Last summer, Charlie Whelan’s lawyers threatened to sue The Spectator for an article describing him as a bully. The article was entirely correct. So what was he so keen to cover up? Fraser Nelson and Ed Howker investigate
The Labour rebellettes fear the creeping takeover of the party by the Unite trade union via Charlie Whelan. He has been taken on by female officers in the union and formally charged with bullying. Certain Labour women see the Brown-Simpson-Whelan alliance as part of a menacing testosterone-sodden axis. And one that needs to be challenged.
Two months later, a letter arrived from Mr Whelan’s lawyers. Carter-Ruck, the Brownites’ law firm of choice, insisted that their client had not ‘engaged in any sexist or bullying behaviour’ and that our post had caused him ‘considerable distress and embarrassment’ for which he sought damages and an apology. It was, at first, baffling: Mr Whelan is perhaps the most notorious bully in Westminster. No court would convict. But due to the generous nature of England’s notorious libel system, it would cost him not a penny to sue. And, while it would cost us thousands to launch a defence, it would cost far less to meet his demands: apologise, and run no such articles again.
There is much that Mr Whelan does not want to be investigated. Who he is, and what he does, are questions he would prefer to remain unaddressed. As political officer at the Unite union, his position seems irrelevant — yet he has become, as one Labour peer puts it, one of ‘the most powerful people in the party’. Just how he has acquired such power, how he uses it and to what ends, is a story that The Spectator had been looking into at the time of his lawyer’s letter. A no-win-no-fee legal action — served to a magazine with a small budget — is normally an effective way of putting pesky journalists off the scent.
As we built our defence, extraordinary details began to emerge. The story goes way beyond his ‘inappropriate’ behaviour in the Gay Hussar restaurant, which featured in the complaints against him at Unite. It is about how Gordon Brown and his allies operate: about the brutality meted out to their opponents and how they managed, in effect, to capture the Labour party. And it is about how, in this campaign, they are fighting to keep the power structure intact, either by winning the election or by installing Ed Balls as party leader.
Mr Whelan had been almost forgotten about when he was brought back, Smiley-like, three years ago. He was Mr Brown’s first-ever spin doctor: hard-working, hard-drinking and specialising in destroying those whom Mr Brown regarded as his internal rivals. One such battle, with Lord Mandelson, ultimately led to his resignation in 1999. Almost ten years later, before Mr Brown’s first Labour conference as party leader, he was brought back as political officer at Unite union. His appointment immediately rang alarm bells among the Labour MPs who feared it signalled a return to the sectarian warfare of old.
‘It’s genius,’ remarked a Cabinet member shortly after Mr Whelan was first appointed to Unite. ‘Anyone challenging Gordon for the leadership would need the backing of the biggest donating union. If they came to Unite, they’d find Charlie waiting for them.’ Unite, meanwhile, gets special ‘hotline’ access to No. 10. The links between Unite and No. 10 have become so close that most Labour observers now assume that Derek Simpson, the secretary-general of Unite, will be nominated for a Labour peerage at the next available opportunity.
But the rest of Unite’s staff was stunned by Mr Whelan’s arrival, and those who regarded it as a Brownite coup d’etat had their fears confirmed when the union sent £5,000 to Ed Balls’s re-election campaign. ‘It was one of his earliest acts of patronage,’ explains one Unite member — and a clear sign of what he was there to do. ‘He delivers very little for Unite or its members,’ says another senior former official. ‘He’s there as an appendage of No. 10.’ Mr Whelan soon became a frequent visitor to Downing Street — where he would meet Mr Balls and Damian McBride. When the latter was caught sending a now-notorious email conniving to smear senior Conservatives and their wives, it was no surprise that Mr Whelan’s name was on the distribution list. The old gang was being reconstituted.
Mr Whelan lost no time in easing out staff who had naive ideas of being there to serve the union rather than Mr Brown. He was given to accusing enemies of ‘plotting’ but was also suspicious of the staff he inherited. His first victim was Mike Griffiths, who he inherited as a deputy. They went out to lunch, where Mr Whelan asked him what he wanted. He replied he simply wanted to stay in his job. ‘Well, it ain’t going to f***ing happen,’ said Mr Whelan (his former colleagues all report the liberal use of expletives). Griffiths was eventually ousted — keeping both his £65,000 salary and company car for more than a year afterwards.
Mr Whelan’s style — bullying — may be commonplace in the rougher world of Westminster (and, by some recent accounts, inside No. 10 itself). But in a union devoted to tackling bullying, such a modus operandi was extraordinary. After he had been there for a little over a year, several of his colleagues brought a formal ‘joint grievance’ against him seeking a full investigation into his behaviour. Only three complainants were prepared to name themselves: Sarah Merrill, John Cryer and Vicky Foxcroft. All were political officers, reporting directly to Mr Whelan.
The formal grievance, a copy of which has been obtained by The Spectator, said the others will not name themselves ‘due to fear of intimidation and reprisals, and due to the cultural atmosphere that prevails’. In her complaint, Ms Merrill referred to ‘a real culture of fear, and a climate of bullying that [Mr Whelan] allows to take place in his department’. She mentioned ‘a verbal violent and abusive tirade’ which he made. ‘People cannot reason with Charlie,’ says the grievance. ‘They are just there to do as they are told and do what he wants.’
