by Wright, Ben;
In 1988 John Smith suffered a serious heart attack and began to work on his health, losing weight and pounding up Scottish mountains. But the boozy bonhomie did not stop, and Blair thought Smith was drinking more than was wise by the end of 1993. Despite his fragile health, Smith could not do without whisky-fuelled fellowship in the evenings. It made his life better. Whether it also contributed to his early death, depriving his party (and the country) of a putative Prime Minister, is something that can only be speculated about. What is the case is that, before Smith died, modernisers like Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were frustrated with the pace of change in the party and worried that Smith did not see the need for a sharper break with Labour’s past. The opinion polls pointed to a Labour election win but it might not have been the Tory rout it eventually was. Despite years of strategy papers, the introduction of One Member One Vote and the incremental rebranding of the party, it was Blair’s election as leader that convinced a swathe of swing voters that Labour really had changed. Blair’s political ambition had been nurtured by one heavy-drinking Scot, and the premature death of Derry Irvine’s whisky-supping friend presented Blair with his moment.
Smith was a political bon viveur, despite the harm it may have done to his health. He was a raconteur who drank socially for enjoyment and to the pleasure of others. Cast away on a desert island by the BBC, Smith chose to take a case of champagne as his luxury. It is interesting that booze has been the luxury pick of several prominent politicians. The former Conservative Home Secretary David Davis wanted to take a wine cellar that never ran out. Norman Tebbit was more specific, requesting a drinking fountain with two taps – one gushing out claret and the other Sancerre. Predictably, a case of Bordeaux wine was the choice of Roy Jenkins in 1989. His supply would have run dry by lunch on the second day, but Jenkins could have used the empty bottles to send out an urgent message for more.
CHAPTER 2
Parliament: Drinks on the House?
A warm breeze cushions the Commons terrace and wine flows beside the Thames. A contented, hazy stupor settles over Members of Parliament as they survey the shimmering river and order another round of drinks. It is the most exclusive members’ club in London, but money will not get you in. No bar can match the gossipy, scheming, back-slapping, self-satisfied bonhomie. On a summer’s evening such as this the terrace resembles the deck of a 1940s ocean liner, dwarfing the tourist boats chugging past. It is a pleasure that has been enjoyed by Members of Parliament since the new Palace opened in the middle of the nineteenth century. Victorian MPs looked back at the drinking antics of their eighteenth-century parliamentary ancestors with prissy disapproval. But they were hearty boozers themselves, as were generations of MPs to come. Parliament itself has been awash with drink for centuries. Its story is one of politically tribal bars that echo with the history of their parties.
For new MPs, the first day in Parliament feels like their first day at school. Separated from their families and yet to make friends, they are given a coat peg and a desk and try to find their way around. The neo-gothic gloom gives the place the feel of Hogwarts and our new MP spends their first days getting lost in a labyrinth of carpeted corridors that smell of school dinners. The aroma of sweating meats and boiled cabbage is the scented signpost to places in Parliament where they are likely to spend a great deal of time. These include the bars – not to be confused with the Bar of the House of Commons, a brass rail at the entrance to the Chamber where new MPs stand before they take their seat on the green benches for the first time.
As they inhale the history of the Chamber, pinching themselves on having made it there, our new MP might begin to plot their political ascent towards the front bench and, who knows, perhaps even to Number 10 itself. Such is the restless striving of many a Member of Parliament. Their parliamentary career is likely to be a rollercoaster of hope, exhilaration, recognition and fame, accompanied by troughs of boredom, loneliness, thwarted ambition and failure. Rab Butler talked about the ‘patience of politics’, the skill of riding out fluctuating political fortunes. And for centuries the places where politicians have gone to plot their careers, flatter political patrons, gossip with (and about) colleagues, mingle with the press and drown their disappointments are the watering holes of the Palace of Westminster. That is why they require their own place in this story. This chapter explores where politicians drink and what happens when they do.
