Walter Harrison

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Walter Harrison

Walter Harrison.Portrait.jpg

Name Walter Harrison (2 January, 1921- 19 October, 2012)
Politics
Party Labour
Constituency Wakefield (1964 - 1987)
Positions • Deputy Chief Whip (1970 - 1983)
• Whip (1968 - 1970)
• Deputy Chief Whip (1970 - 1983)
Likes Sass, trade unions, extreme whipping
Dislikes Fancy food, London tap water, the EEC
Friends Jack Weatherill
Enemies Neil Kinnock, Roy Mason, Bennites, Margaret Thatcher
Relationships
Partners Enid Coleman (1948 - 1990)

Jane Richards (1991 - 2000)

Children Bob and Patricia
Personal Attributes
Nationality English
Religion ?
Sexuality Straight
Height 5' 9"
Eye Colour Brown
Handedness Right
Accent Yorkshire

Being a Member of Parliament is like working in a power station, it's no good if you don't know how it works. ~ Walter Harrison

Walter Harrison was a Yorkshire Labour MP who was one of the party's most effective and entertaining whips. As Deputy Chief Whip to James Callaghan's minority Labour government, Walter's tenacity and ingenuity kept the party in power for four and a half years under the most trying of circumstances. He was also notable for being sassy as hell.

Life and Career[edit | edit source]

Early Life[edit | edit source]

Walter was born in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, the eldest of the ten children of Henry and Ada Harrison. Henry was an electrician who started out working in the coal mines but later got a job with the Yorkshire Electrical Power Company. The family were proud socialists. Henry was a local Labour councilor, and despite her large family Ada always saved money from the housekeeping to donate to Labour election funds. She also vetted the political allegiances of her daughters' suitors: when boys came round to pick them up for dates she would ask if they were members of the Labour Party, and any lad who couldn't produce his membership card would be turned away.

Walter attended Dewsbury Technical and Art College. When he left school at the age of fifteen he got an apprenticeship with his father's company, where he worked until he was called up to fight in World War II in 1940. He volunteered for the RAF, where he became a corporal and served as an electrician in twenty countries.

Pre-political Career[edit | edit source]

Walter was demobilised early because of his civilian skills and returned to Yorkshire Electric. He then got a job as a site electrician with the civil engineering firm Richard Costain, helping to put up the prefabricated houses that were used as a temporary solution to the postwar housing crisis. He was promoted to inspector and foreman, and then to personnel officer, but the job involved a lot of travel and his new wife Enid objected. So he went back to the newly nationalised Yorkshire Electricity Board and settled down in Castleford. He also became active in the Electrical Trades Union, rising in the ranks to become the president of the Yorkshire branch.

Early Political Career[edit | edit source]

A young Walter practises the glare he will one day turn on recalcitrant backbenchers.

Walter got his start in politics at the tender age of ten, running with the numbers from the polling booth to the committee room in the 1931 general election. In 1952 he was elected to Castleford Council, and in 1962 he became the deputy mayor. In 1958 he was elected to the West Riding County Council, where he served with distinction on the West Riding Education Committee.

Walter had parliamentary ambitions and joined the Yorkshire regional executive of the Labour Party, but despite the sponsorship of his union he could never manage to get selected, missing out on Hull West, Newark, Ilkeston and Rotherham. He finally got lucky when Wakefield's senior Labour MP Arthur Creech Jones was forced to announce his retirement due to ill heath on the eve of the 1964 election, clearing the way for Walter to stand as his replacement. He was elected with a comfortable majority of 11,930.

The Whips' Office[edit | edit source]

Whips have a bad name, it's true; but it depends how you operate it. I think the whips' function is to help their colleagues: it's like being a contracting foreman. You can't get the best out of the men if you are just flogging them; you've got to have a good working relationship. ~ Walter Harrison

Walter's first two years in Parliament were uneventful, but after the 1966 election Harold Wilson appointed him as an assistant government whip under Chief Whip John Silkin. The following year he was given responsibility for pairing, beginning a relationship with the opposition whips that would ultimately determine the fate of the Callaghan government. In 1968 he was promoted to a full whip.

