HACKER:
Open Government! That’s what my Party believes in! That was the main plank of our manifesto – ‘Taking the nation into our confidence’! Now, how does that strike you?
SIR HUMPHREY:
In fact, just as you said in the House on May the 2nd last year, and again on November the 23rd, and in your Observer article, and in your Daily Mail interview, and as your manifesto made clear––
HACKER:
Y-You know about that?
[He ignores the question and hands Hacker a thick file of papers]
SIR HUMPHREY:
I’d like you to have a look at these proposals, Minister. They outline the ways in which this policy could be implemented and contain draft proposals for a White Paper for your approval. We thought that the White Paper might be called ‘Open Government’.
HACKER:
Y-You mean … it … it’s––
SIR HUMPHREY:
It’s all been taken care of, Minister.
HACKER:
Huh? Who … who did all this?
SIR HUMPHREY:
The creaking old bureaucratic machine!
Bernard Woolley, as the humble intermediary between these two high-placed officials, soon reveals that he is enough of a mandarin to have ingested most of the prejudices associated with his institution, but also enough of a secretary to sympathise with the needs of his Minister, with the consequence that he usually ends up satisfying neither. When, for example, Hacker declares that he would like a new chair, Woolley is quick to promise that one will be found, but, instinctively rather than vindictively, cannot resist also volunteering an anecdote: ‘It used to be said there were two kinds of chairs to go with two kinds of Minister: one sort folds up instantly, the other sort goes round and round in circles.’ This faux pas – the first of many – manages to rattle both of his bosses: Hacker because it is impudent and Sir Humphrey because it is indiscreet.
It is Woolley’s strange hybridity – part cynic, part idealist – that looks set to condemn him to a career of bouncing back and forth between his two rival bosses. Take, for example, his reaction to the first of Hacker’s ‘Big Ideas’ – Open Government. Whereas Hacker believes in it without understanding it, and Sir Humphrey dismisses it because he understands it only too well, Woolley only starts to establish a coherent position on the subject after both men have bullied him about it. ‘What’s wrong with open government?’ he asks innocently of his Civil Service superiors after Hacker has done his best to convince him of its logic. ‘Why shouldn’t the public know more about what’s going on?’ The answer, when it comes, shakes the fragile foundations of his freshly formed opinion: ‘My dear boy, it’s a contradiction in terms – you can be open or you can have government!’ Woolley tries to stand his ground (‘But surely the citizens of a democracy have a right to know?’), but Sir Humphrey’s intimidating show of certainty (‘No. They have a right to be ignorant. Knowledge only means complicity and guilt. Ignorance has a certain dignity’) soon grinds him down. ‘My dear fellow,’ Sir Humphrey concludes, ‘you will not be serving your Minister by helping him to make a fool of himself. Look at the Ministers we’ve had: every one of them would have been a laughing stock in three months had it not been for the most rigid and impenetrable secrecy about what they were up to!’
It is evident right from the start, however, that Sir Humphrey and Woolley will always be as linked as Hacker will be alone, because, as two of the ‘permanent residents of the house of power’, their very presence, their inviolable devotion to the bureaucratic routine, will always prompt in Hacker, as in Crossman and all of the other recently promoted politicians, the sobering intimations of his own evanescence. No sooner is he behind his desk as the new Head of the Department, the well-meaning words of his civil servants summon up the ghosts of Ministers past and future, and Hacker realises how transient his tenure might be:
HACKER:
[Closing his file and rising as if to go] Well, I think that’s it then!
SIR HUMPHREY:
Oh, there are one or two more things, Minister …
HACKER:
Eh? What things?
WOOLLEY:
Er, yes, if you would just like to check your diary for next week, Minister.
HACKER:
My diary? You didn’t know I was coming! You didn’t even know who’d win the election!
WOOLLEY:
Er, we knew there would be a Minister, Minister.
HACKER:
Don’t start that again!
WOOLLEY:
I’m sorry; even though we didn’t know it would be you.
