Most of what preceded it in the series, however, displayed, in stark contrast, the kind of subtlety and Socratic rigour that had made the show so absorbing, thought-provoking and admirable – regardless of where any viewer happened to be located on the political spectrum. The flaws in logic, along with those in character, would thus be distributed widely and impressively fairly.
There were, for example, many more sparklingly apposite satirical lines about bureaucratic inertia (SIR HUMPHREY: ‘Minister, it takes time to do things now!’13); and institutionalised irrationality (HACKER: ‘The three articles of Civil Service faith: it takes longer to do things quickly; it’s more expensive to do them cheaply; and it’s more democratic to do them in secret’14); and administrative aimlessness (SIR HUMPHREY: ‘There are no ends in administration, Minister, except loose ends. Administration is eternal’. WOOLLEY: ‘For ever and ever …’ WOOLLEY/SIR HUMPHREY: ‘… amen’15). There were also plenty of equally effective digs at political spin and elision (INTERVIEWER: ‘Figures that I have here say that your Department’s staff has risen by ten per cent.’ HACKER: ‘Certainly not.’ INTERVIEWER: ‘Well, what figure do you have?’ HACKER: ‘I believe the figure is much more like 9.97’16) and government pragmatism (HACKER: ‘Are you saying that winking at corruption is government policy?’ SIR HUMPHREY: ‘No, no, Minister. It could never be government policy. That is unthinkable. Only government practice’17).
There was also a classic explanation by Sir Humphrey of why civil servants needed to remain aloof and scrupulously neutral when advising their Ministers on political policies:
I have served eleven governments in the past thirty years. If I’d believed in all their policies, I would have been passionately committed to keeping out of the Common Market, and passionately committed to going into it. I would have been utterly convinced of the rightness of nationalising steel, and of denationalising it, and renationalising it. Of capital punishment, I’d have been a fervent retentionist, and an ardent abolitionist. I would have been a Keynesian and a Friedmanite. A grammar school preserver and destroyer. A nationalisation freak and a privatisation maniac. But above all, I would have been a stark staring raving schizophrenic.18
There were also more telling observations about the distinctive personalities of those who comprised the show’s key comic triangle. The chronically ambivalent Woolley, for example, was weighed up carefully by Sir Humphrey, who still could not quite decide whether he was really a ‘high-flyer’, or just ‘a low-flyer supported by occasional gusts of wind’.19 Sir Humphrey himself was put down, from a safe distance, by Hacker (HACKER: ‘Let me make one thing perfectly clear: Humphrey is not God, okay?’ WOOLLEY: ‘Will you tell him, or shall I?’). Hacker, in turn, received the usual caustic barbs from Sir Humphrey (‘But I didn’t expect you to do anything. I mean, you’ve never done anything before’).
There were also several more well-researched and amusingly insightful glimpses into the kinds of ways in which Whitehall strives to spirit away compromising information, such as when Sir Humphrey shows Hacker how to ‘tidy up’ an historic file:
SIR HUMPHREY:
Well [opening a file] this is what we normally do [hands Hacker a document] in circumstances like these …
HACKER:
‘This file contains the complete set of papers except for a number of secret documents, a few others which are part of still active files, some correspondence lost in the floods of 1967’ – was 1967 a particularly bad winter?
SIR HUMPHREY:
No, a marvellous winter. We lost no end of embarrassing files.
HACKER:
‘Some records that went astray in the move to London, and others when the War Office was incorporated in the Ministry of Defence, and the normal withdrawal of papers whose publication could give grounds for an action for libel or breach of confidence or cause embarrassment to friendly governments’. Well, that’s pretty comprehensive. And how many does that normally leave for them to look at?
[Sir Humphrey, silent, looks coy]
HACKER:
How many does that actually leave? About a hundred?
[Sir Humphrey remains silent as Hacker keeps guessing]
HACKER:
Fifty? Ten? Five? Four? Three? Two? One?? … Zero???