Walter Harrison.2.jpg

It was a tumultuous period for the Labour Whip's office. Wilson was in the midst of trying and failing to implement the controversial trade union reforms set out in In Place of Strife, and he was facing constant rebellions from the backbenches and even within his Cabinet. In the spring of 1969 he sacked Silkin and replaced him with the hard-nosed rightwinger Bob Mellish in the hope of restoring some discipline, only for Mellish to tell him that the bill had no hope of passing and as a loyal trade unionist he opposed it himself.

Walter proved adept at navigating these stormy seas, and when Labour went into opposition in 1970 Mellish made him his deputy. Though cheerful and charming in the Commons bars, Walter didn't hesitate to kick ass and take names when the occasion called for it. He was ruthless about sacking absentee backbenchers from their committee positions and tracking them down at home to shout threats through their letterboxes. When Government Chief Whip Francis Pym guillotined the Industrial Relations Bill without providing the customary advanced notice Walter went up to him, jabbed a finger in his chest and subjected him to a five-minute diatribe.

His combative attitude was an asset to the Whip's office, but it got Walter into trouble over Britain's entry into the EEC. Wilson had a cunning plan to avoid splitting the hopelessly divided Labour Party over the issue: Labour would oppose Ted Heath's terms of entry but commit to a renegotiation and an in-out referendum if they won the next election. Walter was vehemently anti-Common Market, and interpreted Labour's policy of opposition a little too broadly. When his constituency neighbor Roy Mason gave a pro-Market speech in Barnsley, Walter tried to discipline him and got into a furious row that almost led to his resignation. He also began to develop his own intelligence network separate from that of pro-Marketeer Mellish. It would stand the party in good stead in years to come, when Walter found himself de facto running the Whip's Office.

Minority Government[edit | edit source]

To Walter, who made it all possible. ~ James Callaghan, inscribed in a copy of his memoirs

Labour won the most seats in the February 1974 general election and managed to obtain a one seat majority in a second election in October, but they quickly lost it again to scandals and by-elections. Although being Government Deputy Chief Whip came with some perks- as Treasurer of the Household, Walter was entitled to free sides of venison, which he donated to old people's homes in Wakefield- it took all Walter's skill to keep the government from toppling. The hard left were organising to defy three-line whips, and by December Walter and Mellish were so fed up that they threatened to resign.

That January Mellish suffered a heart attack, leaving Walter in charge all spring while he convalesced. Mellish was devoted to Wilson, and in his absence Walter took over as moral support, briefing the press on the Prime Minister's behalf and getting into spats with less-than-perfectly-loyal Cabinet ministers like James Callaghan. "You're finished," Callaghan hissed at him in one whispered argument on the front bench.

Getting real sick of your shit, Skinner.

He wasn't, but Wilson was. In April of 1976 he unexpectedly resigned. Walter backed Denis Healey for the leadership and Mellish Michael Foot, but it was their enemy Callaghan who won. Mellish had never forgiven Callaghan for his disloyalty to Wilson during the In Place of Strife strife and couldn't work with him. He resigned soon afterwards. But Walter was determined to stay on and do whatever he could to keep Thatcher out of power, even when Callaghan skipped over him and appointed Michael Cocks as Chief Whip instead.