SIR HUMPHREY:
Yes, you see, Her Majesty does like the business of Government to continue even when there are no politicians around.
HACKER:
[Chuckling awkwardly] A bit difficult, surely?
SIR HUMPHREY:
Yes … And no.
Hacker’s fast-diminishing sense of triumphalism is further depleted when Woolley lists a dauntingly long list of departmental engagements and Sir Humphrey reminds him that, from now on, as a temporary resident of Whitehall, he will not even be able to dodge compromises when it comes to his Westminster commitments:
HACKER:
What about all the other things I have to do?
WOOLLEY:
What other things, Minister?
HACKER:
Well, I’m on four policy committees for the Party for a start!
SIR HUMPHREY:
Well, I’m sure you won’t want to be putting Party before Country, Minister?
HACKER:
I … er … N-No, no, of course!
Having established the characters and their key interrelationships, the rest of the episode concentrated on the first real tussle between Hacker and Sir Humphrey. When Sir Humphrey hears from his senior colleague, the Cabinet Secretary, that the Prime Minister is keen to close a major defence trade agreement with the United States (it therefore being essential that no one endangers the deal by undermining Anglo-American relations), he hatches a plan to give Hacker a sobering scare (‘We’ll have him house-trained in no time’).
Noting that his Minister continues to be urged on to action by his seemingly indefatigable special adviser, Sir Humphrey arranges for the two of them to ‘discover’ a secret invoice for £10 million worth of American computer equipment set to be used by the Civil Service. Outraged that a British manufacturer has not been handed such a lucrative commission, they demand that the ‘scandalous’ contract, if it cannot now be cancelled, should at least be made public as proof that the principle of ‘open government’ is now being put into practice. Sir Humphrey, after putting up a faux show of resistance, suggests that, if the Minister’s mind is set on this course of action, he should reveal all in a speech and then – via Sir Humphrey – release the damning details to the press.
Hacker and Weisel are thrilled to think that they have asserted their authority – ‘There,’ squeals Weisel to Sir Humphrey triumphantly, ‘who’s running the country now, eh?’ – but it does not take long before their victory is revealed to be pyrrhic. Hacker is sitting in his Department browsing through some documents when Woolley arrives brandishing a minute from the Prime Minister’s Office, informing him that ‘the PM is planning a visit to Washington next month, and is anxious that the visit will result in a valuable Anglo-American defence trade agreement. The importance of obtaining this agreement cannot be overestimated’. Hacker, distracted by his documents, mutters ‘Fine,’ but then the significance of the message sinks in: ‘Oh my God – has my speech gone to the press?’ His sense of panic only increases when Sir Humphrey bursts in to report that ‘all hell has just broken loose at Number Ten’ after they have seen a copy of Hacker’s inflammatory speech.
Concealing his obvious delight in his Minister’s distress, Sir Humphrey explains that, when questioned by the PM’s people as to why the speech had not been sent to them in advance for clearance, he told them that ‘We beli
eve in open government’. Affecting mock regret, he adds that this only ‘seemed to make things worse’. Ominously, he then tells Hacker: ‘The PM wants to see you in the House, right away.’
A quivering Hacker, his face now as pale as his own White Paper, asks Sir Humphrey, in the pathetic tone of a small child who has been caught doing something naughty: ‘What’s going to happen?’ Sir Humphrey sighs and replies sadly, ‘The Prime Minister giveth, and the Prime Minister taketh away.’ Hacker, now more anxious than ever, scuttles off to face the music.
In the waiting room outside the Prime Minister’s Office, Hacker fears the worst. When he spots the big, bossy, beetle-browed Chief Whip emerging from the inner sanctum, his desperate attempt at a friendly greeting gets brusquely rebuffed: ‘You really are a pain in the arse, aren’t you!’ Frank Weisel, hovering as usual by Hacker’s side, gets a similarly rude response when he tries to remind the Chief Whip about the party’s commitment to open government: ‘Oh shut up, Weasel – who’s asking you?’
