Odd this day
Today, I think we should celebrate the 121st anniversary of the birth of Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Walter Henry Bromley-Davenport TD DL, Grenadier Guard, British Army welterweight boxing champion, and legendarily loud, rude, and indeed somewhat violent MP.
Apparently, he would bellow SILENCE at anyone in the chamber who tried to interrupt him, and had a particular penchant (as Conservative member for Knutsford for 25 years) for hollering at Labour MPs to take their hands out of their pockets.
This… enthusiasm for parliamentary discipline, let’s call it, was presumably what won him his one government job. He joined the Tory whips’ office in order to channel his gentle skills of persuasion into getting MPs to vote the right way. There are differing versions of how this experiment ended.
The legend, which is obviously the more entertaining option (although, to be fair, not so much so that the ‘truth’ is underwhelming) is that one evening in the Palace of Westminster he saw a fellow Conservative sneaking out before a vote. This being an unforgivable sin, he gave chase, yelling the man’s name at the greatest volume his apparently considerable lungs would allow. The man ignored him, so Walter caught up with him and kicked him up the arse. He did this with such force that the man tumbled down a flight of stairs — and it was only when he arrived at the bottom that Bromley-Davenport was able to identify him correctly.
As the Belgian ambassador.
That’s the version told by Simon Hoggart in this rather entertaining piece from the New Humanist, anyway.
(That also features the story of former miner Bill Stone overhearing someone in Strangers’ Bar complaining that the Commons was full of cunts. “There’s plenty of cunts in t’country,” he noted, “and they deserve some representation.”)
Anyway, this was, apparently, in 1951. Bromley-Davenport was removed from his role as whip, and spent his remaining 19 years in parliament in backbench obscurity. But his demotion created a vacancy, which then Conservative leader Winston Churchill filled with one of the new boys: Lt. Col. Edward Heath.
It’s a fine story, and it’s pleasing to think that Heath’s career got an early boost from an act of distinctly unparliamentary violence. It has, though, and perhaps not surprisingly, been embellished.
When Edward Heath finally left the Commons in 2001, an astonishing 51 years after he first joined it, he told the story himself:
In those days, the Whips had a place at the Door and, if they wanted to, they kept Members in or let us pass. When our Whip asked one of our Members, “Have you got a pair?”, he said, “No” and went on. The Whip said, “Well, you can’t go out. Get a pair.” “No, I haven’t got a pair,” replied the Member. Whereupon our enthusiastic Whip jumped up, gave him a hefty kick in one of the usual places, and the man fell flat on the floor. He had to be picked up and set on his feet; he went to the Chief Whip and complained. As a result, the Whip himself was changed; I was sent for and invited to take his place. The result was a notice in The Times the next day, to this effect:
“Colonel Walter Bromley Davenport, MP for Knutsford, majority 16,913. He has resigned in order to give greater attention to his constituents. His place is now being taken by Mr. Edward Heath, MP for Bexley, majority 133.”
That is how I began my climb to fame. The next day, I was taken to see Churchill, who patted me on the shoulder and said, “Yes, of course you can be a Whip.” I quote his words: “It will mean much hard work and it will be unremunerated but so long as I am your leader it will never remain unthanked.”
So, it seems no ambassador, Belgian or otherwise, was involved. But someone may very well have been kicked up the arse, Walter B-D lost his job, and Heath began his rise, so it’s still quite fun.
(It’s not quite as good as the story of Labour MP George Brown attending a reception in South America and approaching someone he found very attractive who was wearing a floor-length red gown. “Excuse me,” he said, “but may I have the pleasure of this dance?” To which he received the response: “There are three reasons, Mr Brown, why I will not dance with you. The first, I fear, is that you’ve had too much to drink. The second is that this is not, as you suppose, a waltz that the orchestra is playing but the Peruvian national anthem, for which you should be standing to attention. And the third reason why we may not dance, Mr Brown, is that I am the Cardinal Archbishop of Lima.” But that story is absolutely and entirely untrue, rather than just partly. Ah, well.)
Anyway, in the course of researching this VITAL story, I came across this rather fun piece by Philip Cowley, Professor of Politics at Queen Mary University of London:
…which informed me that colleagues of his in the field of political science have made People Biffing Each Other In Legislatures an area of study. As well as an article, Explaining Physical Violence in Parliaments, in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, they have created a database:
Fistfights In parliamentary Sessions Time-Series (FISTS for short) [which] contains 375 separate acts of violence, close to four times the number of cases than were previously known about.
At this point, I assumed he was taking the piss, but it turned out to be true.
Yes, I do seem to have strayed slightly from the topic, and not for the first time, but in conclusion: Walter Bromley-Davenport, for your contribution to Silly History, we salute you. May your heaven be a well-regimented one, with no slouching or shilly-shallying about.
