Political Commentary
The emotional Whips
Patrick Cosgrave
The weekend following the last general election I found myself, on a crisp Sunday morning, in a television studio with Mr Robert Mellish. It was public knowledge then that he did not want to continue as Mr Wilson's Chief Whip, and it was generally thought that the Prime Minister would find something else for him to do. Housing was suggested, for example (for few remembered that that post itself was not without memories for Mr Mellish: during the course of the 1970 campaign Mr Wilson actually made Mr Mellish housing minister, and the battered Cockney face appeared on television enthusiastically mouthing platitudes about the housing problem). But Mr Wilson — who had thought of trying to liven up the campaign by carrying out a major Cabinet reshuffle in the middle of those tense three weeks leading up to a decision — lost the election, and Mr Mellish shortly afterwards found himself again a Chief Whip.
It is worth recalling: that Mr Mellish Was brought into the Chief Whip's office — at a sacrifice in salary — as a tough guy, so his resignation last week, when he had been defied yet again by the left of the Labour Party, was understandable. Mr John Silkin, who had had the thankless job of keeping order amid the Labour majority of 1966, perhaps partly because of his personal sympathy for the left, found it impossible to maintain discipline, and had to go to another job. Mr Mellish entered on his new task with the kind of bustling enthusiasm which he displays on entering a bar, and he did pretty well. Of course, after nearly six years in the job he is exhausted, and his on-off resignation affair was perfectly understandable. But it remirtas us — or should remind us — of how very emotional Whips are.
I write that in the most serious spirit. Being Chief Whip is a rotten job, a?ifl it keeps one in the Palace of Westminsterrat ungodly hours even when one's party_enjoys a comfortable majority. Unlike other members — including ministers — one cannot, during a late night sitting, slip off to the office or wherever for a quick kip. Nor can one retire into a corner and catch up on one's work, for one's work is the tedious business of staying awake, keeping an eye on possibly recalcitrant supporters, making sure that no late rebellion looms, chatting to, pleading with, members who may stray out of line. Yet, when they talk among themselves in the various bars and tearooms which adorn the House of Commons, ordinary backbenchers mutter away, about 'Whips' as though they were machines rather than men, constantly making calculations for the destruction of the happiness and the independence of those backbenchers on the regimentation of whom their own reputation depends. Still, the two Chief Whips who have dominated affairs for the last decade or so, Mr Whitelaw and Mr Mellish, have been men of exceptional if not excessive, humanity and emotion.
And both men, in the most difficult of circumstances, have more or less held their parties together. Mr Whitelaw again and again in opposition hoped for relief from the job. When the Tories won the 1970 election he ardently desired serious (his word) executive ministry, and instead became Leader of the House, which is rather like being a Whip for all parties. (This, indeed, was against the advice of the late Richard Crossman, who was a great admirer of Mr Whitelaw and thought he should be Secretary of State for Social Services.) Like him Mr Mellish burns to show what he can do in a different job, one where a piece of legislation, or a great decision which influences the lives and happiness of millions of people, can be held to mark one's passing. Like Mr Whitelaw, however, Mr Mellish has been stuck again and again with maintaining discipline among refractory ranks.
It can only be done at enormous cost to one's own personality, especially if that personality is a naturally ebullient one. I recall an occasion during Mr Whitelaw's tenure of office as Chief Whip when a Tory rebellion threatened. The central figure in the rebellion was a Tory backbencher of exceptional obtuseness, but also of exceptional probity. If Mr Whitelaw could persuade this man that his contemplated course of action was wrong the rebellion itself would collapse. Mr Whitelaw had the man in question into his office and talked to him for hours. Again and again, suppressing his impatience, his ebullience — suppressing, indeed, every characteristic of persqnality which makes him lovable — Mr Whitelaw asked his colleague to state and restate his case until, by apparently endless repetition, the man saw the damage he might do to an Opposition in almost as parlous a situation as it is today. Out of his own words the backbencher destroyed his case, and went away, somewhat dazed, to withdraw his earlier threat of leading his friends into action against the wishes of the leader of the party and the Shadow Cabinet. Mr Whitelaw asked somebody in the room to pour him a large whisky, drank it in silence, and then exploded in bad temper, hammering his desk with the wholly justified and angry impatience of an able man who has been forced for a long period to conceal his ability, make himself agreeable, walk across broken glass, do anything which was required to achieve the single end of keeping the members of his party marching in the same direction for hours at a time. Mr Whitelaw and Mr Mellish are both great Chief Whips, but only Mr Heath, in the last generation, has been great in this office without apparent damage to his happiness and peace of mind. Mr Heath was Chief Whip in one of the most difficult periods in the history of the Conservative Party — iust after Suez. To him as much as to Mr Macmillan — who _usually gets the credit — was due the credit for pulling the party together after one of its greatest and most divisive catastrophes. He did it with a performance of astonishing dedication and acuity, though it won him the respect rather than the love of those who came under his discipline. He is a much less vulnerable man than either Mr Whitelaw or Mr Mellish: even he, however, was relieved when he was able to pass the job along to another.
Chief Whips, if they are at all sensible, try to reach some kind of ongoing arrangement with those for whose votes they are responsible. Mr Mellish, for example, once stressed that, however gross a backbencher's rebellion,' he would not ever recommend the withdrawal of the Labour Whip. Thus he tried to exorcise the memory of those unhappy days when Mr Gaitskell was leader of the Labour Party and the Whip was withdrawn from such as Mr Michael Foot, now a minister of unparalleled probity, reputation and statesmanship. By this statement Mr Mellish was signalling to potential rebels that if they played fair with him, he would play fair with them. What he was seeking was every Whip's dream: the prevention of large-scale rebellion.
What he was hoping for was a situation in which any rebellion would be made by a very few members, who could safely abstain, or even vote against their party, without endangering the government's majority in any given vote. What worries Whips is situations in which they cannot rely on a majority; in which a vote • may overturn the policies they are supposed to enforce with the voting feet of their fellow members. Nobody, for example, who saw Mr Pym metaphorically biting his nails and gnashing his teeth during the various votes on the European Bill during the life of the last Heath government could — whatever his view of the situation, whatever his opinion about whether the Bill should be passed or not not feel some sympathy for the man's dilemma.
I speak, of course, of his purely personal dilemma. Mr Pym was a Chief Whip of exceptional ruthlessness and, like Mr Heath, he made life hell for those who looked as though they might deny him his majority on any given occasion. Mr Whitelaw and Mr Mellish were angels of charity and compassion compared with such as Mr Heath and Mr Pym. But they are both remarkable in holding down that particular job for long periods without the utter destruction of their humanity. As a Whip, one inevitably becomes involved in the business of calculating men's emotions and principles as if they were mere factors in a sum. I recall, even at the height of that European row, Mr Pyin's chagrin, in one of the most important votes, when he discovered that his arithmetic was less accurate than that of Mr Neil Marten, the Tory Party's leading and most consistent anti-Marketeer. It was laughable, it was silly, it was sad, but, whatever he had done, one could not help having some very real sympathy for Mr PyM. It is, then, the most thankless of thankless jobs, but one essential to the functioning of party democracy. The Whips should, it is true — as was recently observed by Mr Simon Wingfield-Digby, who was a Whip under Churchill — now do much more of what they. were once supposed to do in the way ot, reporting to their leaders the feelings or backbenchers, so that leaders would much less iir frequently act to impose their will on the. followers without sufficient thought. Even are they do not do that, however, they
creatures for whom it is proper to e sympathy rather than dislike.
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