After delivering his parting shot to Hacker – ‘In politics you have to learn to say things with tact and finesse, you berk!’ – the Chief Whip strides off in search of his next victim. Next to emerge is the Cabinet Secretary, who is just as angry as his predecessor, snapping at Sir Humphrey for allowing his Minister to make such a provocative speech and asking if its contents have definitely been sent to the press. ‘Well, the Minister gave express instructions before noon,’ Sir Humphrey explains, relishing Hacker’s discomfort. ‘The Minister and I believe in open government,’ he adds, eagerly exacerbating the offence, ‘we want to throw open the windows and let in a bit of fresh air – isn’t that right, Minister?’ Hacker looks distinctly queasy at the very mention of his own cliché. Sir Humphrey then leans in to his Minister and, lowering his voice, asks him if he would like to give thought to drafting a letter of resignation – ‘Just in case’.
Hacker, fearing for his future, elects to get his hands dirty. ‘Could we hush it up?’ he asks Sir Humphrey. His Permanent Secretary bristles with mock indignation: ‘Hush it up? You mean suppress it?’ Hacker, embarrassed, mumbles his agreement. Sir Humphrey tries to look thoughtful and concerned: ‘I see … You mean that within the framework of the guidelines for open government that you’ve laid down, you are suggesting we adopt a more flexible posture?’ Hacker is so flustered he can barely compose a response: ‘Do I? Er … Y-Yes, yes!’
At this point Woolley rushes in, announcing breathlessly yet loquaciously: ‘There appears to have been a development which could precipitate a reappraisal of our position!’ A bemused Hacker listens carefully. ‘Apparently we failed to rescind the interdepartmental clearance procedure. The supplementary stop order came into effect!’ Hacker is still puzzled but suddenly vaguely hopeful. ‘So it’s all right, Minister, your speech hasn’t gone to the press!’ Hacker gasps with relief as Woolley completes his explanation. ‘It’s only gone to the Prime Minister’s Private Office, and the Duty Officer had no instructions to pass it out without clearance from the PM and the Foreign Office – it’s the American reference, you see!’
Hacker can barely believe his luck: ‘But how come?’ he exclaims. Sir Humphrey, now looking simultaneously smug and contrite, places a hand on his heart and ‘confesses’: ‘The fault is entirely mine, Minister. The procedure for holding up press releases dates back to before the era of “Open Government” and I unaccountably omitted to rescind it. I do hope you’ll forgive this lapse.’ Hacker, with similar insincerity, pretends to be generous with his forgiveness. ‘That’s quite all right, Humphrey, quite all right,’ he says. ‘After all, we all make mistakes!’ Sir Humphrey looks at him with knowing eyes: ‘Yes, Minister.’
This opening episode thus ended with all of its aims fulfilled. It had introduced the situation not only with impressive clarity but also (in the writing if not the direction) an admirable lightness of touch, established all of the characters with colour and care, and had also sown the seeds of most of its recurring themes, such as the unending tension between politicians and bureaucrats, the inevitable disparity between abstract ideals and practical reality, the perennial conflict between personal ambition and political prudence, the increasingly dire dangers of dealing with the media and, last but by no means least, the universally profound problem of ‘dirty hands’. It had all been handled with consummate care: beautifully written, cleverly and delicately acted and presented in such a way as to maintain a fine balance between comedy and truth.
