 With the rise of totalitarian dictatorships during 1930s his interests spread from coal and unemployed miners to poverty more generally and education, through to foreign affairs.Rearmament and the threat of global conflict attracted the attention of Clement Attlee in 1937 for whom he worked as PPS.During the war Jenkins worked on industrial tribunals for the Royal Ordnance Factory, Glascoed, for which he needed legal dispensation from parliamentary privilege because he was an MP.