and St Pancras Labour Party. As well as taking on such important but unglamorous roles as managing committee rooms in Bayham Street, they were also joint treasurers.

Shirley worked as a volunteer in MP Frank Dobson’s Westminster office and also worked for a time with Harriet Harman.
DAN CARRIER

• Shirley’s funeral is tomorrow (Friday), 3pm at Golders Green Crematorium. The family have requested that instead of flowers, donations be made to the Macmillan Cancer Support charity.