The critical response to the debut generally followed the traditional pattern for the opening episodes of new sitcoms, with some reviewers preferring to wait a while longer before volunteering a judgement, and a few of the others committing their comments to print insulated by so many nervy doubts and reservations as to render their real opinions more or less opaque. Peter Fiddick, for example, wrote in the Guardian that ‘the look of the thing is good’, and said that the show deserved praise for ‘aiming admirably higher than knockabout gags’, but then qualified this positive-sounding welcome by complaining that a fleeting comment that used the wrong citation style for Hansard undermined the sitcom’s verisimilitude – a complaint which, seeing as only the tiniest proportion of the audience would have been in a position to spot such a minor inaccuracy, seemed patently pedantic.4
Probably the most positive evaluation came from David Sinclair in The Times, who hailed the originality of the show and predicted that it was set to mollify all of those viewers who felt that the sitcom genre had recently been stuck in the doldrums:
In this series, the kitchen sink and the bedroom, the office and the factory, the husband/wife/lover/children/aunt/dog/vicar/undertaker permutations, and the other standard scenarios of sitcom have been cast aside. But what on earth is left? you scream, nerves at breaking point. Why the government, of course – and what could be funnier than that? […] Such topics as the EEC, official secrets and quangos may seem unpromising raw material, but just think about them for a moment and you’ll see the rib-tickling potentialities.5
The size of the audience for the first episode had been a somewhat disappointing 1.8 million,6 which was not particularly unusual for that time and slot on BBC2 (it had long been one of the curiosities of British broadcasting that a large part of the viewing public would not watch a programme on BBC2 – perhaps because of some lingering sense of it having started out as the nation’s ‘highbrow’ channel – even though they would happily watch the very same thing if it was repeated on BBC1), but it was still a source of frustration to those involved with the show. Word of mouth helped build the audience a little for the next episode, but it would not be until after the third instalment that the series finally started getting the kind of viewing figures that were commensurate with its quality.
One reason for this upturn in its fortunes was the publication of a substantial review in The Listener magazine. Written by the prominent Labour politician and former Cabinet Minister Roy Hattersley, it represented an insider’s stamp of approval, and, as a consequence, it commanded a considerable amount of attention. Praising Jay and Lynn for wanting ‘to portray more than the small change of political life’, Hattersley went on to link them with the grand tradition of literate political satire: ‘Like Anthony Trollope […], they aspire to write fiction that is about politics, not just politicians. And, like him, they achieve some remarkable successes’. After noting the accuracy and insightfulness of the episodes so far, as well as the sophisticated nature of the humour, he predicted a bright future for the sitcom:
There are funny things to be said and written about the profession of politics and enormous entertainment to be provided by recounting the political ways in which politicians are risible and ridiculous. Mr Jay and Mr Lynn may, on the evidence of the earliest episodes, be able to entertain us by saying them.7
There were also several other positive mentions of the show in the press, which helped to increase the interest. A number of reports, for example, noted how both politicians and civil serva
nts were beginning to speculate as to who might be the models for the characters of Hacker and Sir Humphrey. The Daily Mail, for example, gossiped that ‘order papers are being waved in the direction of Labour’s former Industry Secretary, Eric Varley,’ and even quoted the man himself moaning that ‘if they’d wanted to use me in the programme I would have charged a pretty big fee’. The paper also related a rumour that Sir Humphrey had been inspired by Sir Douglas Wass, the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury since 1974.8
The guesses were, of course, to put it mildly, wide of the mark. Eric Varley, for example, was a serious, complex, disarmingly honest but rather dour figure (a miner’s son who had risen quietly but fairly rapidly up through the party ranks) who, although he had made the odd gaffe in his past (such as the time in 1976 when he decided to shut down the loss- making Chrysler car factory, only for his Cabinet colleagues to force him into an embarrassing U-turn), and was once privately chastised by Harold Wilson for being ‘too much in the hands’ of his officials,9 was nothing like the kind of ditherer that Hacker personified. The smooth-tongued, discreet and quietly crafty Sir Douglas Wass was a much better bet for Sir Humphrey, but then most Permanent Secretaries, by the very fact that they possessed precisely the kind of personality to be made Permanent Secretaries, would have reminded one of Sir Humphrey – his inclusiveness was partly the point.
The wildest piece of speculation at this stage connected Frank Field with Frank Weisel. Field, the London-born MP for Birkenhead, had never been a political adviser, and (rather like a Labour equivalent of the Tory Party’s ‘mad monk’ Sir Keith Joseph) was a quirky and twitchily earnest operator whose pronouncements were often as complex (sometimes bordering on the gnomic) as Weisel’s were risibly simplistic.
A Very Courageous Decision Page 13