For the backbench MP, the Houses of Parliament provide an agreeable life. As the former Conservative MP Julian Critchley described it, ‘the place is kept uncomfortably warm; somewhere in the bowels is a boiler, taken from a battleship, and, while the House is sitting at least, the alcohol flows freely.’1 This was not always so. Prior to 1773 Members of Parliament had to rely on the taverns of Westminster for their food and drink; it was not until the deputy doorkeeper, John Bellamy, was persuaded to set up his eighteenth-century snack bar that MPs could eat and drink on the premises. For sixty years Bellamy’s provided politicians with their meat, bread, pies, cheese and wine, with a furnace of open fires and steaks spitting hot on the gridiron. William Pitt the Younger’s dying words were said to have been ‘Oh, for one of Bellamy’s veal pies.’ Bellamy himself was also a wine merchant, and his claret was pricey for the time at ten shillings a bottle.2 Unfortunately, Bellamy’s burnt to the ground in 1834 along with the rest of the old Palace, although a cafeteria of the same name was reborn in 1991 in Number 1 Parliament Street, a modern annexe to the Palace. It has since been converted into a crèche.
The new Houses of Parliament expanded the refreshment facilities for MPs, which have been renamed and relocated many times since. But their purpose has always been the same: to provide hungry and thirsty MPs with sustenance during their erratic working hours. Questions of access and pricing preoccupied the catering committee from the start. One visitor to the new Dining Room was the American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, who wrote of his experience in April 1856:
It was very much like the coffee-room of a club. The strict rule forbids the entrance of any but members of parliament; but it seems to be winked at, although there is another room, opening beyond this, where the law of exclusion is strictly enforced. (The dinner) was good – not remarkably so, but good enough – a soup, some turbot or salmon, some cutlets, and I know not what else; and a bottle of claret, a bottle of sherry, and a bottle of port.3
The port has dropped off today’s menu, but otherwise Hawthorne’s restaurant review would be echoed by many current MPs.
By the end of the nineteenth century Parliament’s cellar was superb and alcohol was readily available. The centrepiece of the drinking apparatus were the Valentia Vats, a 1,000-gallon vat of Scotch whisky and a 300-gallon vat of Irish whisky. In his contemporary account of the Asquith parliament, Charles T. King describes the ‘the great Valentia Vat, holding its hundreds of gallons of mellow whisky, the long catacombs of wine, the dining rooms with their flowers and palms’, all presided over by the chairman of the Kitchen Committee, Colonel Lockwood MP.4 During the great budget debate of 1909 Colonel Lockwood sustained the protagonists with his unceasing supplies of whisky; and King describes the House of Commons as ‘about the easiest place I know of in which to drink wine’. The reason? A plentiful cellar with low prices:
If you have spent long hours indoors without a breath of fresh air and are jaded with much mental labour, and you find that wine is cheaper there than it is in the outside world, and that you can get a fairly sound claret for ten pence a bottle, the chances are that you will begin to experience the sort of reckless feeling that you really are able to afford half a bottle with your wing of chicken or your grilled sole.5
Such indulgence has been part of the parliamentary experience ever since, to the indignant consternation of those not elected to enjoy its subsidised delights. But they are delights that present dangers to the susceptible MP. Julian Critchley was warned by a Commons grandee that the two occupational hazards for MPs were alcohol and adultery. ‘Obvious drunkenness is rare,�
�� he wrote, ‘but the MP who goes home sober is rarer still.’6 Clement Attlee, who had been Labour’s post-war Prime Minister, also knew that subsidised alcohol, late-night sittings, absent families, thwarted ambition and boredom could make a dangerous brew. His advice to the new Labour MP Roy Mason was simple: specialise in a subject and stay out of the bars.7 But for decades before and since, many MPs have ignored his warning, preferring to drink their way through Westminster life in the convivial comfort of its numerous saloons.
