IWTT aka Truthie · @Real_IWTT_Ringo
9th Jul 2014 from TwitLonger
BBC Newsnight (8th July 2014) - The role of the whips
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04994g0/newsnight-08072014 (from 31.:20)
LK: Well, I am joined now by Neil Hamilton who is now a member of UKIP of course, but in the 1990s was a Conservative whip. Thank you for coming in. When you were a whip, what was the atmosphere like? Were the whips really all-powerful?
NH: Well, Michael Dobbs of course has written very successful books and a TV series err... alleging that we were masters of the dark arts and, to an extent, I suppose we were. Maybe there was no real life... real life Francis Urquart but if you go back to the 60s and 70s, maybe even to the early 80s, there was a culture where the Establishment...erm... were to be defended, protected and secrecy was more the order of the day.
LK: So what kind of secrets did the whips keep?
NH: Oh well, we had what was called a Dirt Book [laughs] and.....
LK: Not even a little black book? A Dirt Book?
NH: A Dirt Book. Yes and er... the whips would write in it what they heard and saw in the course of their day about their colleagues - what was said, how they behaved and, for example, if someone in the bars was behaving inappropriately...er... that would be noted, and erm...erm... it wouldn't just be ignored, of course you'd have a word with er...whoever might be responsible for embarrassing behaviour which could not only embarrass himself but also the Government or the Party to which he belonged. I do agree with Michael Brown that if we had become aware of any serious, criminal conduct, then you would have had to have reported that to the appropriate authorities. But I think you need to know there was - going back 30 or 40 years - there was greater tolerance of what we would no regard as highly inappropriate behaviour. Errr.... not... look at the Savile case or the Smith case, how the police and the Establishment, politicians covered up what we now regard as .... much more than just disgraceful conduct, but actually...err...very predatory and criminal conduct.
LK: But there may have been things that might have been considered 'a bit inappropriate' at that time that we would now find 'deeply inappropriate'.
NH: Absolutely.
LK: Possibly suggestions of paedophilia or child abuse. Now what was the worse thing - the worst secret that you ever kept?
NH: Oh dear! [grimace] Well that would be telling wouldn't it? [smirks / laughs] But ....I....I ....
LK: [interrupts] Well you've come into the studio...
NH: I never heard any allegations of ...erm....erm... well I heard allegations but I never saw anything which you might regard as proof of paedophile activity. Erm...I knew Geoffrey Dickins very well ...erm...and, I mean, nobody really took Geoffrey very seriously and perhaps that is part of the problem here. I don't know what was in this pile of dog-eared papers that he gave to Leon Brittan.. erm ..Geoffrey was a narcissist, self-publicist, and he was .... he had an eye for getting a headline in the tabloid press. But....there could have been something in those papers, who knows [shrugs]
LK: You have just said - you DID hear allegations of child abuse. Did you.....
NH: No! I never heard allegations of child abuse ....erm....erm... but I certainly heard allegations of people with inappropriate sexual behaviour. Not as regards children but certainly erm...erm.. the kind of inappropriate behaviour that today you might be prosecuted for which in those days you might not have been.
LK: And an interest in young boys - as the other former whip describes it?
NH: Well, I never came across this personally but we knew of colleagues who behaved in inappropriate ways. There was a Labour MP called Alan Rogers, who is now dead, who used to go to bondage and sado-masachism clubs and behave in the most outrageous way. It's astonishing that that never came out at the time but we do now know about it in retrospect.
LK: Well, [trying to interrupt]
NH: It was well known at the time but it was kept a secret at the time by the Labour whip [smirk]
LK: of course he's not here to defend himself, but you say quite clearly that there were allegations going on, some of them deeply unsavoury; potentially - as you said - which could be considered illegal now but may have been illegal then. And as whips - they were in the Dirt Book.
NH: Well, I never heard any allegations of the kind that Geoffrey Dickins might have reported, but certainly ....erm... the kind of behaviour which, in the Nigel Evans case..... he was not convicted of a criminal offence but his behaviour in the bars of the House of Commons at the time was a cause of comment. It wasn't criminal behaviour - nothing like this paedophile stuff - but it was that kind of thing which you would find in the Dirt Book.
LK: Very briefly, is there anything that you discovered - the secret kept by a whip - that you feel now that you should have something about it at the time?
NH: Well, I plead 'not guilty' of course. But ...err...err...[laughing] ....erm.... I 'm saving all that for my memoires. [grins]
LK: Okay. Neil Hamilton, thank you very much.