As an avid listener of the Origin Story podcast, I sometimes have the soul-crushing experience of hearing about political plays I’d love to see but that have long since had their final performances in the West End. Over the past few weeks the podcast has been releasing a wonderful three-part episode on the history of the Labour Party, and once again Dunt and Lynskey couldn’t resist name-dropping a few plays that had already finished their runs. I grumbled slightly as they raved about The Gang of Three and James Graham’s This House, thinking these were yet more productions I’d missed my chance to see.

You can imagine my surprise therefore when last week I made the wonderful discovery that the University of Nottingham’s Student Theatre was doing a production of This House that very weekend. I excitedly rushed to secure myself a ticket for the Saturday matinee showing and spent the rest of the week conducting PhD research on Defections during the 1970s so as to better acquaint myself with politics in the play’s time period.

It’s perhaps no surprise I loved the play. Most of this article will focus on the script and its depiction of political defections, but before I get to that, it’s worth briefly congratulating the Nottingham New Theatre on staging a truly spectacular production. Considering the show was student-led, I was blown away by everything from the sets, to the costumes, to the superb acting. There wasn’t a weak link in the cast. I was initially unsure about the actor playing Michael Cocks as I mistakenly read their brilliantly reserved portrayal of the soft-spoken MP as the actor being nervous. However, as soon as I realised that Cock’s was supposed to be a more withdrawn and dignified character compared to the other Whips I began to appreciate the quiet brilliance of their performance. (I could wax lyrical about the genius of any of the actors in the play but figured I’d highlight the portrayal of Cocks simply because my inaccurate first impression made the subtlety of their work all the more striking once it clicked for me).

Overall, I was incredibly impressed with the script. In one sense it was artful how the play largely avoided featuring or naming the big players – Heath, Thatcher, Wilson, Foot, Callaghan. Graham did a remarkable job at keeping the plays focus on the drama of the whips office and not distracting audiences with better known political figures. That said, there were points where it may have been nice for the script to have more overtly identified the offstage political actors shaping events. For example when the Labour Chief Whip Bob Mellish resigned for promising his backing to the MP for Ebbw Vale, I immediately wanted to Google and find out who the failed challenger was. However, in the confines of a small theatre where social norms would rightfully scorn such behaviour as rude, I had to hold back my itchy fingers till I was leaving before I could find out it was Michael Foot. I’m sure other reviewers have probably lauded Graham for not feeling the need to provide audiences with this unnecessary narrative context but as a politics nerd I would have appreciated the script outlining some details a little more explicitly.

As a PhD student examining the history of party-switching MPs, I understandably loved how dramatic the show made defections feel. With Labour operating on a razor thin parliamentary majority, the ever-present danger of MPs resigning the whip was both a clear threat to the survival of the government as well as a personal affront to the whips we’d grown to like (and depending on your political leaning as an audience member, potentially even begun to root for). It helped underscore for me why parliamentarians can feel so betrayed by a defection and why derogatory labels like “snake” and “rat” often get bandied about.

If I recall correctly there were three defections that happened over the course of the play. There was a high tension scene in which both the M.P. for Paisley and the M.P. for South Ayrshire resigned the whip. Though only identified by their constituencies in the production they were John Robertson and Jim Sillars respectively. Post leaving their party both M.P.s went onto to play a role in founding the Scottish Labour Party (SLP) in 1976. The Labour splinter group was ultimately short lived. After initially finding limited success in winning 3 council seats at the 1977 elections the party proceeded to lose both its M.P.s in the 1979 General Election. It then formally dissolved in 1981.

Reg Prentice, the U.K.’s first Labour-to-Conservative defector MP was given a little more prominence. There’s an early foreshadowing scene in the Whips’ Office in which Reg warns about Trotskyists and members of the Tribune group seizing the party. This dramatically pays off later when we see Prentice, frightened by the direction of Labour deciding to join the Conservatives. The Labour Whips are exasperated that he not only resigned the whip but joined the opposition. There is then a scene in which the Tory whip Humphrey Atkins can barely contain his smug glee as he welcomes Prentice to the party. – Prentice is obviously a key figure I need to do more reading on. I’ve read his brief chapter in Patrick Cormack’s book Right Turn but have yet to get round to the Geoff Horn’s biography of him (I’m still a little resentful Horn pinched the title Crossing the Floor for his book but its undoubtedly apt for a biography of Prentice).

In conclusion, if you get the chance to see a production of This House it is more than worth trying to go and see. Equally, if you have a chance to see this or a different play at the Nottingham New Theatre it’s definitely worth taking a chance on – given my ticket was only £7 and it was a student led production I was truly bowled over by the quality of the experience.