To keep the Government in power without a majority, Walter pioneered "extreme whipping". Along with the usual whips' tricks like orchestrating delays in the division lobbies to prevent controversial bills from coming to a vote (during one devolution debate the Sergeant-at-Arms actually had to come into the Ayes Lobby with his sword and pin Walter against the wall before he could restore order), Walter used his extensive intelligence network to ensure every MP was exactly where he needed them to be during crucial votes. He lured opposition MPs away with fancy foreign trips to keep them out of the Commons. One Tory with a keen interest in all things nautical was sent off to view a NATO exercise in the mid-Atlantic. Labour MPs, on the other hand, were brought in to vote come hell or high water. Walter abruptly recalled Shirley Williams from a trip to China and put her straight back onto a plane to England after a seventeen hour flight. When Ian Mikardo was arrested Walter told the police sergeant responsible that he would be directing traffic on the North Circular unless he released his prisoner in time for a close vote.

Walter also cultivated relationships with the "Odds and Sods", the Liberals, nationalists and Northern Irish MPs he needed to top up the Labour vote count. He famously arranged for whips and ministers to take shifts drinking with the independent Irish nationalist Frank McGuire during his rare visits to Westminster to keep him entertained long enough stick around for the night's votes. As McGuire drank each one under the table, a replacement would arrive to take up the baton.

If Walter couldn't find enough MPs to make up the numbers, he wasn't above faking it. He told three MPs to vote each way in a committee to make it look as if a quorum were present (a stunt for which Mellish later apologised to the House). When the Tories called an unexpected vote in breach of an agreed deal, Walter provided disguises so that Labour MPs could vote twice in one division. This upped the stakes, because the Tories were understandably furious and broke off their pairing arrangement so that ministers and sick MPs were forced to come in and vote. At one point Walter actually moved the terminally ill Alfred "Doc" Broughton into a minister's office with his wife and his oxygen tanks so that he could vote without needing to travel. During another close vote he arranged for a helicopter to airlift the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland from Hillsborough to get him back to Westminster in time. The long hours put an unbearable strain on Labour MPs, several of whom died in office, and Walter persuaded the Services Committee to flash an appeal for a doctor on the Commons annunciators whenever someone took ill.

The Day of Reckoning[edit | edit source]

I didn't want Jack Weatherill put on the rack, or his neck put on the block. I was dealing with it straight. I couldn't fetch Doc Broughton in, and I don't see why Jack Weatherill should have sacrificed himself. ~ Walter Harrison, on why he let the Callaghan government fall

The short-lived Lib-Lab Pact took some of the pressure off the Labour Whip's office, but it was dissolved in the summer of 1978, and the Liberals began lobbying for an immediate election. The Government was able to hang on for another nine months thanks the the support of the SNP, but when the 1979 Scottish devolution referendum failed due to insufficient turnout they tabled a motion of no confidence. Thatcher realised she now had enough votes to potentially bring down the Government and tabled a confidence motion of her own.

The Labour whips scrambled around frantically trying to put together the votes they needed to defeat her. There was a tentative plan to buy off the Ulster Unionists with an oil pipeline to Northern Ireland, but Callaghan thought it was grubby and absurd to keep a government in power through such transparent bribery and wanted no part of it. The Government had the support of Plaid Cymru, but they had lost the SNP and all the Liberals despite a last-ditch attempt to lure Clement Freud into their lobby with a Freedom of Information Act. The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Walter's old nemesis Roy Mason, had alienated the Irish Nationalists with his unapologetic unionism, and the normally loyal SDLP leader Gerry Fitt felt he could not in good conscience vote with the Government unless Mason was sacked, which Callaghan refused to do. Walter's drinking buddy Frank McGuire might have supported them, so the IRA sent two minders along with him to Westminster to help him to reconsider. When Fitt threatened to tell everyone back in Fermanagh how he'd voted, it was the final straw; McGuire lost his nerve and slunk off home before the vote.

Victory, but not at any price.

Labour were one vote short of the tie they needed to cling to power, and the whips faced an invidious choice: whether or not to bring the dying Broughton down form Yorkshire to cast the crucial vote. He was determined to help, but the journey might kill him. Journalists had laid siege to the Broughtons' house and forced them to disconnect their phone, so Walter sent his wife and daughter over from nearby Wakefield to push a note through their letterbox asking after his condition. On the day of the vote Mrs. Broughton rang the whips' office to say it would be madness to bring her husband down. Against the wishes of some of his colleagues, Walter decided that keeping the government in power was not worth a man's life and they shouldn't call him. For the rest of his life he treasured the letter Callaghan sent him after the election telling him he'd made the right choice.