Licensing and Liquor
MPs drink differently from the rest of us. Not least because they imbibe in bars that operate without a licence and set their own opening hours. For many years Parliament’s alcohol sales were thought to be illegal, a view tested in a court case in 1898 by a Mr Williamson against an employee of the Refreshment Department for supplying him with a brandy and soda. Although in that case the judge decided no offence had been committed, the legality of Parliament’s bars remained murky until 1934, when A.P. Herbert laid an information against the Kitchen Committee of the House of Commons for selling alcohol without a licence. Herbert was a lawyer, wit and writer who became the independent Member of Parliament for Oxford University the following year. His maiden speech was a passionate appeal for divorce law reform, a performance that met with Winston Churchill’s witty approval: ‘Call that a maiden speech? It was a brazen hussy of a speech. Never did such a painted lady of a speech parade itself before a modest Parliament.’8
Herbert wanted to test Parliament’s exemption from its own complicated and restrictive licensing laws. If the public had rules to govern their drinking, then why not MPs? But in December 1934, Lord Hewart, the Lord Chief Justice, ruled that parliamentary privilege made the licensing laws redundant in Parliament, ensuring forever that its bars could serve liquor whenever they liked.
A further difference between public and parliamentary drinking is that MPs can never be described as being drunk. Parliamentary law, established in a formal ruling by the Committee of Privileges, is clear that no one may accuse MPs, individually or collectively, of being drunk within the precincts of Parliament. This judgment arose after a Member of Parliament was reported to the Committee of Privileges after saying at a public meeting in his constituency that some MPs were drunk at the end of the day’s proceedings. Despite the undisputed truthfulness of his observation, the Committee ruled against him.9 Alleging that an MP is drunk in the Chamber of the Commons will ignite uproar, as Clare Short discovered when she suggested Alan Clark was the worse for wear in 1983. When in 1947 a Labour MP, Garry Allingham, dared to suggest there was insobriety among Members, the House voted to expel him.
Then there is the perennial controversy over cost. The caricature of MPs draining bottles of subsidised champagne at the taxpayer’s expense is one newspapers tirelessly propagate. In 2009 the Daily Telegraph exposed the way many MPs had been exploiting the old parliamentary expenses system for private gain, making small fortunes from playing the London property market with public money while furnishing their flats at John Lewis. There were claims for toilet seats, garlic presses, wisteria pruning, moat clearance and much else. Voters were furious and political careers were destroyed in the fallout. The focus on MPs’ subsidised drinking therefore fits the picture, post-expenses scandal, of a self-serving political elite looking after its own interests and divorced from everyone else.
The reality, though, reveals a rather different picture, as a click through the many Freedom of Information responses and Commons Catering Committee reports show. All this can be found on the Houses of Parliament website. Taxpayers do subsidise its restaurants and bars by around £2.4 million a year, but that figure has dropped from £6 million since 2010.10 Almost all the Commons facilities run at a loss, although the Strangers’ Bar did manage to make a small profit in 2013/14 according to a Freedom of Information release in 2014. And its prices are about the same as those of the pubs around Westminster. The change, which started in 2010 in the wake of the expenses scandal, ended decades of cut-price boozing. Food remains less expensive than in nearby restaurants, but the parliamentary authorities say the subsidy is needed because of the irregular hours and unpredictability of Commons life. The House of Commons currently spends around £750,000 a year buying alcoholic beverages to sell to MPs, parliamentary staff and for sale at commercial functions. The Strangers’ Bar has by far the biggest takings of any Commons watering hole: £202,575 in the financial year 2013/14.11
Here are some more facts to fill out the picture. In 2014 the House of Commons wine stock was valued at £41,077, and over the course of that year 4,350 bottles of House of Commons champagne were bought by Parliament for sale in the bars.12 But it is the cheaper booze that sells. For example, between November 2012 and October 2013, the House of Commons bars served 15,075 pints of the guest ale, 9,504 pints of Becks, 9,484 bottles of Commons sauvignon blanc and 7,085 bottles of merlot.13
The prices charged have been creeping up in recent years, to the consternation of some MPs. In written evidence provided for a 2011 report on the catering and retail services in the House of Commons, the Administration Committee received some gems among MPs’ submissions. The former Liberal Democrat MP Lorely Burt wrote that ‘the Pugin Room has great and courteous service. However this little haven has now become a rare treat because of the hike in prices. One colleague said they had been charged £17 for 2 Chablis! That, with respect, is taking the Mickey.’ Labour’s Brian H. Donohoe was equally unimpressed: ‘The prices in the facilities have got to Five Star Hotel levels. Two glasses of wine in the Pugin Room £14. Six cups of tea £10.50. I don’t expect to pay that in my “Works Canteen”.’ And the Conservative MP Margot James, while seemingly content with the prices, did want better quality wine in the Strangers’ Dining Room: ‘Chardonnay is a very popular varietal and the only one available is a Chablis – which is a very flinty style of Chardonnay – and frankly at that price level really quite acidic! It would be nice to have another Chardonnay choice from a warmer climate capable of providing a slightly fuller bodied more rounded style of wine.’