SIR HUMPHREY:
Yes, Minister.20
One of the ways that the series tried to appear fresh and different was in its use of guest actors in unusually noteworthy roles. Two in particular – Eleanor Bron and Ian Lavender – would make key contributions to certain instalments of this set of shows.
This had been one aspect of the sitcom that had, behind the scenes, failed to take off during the previous series. Time and again, during the planning of the second set of episodes, one well-known actor after another had passed on a cameo role. Mel Smith, for example, had turned down the admittedly very small role of the militant union rep in ‘The Compassionate Society’ (it was taken over by Stephen Tate); Eleanor Bron had similarly passed on the offer of playing the tenacious select committee member Mrs Phillips in ‘The Quality of Life’ (Zulema Dene appeared in her place); and Billie Whitelaw had done the same when offered the part of Betty Oldham in ‘A Question of Loyalty’ (which was played by Judy Parfitt instead).21
Times, however, had changed, and the reputation of the sitcom had risen. The show, by this time, was much more of a talking point, as well as a more prestigious (and slightly better-paid) production, and, perhaps most importantly, the cameo roles were stronger and more appealing.
Eleanor Bron appeared in the opening episode, entitled ‘Equal Opportunities’, playing a strong, intelligent, charismatic woman who would end up seeming like the Yes Minister equivalent of Sherlock Holmes’ Irene Adler. Conan Doyle’s unusually memorable female creation only appeared in one short story – ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ – but her alluringly independent personality left a profound impression on both Holmes and Watson, with his friend and chronicler recalling how her refulgent presence had threatened to be ‘a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all [Holmes’] mental results’.22 Similarly, Jay and Lynn’s character for Eleanor Bron, an up-and-coming Under-Secretary named Sarah Harrison, manages to intrigue and unnerve both Hacker and Sir Humphrey.
Hacker spots her working in his Department and is immediately struck by her beguiling combination of charm and expertise. Even Sir Humphrey, whose general awareness of the female sex has only normally amounted to the admission that his wife happens to be a woman, has definitely noticed Ms Harrison, and, as a self-confessed ‘great supporter’, admits that she is ‘very able, for a woman, er, for a person’.
Hacker – who is keen to promote gender equality (quite a topical issue given that the 1979 election had returned the lowest number of female MPs for nearly thirty years, amounting to a mere 3 per cent of the Commons, and only one woman – Baroness Young – had joined Margaret Thatcher in her Cabinet23) – sees Harrison as the ideal figurehead for his drive to establish a 25 per cent quota of women in senior administrative positions within the next four years, and thus plans to promote her to Deputy Secretary in his Department. Sir Humphrey, although he was responsible for her previous promotion, is opposed to this further rapid elevation on the grounds that ‘it’s not her turn yet’, but can see why his Minister is so keen on fast-tracking her rise to the top.
Both men, however, are in for a huge surprise when they summon her to impart the news of her imminent promotion. She listens, smiles and then politely turns them down, revealing that she is actually about to resign from the Civil Service to become a director at a merchant bank:
HACKER:
[Stunned] You were to be my, so to speak, Trojan horse.
HARRISON:
Well, quite honestly, Minister, I want a job where I don’t spend endless hours circulating information that isn’t relevant about subjects that don’t matter to people who aren’t interested. I want a job where there’s achievement rather than merely activity. I’m tired of pushing paper.
I want to be able to point at something and say: ‘I did that’.
SIR HUMPHREY:
I don’t understand.
HARRISON:
I know. That’s why I’m leaving.
Hacker is dumbfounded. Surely, he asks her, the government of Britain is an extraordinarily important and worthwhile thing? She smiles and agrees. The problem, she explains, is that she has not encountered anyone who appears to be doing it. She is also, she adds, tired of all the ‘pointless intrigue’, which, most recently, has seen him use her as just another pawn in the endless chess game.
