Wakefield MP and tough Labour deputy chief whip who kept Callaghan in power
Walter Harrison, the long-serving Wakefield MP, who has died aged 91, established an unequalled record in his 13 years as Labour's deputy chief whip, from 1970 until 1983. In particular, he kept in power the minority 1976 Callaghan government for two and a half years rather than the few months it might have expected.
James Callaghan confirmed the debt he owed Harrison by inscribing a copy of his memoirs to "Walter, who made it all possible" and in 1977 elevating him to the privy council. Harrison's achievement was to mount a fierce campaign to keep Labour in power and Margaret Thatcher out, establishing a one-man intelligence system and exploiting with minimum scruple every weakness of his opponents.
There had been no advance indication when Harrison reached Westminster as Labour's new MP for Wakefield in 1964 that he was other than a run-of-the-mill loyalist sponsored by the electricians' union. He was distinctive only for his rolling gait, friendly grin and his frisky attitude in Annie's Bar, where he declared that he would never mix London tap water with his spirits.
He was born in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, the 10th child of Henry Harrison, an electrician with the Yorkshire Electric Power Company and a Labour councillor, and his wife, Ada. After Dewsbury and Castleford technical colleges, and an apprenticeship in the company where his father worked, he did his four-year wartime stint as an RAF electrician, serving in 20 countries.
Released early because of his civilian skills, he went back to Yorkshire Electric, before switching to Richard Costain's as a site electrician and then as a welfare and personnel officer. This involved a wandering life to which his new wife, Enid, whom he married in 1948, objected. He returned to the Yorkshire Electricity Board, becoming active in the Electrical Trades Union (ETU).
The backing of a union was crucial for his political ambitions. He started in 1952 as a councillor in Castleford, becoming a West Riding county councillor in 1958. He went on to the Yorkshire regional executive of the Labour party. A parliamentary seat seemed to elude him, though, as he missed out on Kingston upon Hull West, Newark, Ilkeston and Rotherham. He was finally belatedly adopted for Wakefield and elected in 1964.
He made a cautious start in the Commons, but after the 1966 election was named an assistant whip in charge of pairing. He became a full whip in 1968. Some thought Harrison's career might be cut short when Harold Wilson dropped his soft-left chief whip, John Silkin, for a rightwinger, Bob Mellish. But both Mellish and Harrison were trade union loyalists, united in their opposition to Barbara Castle's union-curbing In Place of Strife legislation.
When Edward Heath won the 1970 election, Mellish made Harrison deputy chief whip. Harrison showed his toughness in 1971 when he could be seen tongue-lashing and finger-jabbing the Tory chief whip, gentlemanly Francis Pym, for five minutes for "guillotining" the Tories' industrial relations bill without having discussed this through the "usual channels".
Mellish and Harrison worked harmoniously until Heath began his 1971-72 push for Britain to join the EEC. As a pro-Marketeer, Mellish seemed to run a different intelligence network in the whip's office from anti-Marketeer Harrison. In the end the unexpectedly large vote for entering the EEC was a bigger shock for Harrison.
Harrison's Machiavellian side was restricted to Westminster and unknown in his constituency. There he was a genial Yorkshireman with a genius for organising publicity for the party.
When Wilson unexpectedly resigned in 1976, Harrison backed his fellow Yorkshireman Denis Healey for the succession. But when Callaghan won, Harrison devoted himself to his survival. His obsession with keeping Thatcher out of power was such that he frequently sailed close to the wind. He once threatened a police sergeant that he would be directing traffic on the North Circular unless he released Ian Mikardo, needed for a close vote. In January 1978 he was involved in an incident in the voting lobby while trying to prevent a government defeat on Scottish devolution. But despite his efforts, the Callaghan government collapsed after a vote of confidence was lost 311 to 310 in March 1979.
By the 1983 election, Harrison's majority in Wakefield was reduced to 360. He declined to stand again as deputy chief whip. But although he no longer had the job, it was difficult for him to shake his long-fixed habits; he still padded around the Commons corridors as if hunting for errant Labour MPs. He stood down in 1987, after 23 years, partly due to the poor health of his wife. After Enid's death in 1990, he married Jane Richards, long the popular secretary of the Labour whips' office. She died in 2000. Harrison is survived by his son and daughter.
Julia Langdon writes: It was a source of some surprise at Westminster that after his retirement as an MP, Walter Harrison was never offered a seat in the House of Lords. It was a position he had unquestionably earned, having made such a huge contribution to the survival of the Callaghan government and having clearly deserved such elevation rather more than many others among his less distinguished colleagues who were so preferred. It was a personal slight attributed to a longstanding disagreement with Neil Kinnock, who was Labour party leader at the time, and one which was bitterly resented on Harrison's behalf by his many friends.
Despite the tough dealings in which he engaged as the deputy chief whip during those immensely difficult years in which he helped keep Labour in office, there was a considerable nobility to Harrison's personal role. It has only recently been revealed that in order to try to spare the dying Labour MP Sir Alfred Broughton from being brought into the Commons for the vote of confidence which precipitated the 1979 general election, Harrison approached his opposite number in the Conservative whips' office, Bernard "Jack" Weatherill. He asked the Tory deputy chief whip to observe the convention under which a member of the other party would abstain to match the absence of a sick MP.
According to a new play, This House by James Graham, currently being staged at the National Theatre, Weatherill asserted that the convention was not applicable in such a critical vote and no Tory MP could possibly agree to abstain; he then offered to do so himself out of his own sense of honour. Harrison, motivated by a similar decency, recognised that such a gesture would certainly affect Weatherill's future career and refused to accept the offer.
Broughton was not obliged to attend the vote and the government lost by one vote. Broughton died five days later and Weatherill was subsequently elected Speaker of the Commons, despite the opposition of the new prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, to his candidacy. Harrison always treasured a letter from a defeated but unresentful Callaghan assuring him that he had done the right thing in deciding not to bring Broughton to Westminster for the vote.
• Walter Harrison, politician, born 2 January 1921; died 19 October 2012
• Andrew Roth died in 2010