An Unexpected MP

by Jerry Hayes

  I recall two very sad cases when the whips took their eye off the ball. John Heddle, the delightful Member for Lichfield, took his own life rather than face the horror of bankruptcy. He was a lovely chirpy man. It was awful going to his memorial service and witnessing the distress of his widow and two little boys.

  Then there was the tragedy of Iain Mills. He had been missing for days. He had had a messy divorce and had taken to drink. His body was found in a bottle-strewn flat. He had been dead for three days. Alone.

  Mind you, some of the guys did take advantage when we were effectively in a minority government in the ’90s. The last thing anyone wanted was a by-election. It came to the attention of the whips that an MP was facing bankruptcy due to gambling debts. A donor was found. But rather than pay off his debts this MP took the family off on an expensive holiday. He was not flavour of the month.

  The whips tend to classify their little charges as ‘troublesome … shit … absolute shit … insane’. The worst offence is not rebellion; it is not playing the game. This means letting them know if you have problems with a vote. In other words, if you feel very strongly on an issue and particularly if it affects the constituency, let them know well in advance. They will arrange a meeting with the minister, who will do his best to persuade you that the slaying of the firstborn male child is very much in the interests of the economy and an overburdened health service. If you have listened to the arguments and are still concerned then they will do everything they can to persuade you to support the government. But if you really want to incur serious anger, just roll up to the vote and go into the wrong lobby without having the courtesy to let them know. They need to know the numbers.

  On one successful rebellion which I was part of, to ensure that child benefit should be paid to the mother rather than the father, the minister (the lovely Tony Newton) had two speeches prepared. One conceding, the other battling on. He had to choose the former when the whip on duty told him that we didn’t have the numbers … one minute before Tony got to his feet.

  On his death, John Major said of him that if someone robbed Tony of his coat he would chase after them and offer them his shirt. He was a great human being.

  During the Teeth and Eyes rebellion (over the government’s plan to save £30 million by abolishing the free sight test and dental check-up) I asked my old chum Tim Devlin how he was going to vote.

  ‘Oh, with you,’ he said in his charmingly laid-back way.

  ‘So long as you tell the whips.’

  ‘Oh, really? Oh, not to worry.’

  Well, he did need to, as he was torn limb from limb. But at least his heart was in the right place.

  Veteran Telegraph sketch-writer Ed Pearce gave me a tip on how to impress the whips and get a job. ‘Make a speech defending the utterly indefensible. Read Michael Howard on the economic case for not allowing local authorities to spend all of their council house sales receipts on new builds. He will get a job in the next reshuffle.’ And he did. It was the beginning of a meteoric and distinguished career.

  Ed is an interesting fellow. After university he won a writing competition organised by the Sunday Express and was hired, on a piece-by-piece basis, by the legendary John Junor. When I was first elected Ed was a parliamentary sketch-writer for the Telegraph. I say ‘a’ because he shared the job with Godfrey Barker. In those days, Prime Minister’s Questions were fifteen-minute slots on Tuesdays and Thursdays. For reasons beyond human understanding, the two of them would race to sit in the Telegraph perch in the press gallery overlooking the chamber. Sometimes this led to unpleasantness. I will never forget seeing Ed fighting with Godfrey for the seat. Mercifully, this was before the cameras were permitted in the chamber, otherwise viewers would have been entertained by Godfrey getting perilously close to being flung over the railings.

  The clamour for whips to get information knew no bounds. They would attend all committee meetings, patrol the bars, sit in the Tea Room and strategically plonk themselves in the Members’ dining room. They also kept a close eye on the two biggest enemies of the executive: the lavatories and the photocopier. If ever you wanted to have an indiscreet chat in the loo, you always had to check that the cubicles were empty. More often than not one would be occupied by the ‘toilet whip’, some poor devil sitting there for a couple of hours in the hope of eavesdropping a tasty morsel of gossip. The photocopier was also a source of indiscretion. All governments arrange for questions to be planted, and the whips distribute helpful suggestions for supplementary questions and ‘lines to take’. Every now and again some hapless aide would leave the original plants on the photocopier. They would then be found by an Opposition aide, who would re-photocopy them and distribute them throughout the chamber to embarrass the government.

