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Fifty years ago, The House sought to profile Parliament’s staff. Alan White sees a snapshot of how Westminster was very different in some ways, and much the same in others
Soon after its foundation in 1976, this magazine ran a project which would be of great use to any researcher of parliamentary history as an invaluable insight into the workings of the estate 50 years ago. It undertook to run profiles of House of Commons staff, and they are endlessly fascinating.
The past is a foreign country, as LP Hartley had it, and certainly there are elements of their roles that, in the age of the internet, now appear somewhat surreal. Mr Alfred Brazier, the postmaster, for instance, had a staff of 34, and handled an estimated 40,000 incoming and outgoing letters and packages every day across 26 post boxes. Bill Brewin, meanwhile, was the “Shorthand Writer to the Houses of Parliament”, who supervised 14 writers who were there to ensure select committees were recorded, “although three or four select committees are recorded each week”.
Policing Parliament, meanwhile, seemed on the surface to be rather less high-stakes than it would be for the years that followed. The last murder of an MP had taken place over 50 years previously. Michael Greene, the inspector of police, however, described a taxing situation in keeping Parliament safe due to the huge number of visitors. He was right to be concerned: three years after this series, Airey Neave would be killed on the site by the Irish National Liberation Army – the first of six murders of MPs by extremists of various stripes in the years that followed to the present day.
Some of the profiles sound deeply familiar. John Smillie, the catering manager, said the catering department was running at a loss, owing to the need to employ staff during recess, the unpredictability of business, the flexibility of service required, and so on. Evidently unsolvable challenges: for the 2024-25 period, the House of Commons reported a net operating cost of £7.4m for its catering.
Likewise, John Darwin, the resident engineer, described his ambition of modernising Parliament’s heating system away from its steam radiator set up, “which does not allow for adjustment of temperature”. It’s unclear what, if any, progress he achieved: while the boilers have since been replaced, the seven miles of steam pipework running through the palace remain a major focus for the Restoration and Renewal Programme.
Another thing that stands out is the number of remarkable events and figures some of these staff had seen. Many had fought in the Second World War. Mary Frampton, the first woman clerk in charge of the Serjeant at Arms department, was present for the lying in states of Queen Mary, George VI and Sir Winston Churchill.
Stephen Silverman, the parliamentary barber, began working on the estate in 1970. “The occasional lady has now graced the barber’s chair,” the magazine reported. “A year or so ago Silverman might have been inclined to say ‘no’ to this, but he certainly feels he cannot do so now, with the new sex discrimination laws.” Half a century later (under my leadership), this magazine interviewed the incumbent hairdresser, Kelly Dodge, who by that point had been in situ for 27 years. She’d told us she’d come in precisely because of the large number of women who needed their hair cut. Parliament was, and remains, a little world within a world, in constant flux.