It also describes how he allegedly appointed John O’Reagan as his deputy without advertising the post, in defiance of union procedures. He was building up praetorians of his own. As the grievance put it, ‘a pattern of behaviour is allowed under Charlie’s leadership’ where the few whom he trusts ‘are abusive, aggressive, and generally intimidating to others with his knowledge and approval’. His arrival at the union has led to a ‘culture of bullying and intimidation that appears to be endemic’.
It was this grievance that The Spectator blog post referred to as ‘formal charges’. Carter-Ruck claimed that this was libellous as charges had been ‘withdrawn’. In fact, the Unite leadership (which answered none of the 13 questions we put to it) made formal offers to two complainants. Ms Merrill and Ms Foxcroft eventually agreed ‘compromise agreements’, one of which involved a significant cash settlement. Mr Cryer was offered protection from Mr Whelan and eventually given a safe Labour seat. Quickly and effectively, this whole episode — which could have ended Mr Whelan’s comeback — was kept quiet. This is how Mr Whelan badly wanted it to remain.
While building a power base at Unite, he had also been working on another target: Labour’s governing National Executive Committee. Speaking last summer, one senior Labour figure put it this way: ‘The General Secretary of the party [Ray Collins] is scared of Charlie, and in a way you’d be stupid not to be. When he takes a dislike to people, he can be brutal.’ Another source put it thus: ‘Ray will call Charlie three times a day. And who is Charlie Whelan? A friend of the Prime Minister’s, but what platform does he have? Who elected him?’ The source added that the chair of Labour’s executive council, Catherine Speight, has told friends how she also fears Mr Whelan and has ‘her eye over her shoulder’.
The irony is that this seems like a formal, unholy alliance between Unite and the Labour party. In truth, neither institution is being served by the power axis running them both. Mr Simpson’s many enemies at Unite moan that Mr Whelan has offered not just the union’s money but its personnel to help Labour — and for what? Aside from a few gestures (like a guarantee in this week’s manifesto to make it easier to muscle private contractors out of the NHS) it is hard to see a Unite agenda being embraced by Labour. But as we found over the British Airways strike, Mr Brown cannot quite bring himself to condemn anything the union does.
‘This is what’s so baffling about it all,’ says one Labour peer. ‘You can see the power they are wielding. But there is no agenda, no principles, no core beliefs. Just raw power, for its own sake.’ This is, of course, the heart of Brownism. It is not so much about ideology as it is about the exercise of power and control. Peter Watt, a former Labour general secretary, says his party has ended up becoming ‘the political wing of Unite trade union’ and not just because of the £12 million donations. ‘The real issue is that they are ferociously well organised and at every level of the party they exert influence on [candidate] selections and on policy.’
It is Mr Whelan’s influence over candidate selection — choosing the next generation of MPs — that is of great concern to Labour members now. It is feared that he is giving Unite’s backing to candidates who can be relied upon to support Mr Balls in a leadership contest. One Labour candidate was surprised to be rung by Mr Whelan and asked if she was ‘loyal’ to Mr Collins. There is no obvious reason why fealty should be felt towards a party’s general secretary — but this will matter when, as expected, Mr Collins is persuaded to use his clout to lobby for Mr Balls’s victory.
When Mr Balls managed to wangle a prime speaking slot at the memorial service of Graham Goddard, a senior Unite official who died last year, it was seen by some Unite members as another example of Mr Whelan’s influence at work. There is no other faction of the party with anything like this organisational ability. Labour members such as Charles Clarke see in all this a return to the pre-Kinnock days, where the real power lay with shadowy unelected figures. But none of Mr Brown’s enemies have managed to fight back, and many have self-destructed in their attempts to depose him.
With one exception. For all his reputation as a self-serving weasel, Lord Mandelson has a strong sentimental attachment to the Labour party — the party of his grandfather, Herbert Morrison, whom he hero worships. That he loathes Mr Whelan goes without saying. But he would be joined in that by contenders on the Labour left such as Jon Cruddas and the Campaign Group of left-wing MPs. Their objection to Unite’s influence is not ideological: there is no ideological agenda to discern. It is simply about who controls the party.
Like the old Sicilian villages that lost their menfolk due to mafia wars, the Labour Cabinet now is bereft of talent. Alan Milburn, John Hutton, John Reid, James Purnell — all have decided to leave parliament, rather than stay to fight the machine which beat them so thoroughly. Even Mr McBride is making something of a comeback, with Mr Balls admitting this week that he still speaks to him — ‘from time to time’, of course. Lord Mandelson’s justification for supporting Mr Brown — that he would ensure a New Labour manifesto — was disproved upon the document’s publication this week.
New Labour, one of the most successful vote-winning machines in modern British politics, has gone. In its place is a shadowy network of thugs, planning to do battle with whoever will challenge them on 7 May. As for Mr Whelan, his second attempt at politics has been a tremendous success. His job was not to help the Labour party, but to keep Brown in place. The price Labour has paid for his sectarian war is the destruction of anyone with the talent to challenge him, or renew the party. And this is why the Conservatives should be forever grateful to him. He has done what the last five Tory leaders have failed to do: finally killed off New Labour.