  In those days the Members’ dining room was configured along strict party lines. Government at the bottom, Lib Dems and minority parties in the middle and the Opposition at the far end. The government Chief Whip’s table had one special feature: the chair for the great man had arms. The only chair with arms in the whole dining room. Heaven knows why. Every so often, Labour would send over a raiding party to occupy the Chief’s table. All very public school.

  I always used to enjoy a drink with Walter Harrison, the iconic Labour Deputy Chief Whip under Wilson and Callaghan. His stories of how his Whips’ Office kept the minority government in office were scarily fascinating.

  On one clincher vote Walter and his opposite number, John Stradling Thomas, went down to the courtyard to inspect a Labour Member on a trolley connected to a spaghetti of wires and tubes. Those were the terrible days when even the most mortally ill had to be ‘nodded’ through.

  Stradling Thomas looked at the poor inert patient who had clearly popped his clogs.

  ‘You can’t count him, Walter, he’s dead.’

  ‘No, he isn’t,’ says Walter and kicks the life-support machine, making the corpse convulse. ‘There you are. I told you he’s alive.’

  And he was duly nodded through. In those days even the dead voted.

  The Tory whips were known for their cunning subtlety, like hiding MPs in cupboards and calling surprise votes.

  Violence was rare. Sir Spencer Le Marchant was a legendary Tory whip. His job was to ensure that his MPs stayed to vote. One evening out of the corner of his eye he spotted a Tory MP creeping down the steps to slink out of a vote. This seriously angered the old boy and he aimed a kick which sent the MP flying, with the shout of, ‘And you can fuck off, you lazy bastard.’

  However, there was a slight problem. The kickee wasn’t a Tory at all. Nor an MP. It was the Peruvian ambassador on his way home from a drinks party. This caused the Foreign Office one or two difficulties.

  Spencer was a popular whip on the Finance Committee. This was the standing committee by whom every dot and comma of the Budget would be pored over. The sessions went on long into the night. So, to keep the troops happy, Spencer would lay on vast quantities of free booze in an adjoining committee room and allowed his little charges access on a rota basis.

  But back to Walter Harrison. The acclaimed play The House was based on his antics. Sadly, he was too unwell to see it. He wasn’t exactly the most subtle of operators. After all, he and his boss, Michael Cocks, had to keep hard-drinking, very tough working men on the reasonably straight and narrow. He told me that he would not tolerate shagging on overseas trips and would order room inspections every night after ten.

  One week there was a desperately tight vote and Walter could not find one of his Members. His government could fall if they lost. Eventually, a lackey passed him the phone.

  ‘Where the fuck are you?’

  ‘Er, just taking a short break in Crete.’

  ‘Well, if you’re not back in time for the vote you’ll be in fucking concrete.’ And he meant it.

  Another time Walter was concerned for the whereabouts of one of his confirmed bachelors, who had a keen interest in rent boys. He wouldn’t answer his telephone (there were no mobiles in those day
s) and hadn’t been seen for days. So Walter despatched a junior whip to go to the old boy’s flat. He sat outside in his car for a day and a night. Nobody answered the door but there was a steady stream of young men who were let in. After a while the whip could take no more and broke the door down. He entered the bedroom to find the MP sitting up in bed with a smile on his face – stone dead. He rang Walter.

  ‘Found him, but I’m afraid he’s dead.’

  There was a growl at the other end of the phone.

  ‘I said find him, not fucking kill him.’

  Peter (now Lord) Snape was a newly appointed whip and received a call from Michael Cocks. Labour MP Maurice Edelman’s voting record at the dying embers of the Callaghan government was woeful, so Snape was sent round to give the slacker a serious bollocking. Off he trundled to Edelman’s magnificent old house in Belgravia and read the riot act. That night, Edelman came in to vote. Sadly, the next day he died. Cocks rang Snape.