But Walter had one last trick up his sleeve. He went to his friend and opposite number, the Tory Deputy Chief Whip Jack Weatherill, and asked for a pair for Broughton since he was too sick to vote. Jack initially refused, on the grounds that the pairing arrangement had never been intended for confidence motions and he couldn't ask a Tory MP to risk their career by sitting out on such an important vote. But on reflection Jack admitted that they did have a firm understanding that sick MPs would be paired. To honour their agreement he would abstain himself.

"I'm not going to put you in that position, mate," said Walter, who knew that such an abstention would finish Jack's political career, and released him from the pairing arrangement. The government fell by one vote, ushering in eighteen years of Tory rule.

The two whips kept their eleventh hour negotiation a secret for twenty-five years, until they were both long retired and Walter revealed it in a BBC documentary about the fateful vote. He insisted that it wasn't Jack's vote that brought down the Government, but the absence of Fitt's, McGuire's and Broughton's- it had been his responsibility to deliver the votes to keep the Government in power, and he was unwilling to let Jack pay the price for his failure.

You can listen to the documentary here with RealPlayer: Today in Parliament Special Edition: The Night the Government Fell. It has accounts of the night from key players including Walter, Jack and the always entertaining Michael Foot.

Retirement[edit | edit source]

Walter served as Cock's deputy through the next Parliament. In the run-up to the 1983 election he had to fight off a deselection attempt by the hard left in his constituency, and then suffered another shock when his majority was cut to 360 on polling day, partly because of the rise of the SDP and partly because Labour had assumed the seat was so safe that they didn't have to bother campaigning for it. With the party still locked in vicious internal conflict, Walter declined to stand again for Deputy Chief Whip. But he was unable to shake the habits of almost two decades and could still be found wandering through the Commons corridors as if searching for errant backbenchers.

He stood down in the 1987 election. Neil Kinnock, who hated him, decided to be a petty bastard and refused to give Walter the peerage that Walter wanted and his long service clearly merited. He was therefore unable to join Jack in the Lords. He retired to Wakefield and in 2003 he was granted the Freedom of the City.

After Walter's death in 2012, a prize was established in his honour to encourage young people to take an interest in politics, open to teenagers from Wakefield state schools. We strongly advise against submitting Harrisill fics.

Full List of Appointments
• Assistant Whip (1966 - 1968)
• Whip (1968 - 1970)
• Deputy Chief Whip (1970 - 1983)

Personal Life[edit | edit source]

Walter married his first wife Enid Coleman in 1948, and they had two children together, Bob and Pat. Her failing heath was one of the reasons Walter decided to retire from Parliament in 1987, and she died in 1990. The next year he married Jane Richards, who had been the secretary in the Labour Whips' Office. She died in 2000.

Walter had simple tastes. He once objected to making bon vivant Clement Freud chairman of the Catering Committee on the grounds that “I am a down-to-earth man. I don’t want any fancy dishes. I want my roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.” He did, however, have high standards for his drinks, insisting that they should never be sullied with London tap water.

Walter Harrison Facts[edit | edit source]