As MPs wince at the cost and quality of the wines available today, they might be allowed a stab of nostalgia for the olfactory glories enjoyed by their parliamentary predecessors. The Commons wine cellar used to be famously good, carefully cultivated by the Tory grandees who presided over the Wine Committee. In June 1947 the Manchester Guardian reported that guidance was being provided to MPs to help them with their wine selections:
The refreshment department of the House of Commons has taken in hand the delicate task of forming members’ taste for wine. ‘For the benefit of members who, due to the war years, are out of touch with recent vintages, the following notes are attached’, says the House of Commons wine list. ‘The wines of Burgundy in 1937 have, it seems, fulfilled their early promise and are now robust full-bodied wines. The following year was good but not exceptional. Burgundies of 1939 have a low degree. The Burgundies of 1940 have been destroyed but clarets of the same year have developed greatly in bottle. In terms of cash a bottle of 1941 Burgundy costs a Member of Parliament 23s. 6d. and a 1943 Burgundy 31s.’14
The vintage cellar survived the war but it did not survive Robert Maxwell, who was appointed chairman of the Kitchen Committee shortly after his election to Parliament in 1964. The bombastic swindler was given the job by Richard Crossman, the Labour Cabinet minister, who thought a successful stint in charge of the committee would persuade Harold Wilson to put Maxwell in charge of a government department. Fortunately he never did.
In his new role, Maxwell found that the cellar was full of wonderful wines from the turn of the century and decided that there was money to be made by selling them off, a move that instantly brought the loss-making department into profit. But as Maxwell drained the cellar in a grand sale he made sure to snap up some of the best bottles for himself at a bargain-basement price. As the former lobby correspondent Colin Brown says, ‘everyone thought that it was brilliant because he’d made a profit bu
t what they didn’t realise was that he was ripping off their wine.’
Years later Brown and a party of political journalists were skiing in Austria when they were invited to see the wine cellar of a ritzy restaurant in St Christophe. A number of the dusty bottles bore a Robert Maxwell stamp. After his death Maxwell’s cellar was itself sold off and the hotel had bought a slice of it. ‘I’m absolutely certain that some of those bottles came from the House of Commons,’ says Brown.15
For many years the sale of the Commons wine cellar was a subject guaranteed to produce red-faced fury in a certain sort of MP. But newer members have known nothing other than screw-top table wines and the days of a six-shilling glass of Chateau Latour have gone. So have some of the old bars, as the drinking has dwindled.
The Smoking Room
The grand dame of Westminster watering holes has traditionally been the Smoking Room. It is the only bar reserved exclusively for Members of Parliament. The wood-panelled room is one of the finest in the Palace, with portraits of long-forgotten parliamentarians brooding over the sagging leather armchairs. For decades this is where Conservative MPs have come to drink, gossip, plot and play chess. Once the place would have been heaving either side of dinner, the air thick with cigar and cigarette smoke as Tory MPs guzzled their whisky, gin, brandy, wine and cocktails.
Journalist and former Conservative MP Michael Brown first discovered its clubby charms on his election to the Commons in 1979. On his first visit to the Smoking Room that summer he ended up chatting to Labour’s Harold Wilson. Brown told the former Prime Minister that he was the new MP for Brigg and Scunthorpe. ‘Wilson said, “I’ll give you a tiny bit of advice lad, don’t get up at the Parliamentary Labour Party too soon. Give it two or three years before you make an impact there.” I said, I’m actually on the other side. “Tories won Scunthorpe?” exclaimed Wilson. “Have another drink lad.” He got the barman round and had a large brandy. I was in seventh heaven.’16