He looks at her with a hurt expression:
HACKER:
Sarah, you probably don’t realise this but I fought quite a battle for you.
HARRISON:
[Suddenly turning angry] Oh, have you? I didn’t ask you to fight a battle for me. I’m not pleased at being part of a twenty-five per cent quota. Women are not inferior beings and I don’t enjoy being patronised! I’m afraid you’re just as paternalist and chauvinist as the rest of them. I’m going somewhere where I shall be accepted on my own merits, as an equal, as a person.
[As she leaves, Hacker, shaken and confused, looks over at a similarly bemused Sir Humphrey]
HACKER:
You can’t win, can you?
Sarah Harrison was, by a long way, the most coherent and fully formed female character that Jay and Lynn had written so far, which was particularly welcome seeing as Jim Hacker’s wife, Annie, remained a maddeningly inchoate figure (sometimes seeming pushy and principled, sometimes dazzled by shiny objects, and, in this episode, an outspoken advocate of positive gender discrimination until she discovers that her husband finds Sarah Harrison attractive, after which she turns her back on the whole idea).24 The presence of this character also served to highlight how insular and immature both the Minister and his Permanent Secretary remained, with both of them acting like overgrown schoolboys – one co-educational, one single-sex – when contemplating the issue of gender.
Ian Lavender was equally significant playing a figure who was obviously modelled on the real-life Civil Service whistle-blower Leslie Chapman. Called Dr Cartwright, an Under-Secretary with special but neglected expertise in local government, he, just like Chapman, is desperately hoping that an untamed politician will read his cost-cutting proposals and change departmental policies accordingly. Featured in two consecutive episodes – the first entitled ‘The Challenge’ and the second ‘The Skeleton in the Cupboard’ – Dr Cartwright represented the enemy within as far as Sir Humphrey was concerned, slipping his Minister dangerously practical advice on the sly (‘brown envelope jobs’).
Hacker, on the other hand, can hardly believe his luck. Cartwright hands him a thick file full of information that can be used to shape a new policy and thus win him plenty of praise:
CARTWRIGHT:
It’s all in here.
HACKER:
What’s this all about?
CARTWRIGHT:
Controlling expenditure. I’m proposing that all council officials responsible for a new project would have to list their criteria for failure before they were given the go-ahead.
HACKER:
What do you mean?
CARTWRIGHT:
It’s a basic scientific approach. You must first establish a method of measuring the success or failure of an experiment. Then when it’s completed you can tell whether it’s succeeded or failed. A proposal would have to state: ‘This scheme would be a failure if it lasts longer than this, or costs more than that, if it employs more staff than these, or fails to meet these pre-set performance standards’.
HACKER:
That’s fantastic, but you could never make it work.
CARTWRIGHT:
Of course you can! [Pointing at the file] It’s all in there.
HACKER:
Bernard, this is my top priority reading for the weekend!
Cartwright is not only a threat to Sir Humphrey’s authority, but also, and more importantly, a threat to his relationship with Hacker, and so, after causing a suitable frisson within the Department, it is inevitable that this rogue agent will be removed:
HACKER:
I have learned some very interesting facts.
SIR HUMPHREY:
Well, I sincerely hope it does not happen again!
HACKER:
I beg your pardon?
SIR HUMPHREY:
You simply cannot go round speaking to people in the Department!
HACKER:
Why not?
SIR HUMPHREY:
Minister, how can I advise you properly if I don’t know who is saying what to whom? I must know what is going on! You simply cannot have completely private conversations. Now, supposing you’re told things that are not true––
HACKER:
Well, if they’re not true you can put me right.
SIR HUMPHREY:
But they may be true. Now that is not entirely false, but misleading, open to misinterpretation …
HACKER:
I believe you’re trying to keep things from me, Humphrey!