  • Walter had a personalised license plate that read KHE2L, standing for "Kick Harrison's Enemies to Hell."
  • "Remember, kids: tell your parents to vote Labour or I'll come over to your houses and stamp on your toys."
    During one close vote in 1968 Walter was trying to whip two committees and the vote at the same time, and kept having to run back upstairs to the committee rooms. He got down to the division lobby again just as the doors were closing and managed to force his way inside. When the Shadow Chancellor challenged his vote, Walter said he'd been three-quarters of the way into the lobby when the door closed. The Speaker ruled in Walter's favour and the bill passed by three-quarters of a vote; it remains the only fractional vote ever recorded in Hansard.
  • Walter once went with two Tories on a parliamentary trip to New Zealand. Due to a mix-up with the hotel booking, the Tories were forced to share a room, and the next morning they came downstairs barely on speaking terms because one had kept the other awake all night with his snoring. Walter volunteered to swap rooms. The next day he came down whistling cheerfully. "How did you manage that?" asked the sleep-deprived Tory, amazed. "It was simple," said Walter. "Just as he put out the light I said: 'Give us a kiss, love,’ and he sat bolt upright all night."
  • He was less friendly with rebellious Bennites. At one point he found Eric Heffer on the Commons Terrace, picked him up by the lapels, and threatened to throw him over the wall into the Thames if he didn't "get in the Chamber and effin' vote."
  • He also developed a novel technique for getting Jack Straw to STFU. In 1982 Jack was a junior member of the Shadow Treasury Team, charged with opposing the more boring parts of a government finance bill. Walter decided he didn't like Jack's strategy. In Jack's own words:

Walter stopped me in the corridor outside the Opposition Whips Office, and told me the tactics I was using in my part of the finance bill had to be changed. I thought he was wrong, and explained, in earnest detail, why. He repeated his instruction; I repeated my contrary case, jabbering on. He fixed both eyes upon me and as he did so, I felt a pain between my legs I'd not experienced since the school rugby field. His grip tightened. I rose on tiptoes as he pushed up as well. My mouth came open; only a little screech came out.

'Now, lad. Have you got the point, or do you want some more?'

'Yes,' I whimpered in reply. Walter released his grip. I did as I'd been told.[1]

"What was that for?" Jack is said to have added tearfully, to which Walter replied, "Nowt. Just think what I'd do if you crossed me." That part of the story may be apocryphal, but the testicular squeeze was definitely real.

Appearance[edit | edit source]

Walter was a sturdy Yorkshireman with a distinctive rolling gait. Jack Straw described him as being as broad as he was tall, although this may be because Walter was squeezing Jack's balls at the time and Jack was understandably intimidated. During one period in the late 60s Walter sported these horrible glasses:

Everything about this photo is embarrassing.

Ideology[edit | edit source]

Walter was a standard socially conservative trade unionist Labourite. The poverty he saw growing up in the rough neighborhood of Daw Hill in Dewsbury and later in the Middle East during his RAF days convinced him that he had to go into politics to try to improve things. His father's death from emphysema in 1953 strengthened his resolve, and throughout his time in Parliament Walter campaigned for the victims of work-related accidents and disease. He was a staunch trade unionist and opposed Wilson's reforms, along with the EEC.

But on social issues he veered sharply right. He opposed the legalisation of homosexuality on the grounds that it would alienate Labour's working-class base and position the party as the champions of weird minorities instead of ordinary people. He even defied the whip during the Heath government to support a Tory bill to bar convicted prisoners- meaning IRA hunger strikers- from serving in Parliament. "I have always believed in law and order," he said, defending his vote. "If I had my way I would have made the bill much tougher."

Portrayal[edit | edit source]

In Culture[edit | edit source]

Walter is one of the heroes of James Graham's hit political play This House, soon to be turned into a BBC series. In the stage version he was played by Philip Glenister and Reece Dinsdale:

Walter by way of Gene Hunt
Walter: the Dinsdale edition

The main theme of the play was that you should ship Harrisill. They even cast Jack with a blond hottie to make it easier.

Fanon[edit | edit source]

Shipping[edit | edit source]

Walter has been exclusively shipped with Jack Weatherill, which is understandable since there are a grand total of three fics about him.

AUs[edit | edit source]

In the Dæmon AU Walter's dæmon is a great skua named Kelda.

References[edit | edit source]

  1. Straw, Jack (2012). Last Man Standing: Memoirs of a Political Survivor. Macmillan.