High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Roy Harris Jenkins, Baron Jenkins of Hillhead OM, PC was a British politician. Once prominent as a Labour Member of Parliament and government minister in the 1960s and 1970s, he became the first British President of the European Commission and one of the four principal founders of the Social Democratic Party in 1981. In 1987, he was appointed as Chancellor of the University of Oxford, a position he served until his death. During his lifetime, he was also a distinguished writer, especially of biographies. His nickname in Private Eye magazine was 'Smoothiechops'.