  ‘Overkill, boy, overkill.’ And slammed the phone down, to the hoots of laughter in the Whips’ Office.

  Jack Weatherill was a thoroughly decent Deputy Chief Whip and a great Speaker. When he was Speaker he used to pop into the Labour Whips’ Office to keep them up to date with the gossip. One day he told them that he had just received a report from the Papua New Guinea Parliament that its Speaker had been sacked for being drunk and urinating on the floor of the parliamentary press gallery. I can imagine how tempting this might be for John Bercow.

  When Jack was Speaker he would always host a reception if any Member’s child was christened. In 1984 my daughter, Francesca, was baptised by my old friend Tommy McMahon, the Bishop of Brentwood. Usually, before the Speaker entered, his train bearer would formally shout ‘Speaker’ and we would all stand as the great man walked in. On this occasion he sent in his five-year-old grandson wearing his full wig, which trailed on the floor.

  Jack used to organise prayer suppers from time to time and invite a guest speaker to address us. One evening the famous American evangelist Billy Graham was invited to give a talk in the state apartments. Billy was an imposing, lantern-jawed charismatic used to wowing stadiums of 100,000. So addressing thirty of us ought to have been a piece of cake. But at the last moment a familiar figure seated herself on the front row: Margaret Thatcher. Her steely blue eyes pierced into him all evening. The poor man fell apart.

  It is remarkable the lengths some Members go to in order to be called to make a speech. Labour old guard and Glaswegian hard man Jimmy Wray once complained to his Chief Whip, Derek Foster, that Betty Boothroyd wouldn’t call him in debates.

  ‘I canny catch the Speaker’s eye, but I think I’ve cracked it.’

  The next day he came into the chamber wearing a bright pink suit.

  ‘She’ll fucking see me now,’ he grinned.

  She did, but she still didn’t call him.

  The only other MP I have ever seen wearing a pink suit regularly was Nigel Lawson when he was Chancellor. And very fetching it was too.

  I had a habit in the summer of wearing a blue-and-white seersucker suit which I had bought in New York. After a couple of years I gave it up after endless ribbing by the likes of Fatty Soames, asking me for an ice cream. Not unlike my good mate Ian Twinn, who always insisted on being called Dr Twinn by staff. We used to have great fun at his expense, pretending to be unwell and persuading secretaries to consult him on gynaecological matters. Ian, of course, was a doctor of planning.

  My old friend Roger Pope (Popey), for years press officer to various Energy Secretaries, told me about the time he went to work as special adviser to Derek Foster, the newly appointed Labour Chief Whip. Michael Cocks called him in.

  ‘You’re going to work for the Chief Whip. I’ve only got one piece of advice. Never forget the strategic value of two words: “fuck” and “off”.’

  Actually, I always got on rather well with the whips because although I was independent-minded I would never take them by surprise.

  One day, when I had been particularly well behaved for a few weeks, I was summoned by the then Chief, David Waddington. I was intrigued. A pat on the back? Perhaps my first slither up the greasy pole? Sadly not. David was in a foul mood.

  ‘The chairman of the party was in his bath this morning and was listening to the Today programme,’ he boomed.

  The image of Peter Brooke naked in a bath up to his ears in soap suds and rubber ducks was not something I wanted to hold for too long.

  ‘And then he heard some bloody socialist sounding off.’

  ‘How awful,’ I empathised.

  ‘And then he realised it was you!’

  This mystified me, as I had been vaguely supportive of the government that morning. But he would have none of it.

  Eventually I managed to get a transcript and I sent it to him. To his credit, he sent me a charming letter saying, ‘I must have sounded more ferocious than I meant.’ He really is a lovely guy.

  A few weeks later I ran into a charming lady in the lift.

  ‘How are things, Jerry?’ she politely enquired.

  I asked how she knew me.

  ‘Ah, I keep a particular interest in your career.’

  She saw that this puzzled me.

