Cracking the Code
Scrutinising a once impenetrable world.
I knew from experience that infiltrating the whips’ office was no easy task. I also knew that, in rejecting my advances, this particular former Conservative Chief Whip would not leave me empty-handed.
Sure enough, late one evening in November 2023, his email arrived. After a charming preamble, in which he regretted having to turn down an interview with me once more (he’d done the same for a piece I wrote three years earlier), he explained his reasoning.
Chief Whips should never write memoirs nor give detailed interviews about their work or their flocks. Conservative Chief Whips perform a “father confessor” role in addition to the usual public perception of just disciplining colleagues. In my time I handled one “coming out” and three marriage problems and other personal difficulties.
Colleagues talked to me openly about these personal problems secure in the knowledge that they would never read or hear about them from the whips’ office. I would go to jail for contempt of court rather than reveal any secret of The Office or what colleagues said. If Conservative MPs thought that whips or Chief Whips would be writing books or giving detailed interviews, then no one would talk to us again, on anything.
At the time of this email just one former Chief Whip, Tim Renton—Margaret Thatcher’s last—had breached this unwritten code. ‘And he was banned from attending any whips’ function ever again,’ wrote the ex-Chief Whip, ‘just like Peter de la Billière was banned from the SAS because he wrote a book about them.’
OK, I am not comparing us to the ultra brave men of the SAS, but the rule of trust is the same. I suppose if Chief Whips of all parties wrote detailed books then we could outsell Nadine Dories, Jilly Cooper and God knows how many Shades of Grey—but we don’t and should never do so.
My pen pal had other words of wisdom he was happy to see published—an assault on ‘whinging namby-pamby’ MPs, stories of hurled backbenchers and twisted genitalia—which can be found in the early pages of my book on the whips, The Usual Channels.
OMERTÀ
One develops an instinct for the type of former whip who holds similar sentiments. Those who joined The Office in the late 20th Century, for example, tend to be more reticent, especially from the Conservative party. I lived in fear of a giant whips WhatsApp group in which a message would go out not to speak to the bloke with the silly surname. (Michael Cockerell, in putting together his brilliant 1995 BBC documentary on the whips, experienced something similar: Richard Ryder, then the government Chief Whip, asked his predecessors at a meeting not to take part. But he forgot to invite Willie Whitelaw, a Tory Chief Whip in opposition, who spoke candidly to Cockerell about the ‘dirt book’ and other aspects of how The Office operates.)
As such, and presented with the piercing blur of the blank page, I pondered how to navigate the whips’ office’s cloak of secrecy, its mafia-like code of omertà.
Then it struck me: all MPs, to greater or lesser degrees, have to deal with whips. I wrote indiscriminately to those who served in Parliament from around 1970 onwards, regardless of their longevity or position. In so doing I accrued a wide variety of interviewees with different backgrounds: from Cabinet ministers who served for decades to MPs of just one term. From taking legislation through the House to how The Office cracks down on nascent rebellions, the whips’ world began to take shape.
It also just so happened that the brick wall I had feared encountering never materialised; in total I spoke with sixty-four people who served in the whips’ office, and more who work(ed) behind the scenes. By the time of publication, I had interviewed 157 people, with more than 100 hours of audio.
But why was this the case? What had changed?
The answer, in part, dates back nearly thirty years ago.
GB’s NEWS
Unbeknown to his colleagues in The Office, Gyles Brandreth, a whip for two of his years as a Tory MP from 1992-97, had been writing a diary. In 1999, to much critical acclaim, Breaking the Code hurtled its way to bookshelves. In it Brandreth revealed many of the whips’ secrets, including the system of notes stored in an infamous ‘Black Book’, often detailing MPs’ personal proclivities, their penchants and peccadilloes.
Soon after publication its author received in the post a blank piece of paper with a black spot, a mark of shame. To many of his colleagues this was no trivial matter; some still carry resentment to this day. But for those of us outside The Office, Breaking the Code is of enormous value (and, for what it’s worth, a scintillating read).
As our pen pal earlier alluded to, Tim Renton, Chief Whip from 1989-1990, followed with a part-memoir, part-study of The Office. Earlier this year Simon Hart, Chief Whip under Rishi Sunak, published Ungovernable: the political diaries of a Chief Whip. Both also faced criticism from their contemporaries for doing what, for some, is the unthinkable (as alluded to by ex-Chief Whip George Young in a review of my book).
Unlike whips who broke the code Michael Dobbs, despite being the man most responsible for The Office’s fearsome reputation, has faced no such backlash; former Chiefs have even asked him to sign their copies of House of Cards, his 1989 classic.
For my purposes there are many other trailblazers to acknowledge; James Graham’s play This House is rightly lauded for its magnificent insight into the endlessly extraordinary lengths taken by the whips to keep the Labour government afloat during the 1974-79 Parliament (or, in the Tories’ case, to try to bring it down). (I can think of two other plays, including one in 1981 written by Joe Ashton, a former Labour whip, that also focus in part on The Office). Many journalists too have poked and prodded and produced great works, from podcasts to features to news stories. Professor Philip Cowley’s books on New Labour rebellions are essential reading.
The cumulative effect of all this is that ex-whips now feel more comfortable to shed light; Andrew Mitchell, once a staunch subscriber to the code of omertà, wrote a chapter in his memoir about his time in The Office. Others told me they were happy to speak if only to correct the record, about themselves, The Office, or the role of a whip. Many did so with clear parameters, defined lines of how far they’d go. Others were candid, very candid. A few felt they’d been of no use at all. But they were wrong.
The inevitable conclusion of a study like this is that whips are at the heart of everything, from the mundane (the day-to-day in the Commons) to the macabre (in some instances whips had to identify the bodies of MPs who had lost their lives). Be it votes on military intervention, the fallout from the expenses scandal, or the vexed issue of Britain’s relationship with the European Union, the whips are there or thereabouts, lurking in the shadows. ‘The whips’ office is the essential lubricant of Parliament,’ said one former Tory whip. ‘It is the oil that keeps the gears running.’
I also see The Office as politics as it really is rather than as you might want it to be. The whips are the bracing reality check to MPs arriving in Westminster with notions of parliamentary life that are quickly (and sometimes rudely) dispelled. Through the usual channels whips shape so much of what happens within Parliament’s crumbling walls. This leaves some cold, and others in a state of pragmatic admiration.
And yet, there’s often a feeling of incompleteness, as though there’s more secrets to uncover. Together we will delve deeper, and crack the code of this essential institution.
Until next time.
Seb
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