SIR HUMPHREY:
Absolutely not, Minister! Minutes must be taken, records must be kept. You won’t be here for ever, you know, nor will we. In years to come, it may be vital to know what you were told. If Cartwright were moved tomorrow, how could we check on your information?
HACKER:
Cartwright won’t be moved tomorrow.
SIR HUMPHREY:
Oh, really?
The darkest and most interesting moments in the series, however, revolved around Hacker’s spasm of morality. Throughout the previous two series, and the first three episodes of this one, Hacker had been seen leaping through each one of the circles of Hell with all the mounting enthusiasm of an Olympic hurdler in sight of a gold medal, showing fewer and fewer qualms about diving into political problems and getting his hands completely dirty.
In the opening episode, for example, he only gets serious about promoting gender equality when he thinks it might suit his own personal ambitions, hoping that such a supposedly ‘principled’ policy will improve his reputation as a Minister and do some good at the polls. The same thing happens in the next episode, when he hears that something else might prove a vote winner. ‘A vote winner?’ he exclaims, his principles once again popping like punctured bubbles as he contemplates lending his name to a policy about which he is utterly unconvinced.25 In the third episode, he is at his most cynical and cruel so far, relishing the prospect of completely destroying the career of his Permanent Secretary for a thirty-year-old mistake, and only relenting after he has watched Sir Humphrey crumble in front of his eyes and agree to bend the rules for the sake of Hacker’s own party.
It comes as quite a surprise, therefore, when, rather implausibly, he suddenly teeters on the brink of the abyss and starts trying to pull back, lecturing everyone else on the need to do the right thing and generally behaving as though he now thinks he has a halo hovering above his head. He is full of self-righteous indignation in episode four, when, for example, he realises that a Government trade agreement has been secured through bribery (Sir Humphrey prefers to call it ‘creative negotiation’), and bristles at Sir Humphrey’s self-serving claim that ‘a cynic is what an idealist calls a realist’.26
This belated intrusion of scruples reaches a climax in the penultimate episode, ‘The Whisky Priest’ (which was partly inspired by Oilgate – a recent study about the 1960s sanctions scandal27), when Hacker, at his most self-deluded, attempts to act as moral arbiter for the whole of Whitehall and Westminster. Upon hearing some disturbing information from an army officer, the morally motivated Major Saunders, he marches into his Department determined to fight the good fight:
HACKER:
Last night a confidential source disclosed to me that British arms are being sold to Italian red terrorist groups.
SIR HUMPHREY:
I see. May I ask who this confidential source was?
HACKER:
/>
Humphrey, I just said it was confidential.
SIR HUMPHREY:
Oh, I’m sorry, I naturally assumed that meant you were going to tell me.
HACKER:
You don’t seem to be very worried by this information.
SIR HUMPHREY:
Well, these things happen all the time. It’s not our problem.
HACKER:
So does robbery with violence. Doesn’t that worry you?
SIR HUMPHREY:
No, Minister – Home Office problem.
HACKER:
Humphrey: we’re letting terrorists get hold of murderous weapons!
SIR HUMPHREY:
We’re not.
HACKER:
Well, who is?
SIR HUMPHREY:
Who knows? The Department of Trade, Ministry of Defence, Foreign Office …
HACKER:
We, Humphrey. The British Government. Innocent lives are being set at risk by British arms in the hands of terrorists.
SIR HUMPHREY:
Only Italian lives. Not British lives.
HACKER:
Well, then, the British tourists abroad.
SIR HUMPHREY:
Tourists? Foreign Office problem.
The Permanent Secretary warns his Minister that the sale of arms abroad is not a topic that rewards close scrutiny. ‘A basic rule of government,’ he notes, ‘is never look into anything you don’t have to, and never set up an inquiry unless you know in advance what its findings will be.’ Hacker is insistent: ‘We’re talking about good and evil!’ ‘Ah,’ says Sir Humphrey brightly, ‘a Church of England problem.’
A Very Courageous Decision Page 21
