It’s a very strange experience to leave your place of work, head across the river to the National Theatre and see your place of work portrayed by actors on the stage there. To see the very room you just left recreated for the audience to see. To hear the language that hums though the building you inhabit: divisions, pairing, motions, adjournments, constituencies, majorities, used by actors on a stage reflecting back at you the world you live in.
But when the Industry and Parliament Trust very kindly invited a bunch of us whips to see the brilliant This House by the brilliant James Graham, this was the (slightly odd) situation. We left the real opposition whips office in the Palace of Westminster to a theatrical version set up in the National to tell the story of the 1974-79 parliament.
These were turbulent times, and the fractious politics reflected global uncertainty that buffeted Britain from all sides. The whips of that day were fighting to keep the United Kingdom united, looking to smaller parties to get crucial victories on important votes, while the country wrestled with economic change and unrest. So no parallels there with today, then.
The few women in the play are particularly strong characters. Ann Taylor, for example, is portrayed as a formidable, determined woman who changed the landscape in parliament. From what I know of her in real life this picture is spot on. The Tories, are delightful buffers whose self-confidence is their strength, but undoes them. It wouldn’t be for me to say how true this is, of course.
But what I found thought-provoking was the class divide that existed inside British parliamentary politics. The Labour whips are by and large working-class ‘fixers’. They are the folk who use their practical skills to get the business through. They negotiate, cajole, and bargain their way through, using skills acquired from pits and factory floors. What might be thought of as Labour’s intellectual elite are absent from the play.
South London’s Bob Mellish (chief whip under Harold Wilson) is portrayed as making a crucial mistake in backing the wrong candidate for leader to replace Wilson. His reason for this decision – in the play – was the chance to step outside the whips office and ‘take a seat round that table’. If the real Bob Mellish did ever have such feelings, he wouldn’t be the first Labour MP to wonder if the somewhat artificial barriers between the ‘do-ers’ and the ‘thinkers’ in my party were too high.
I don’t want to say too much about the conclusion of the play. That is, the portrayal of the loss – by one crucial vote – of the no confidence motion that ushered in the Thatcher government in 1979.
I was not alive during these events, but I could not help but ponder, as the piece closed, the impact on friends and family – and of the communities I now represent – of the Thatcher government. It wasn’t good. The unemployment and loss of human potential caused is probably the reason I’m in politics.
The reasons for the advent of the Thatcher government were complicated, and of course include the disputes within the Labour movement then. But seeing that link between a broken whips’ deal with the minor parties and the massive economic and social impact of the post-1979 Tory governments really struck home that all we do in Westminster (even when some parts of it appear trivial and inward looking) affects the communities we serve.
In that respect, combined with the emotional punch of decent people struggling against the odds, I will just say this of the ending of the play: it was heart breaking.
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Alison McGovern is the MP for Wirral South and tweets @Alison_McGovern