  ‘I’m Gill, David Waddington’s wife,’ she grinned.

  Peter Brooke was a funny old cove. He only seemed able to have a conversation about his only two interests, Balliol and cricket. As I had not been to the former and didn’t have much interest in the latter, we didn’t have an awful lot in common. One time, when he was the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, he unfortunately tried to show a little humanity by singing ‘Oh My Darling, Clementine’ on The Gay Byrne Show on Irish TV. He was not to know that a few moments earlier a bomb had gone off in Belfast. The media rather unfairly creamed him.

  One of his civil servants once told me that when Brooke was given his first-day briefing as Secretary of State he was shown the colour-coded map setting out the political allegiances. He cottoned on fairly quickly.

  ‘So that blue bit is where all the Conservatives are, I suppose?’

  ‘Not quite, Secretary of State. That’s the loch.’

  Tim Renton was briefly Chief Whip but, for reasons that I never quite understood, was never a great success. He was witty, educated and very well read. An all-round good bloke. In the days when the Whips’ Office was based at 12 Downing Street, I used to drop in to have a chat to my mate Murdo Maclean. Murdo’s official title was Secretary to the Chief Whip. In reality he was ‘usual channels’, one of the most powerful men in government, with the rank of Permanent Secretary. His job was to do deals with all parties to ensure that the government ran smoothly. He had loyally served Wilson, Callaghan, Thatcher and Major. He was trusted by everybody and was one of the most popular figures in Westminster. I greatly enjoyed his company. Sadly, the Blair machine took a dislike to him (heaven knows why) and he took early retirement. Their loss.

  When I was waiting to have a gossip with Murdo I would drop in to have a cup of tea and a chat with Dot, the No. 12 tea lady.

  One day we were sitting in her cubbyhole when Tim Renton appeared. He was not in good spirits.

  ‘Dot, am I really such a hopeless Chief?’

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ she said without a blink.

  Those Downing Street tea ladies were a formidable lot. Sometimes, if Blair’s mob had done something really daft the Cabinet would find themselves without tea or biscuits. Cross a Downing Street tea lady at your peril.

  As No. 12 was the whips’ lair and therefore by its nature very political, it was used for party functions. These were very often ghastly affairs where people who had donated a few quid could rub shoulders with MPs and ministers over a glass of warm white wine. I remember going to one these ordeals and being confronted by a terrifying lady in a veil whose views made the BNP seem rather left. And she had the easy charm of Miss Havisham. I introduced myself and asked if she had any concerns about policy.

  ‘Don’t you think that the
re are too many Jews in the Cabinet?’ she hissed. This rather stumped me.

  ‘Actually, I’ve never counted,’ I chirped.

  Through her veil I could see a look that would have melted an iceberg as she rattled through the bloodlines of ministers, spitting venom.

  Time for a conversation change.

  ‘Anyhow, we have loads of Catholics. Look, there’s Chris Patten.’

  The word ‘Catholic’ didn’t have the desired effect. It was like one of those projectile vomiting moments in Little Britain whenever the word ‘homosexual’ is mentioned. And in no way was I going to mention that group of ministers.

  So I did something quite unforgivable.

  I beckoned over Chris Patten.

  ‘Hi, Chris, here’s a lady who’d love to speak to you.’ And I made my excuses and left. He is probably still in counselling.

  Lord (Bertie) Denham was a delightful Chief Whip in the Lords. This is a very difficult job and relies totally on charm, as there are neither threats nor inducements worth the paper they are not written on.

  Once, he was splashed all over The Sun for an alleged dalliance with a very pretty young lady. It was sadly totally untrue. Nevertheless he was summoned to John Gummer, who was then chairman of the party.

  ‘John, do you think people will believe this nonsense? I certainly hope so.’

  In the ’60s he once took Peter Carrington to the Bunny Club. They were agog at the amount of female flesh on display. They thought that they were being very, very wicked.

  Those were innocent days.

  CHAPTER 14

  HER MAJESTY’S PRESS