A Very Courageous Decision

by Graham McCann

  The episode – which, with delicious irony, was broadcast only hours after the real Defence Secretary, Michael Heseltine, had stormed out of Number Ten after resigning over a difference of opinion on investment issues2 – struck just the right tone. It not only underlined the wider range of subjects that would now be addressed (with some of the more sobering insights eliciting an audible gasp as well as a laugh from the studio audience), but it also, very swiftly and smoothly, updated the audience on the evolution of the relationship between Hacker and Sir Humphrey.

  Hacker, as the new Prime Minister, was now shown to be not only more powerful but also more isolated than ever. He seems to have struck a Faustian deal, dirtying his hands to achieve an exalted office but at the expense of an atrophied life. Inside what his unhappy wife calls the ‘goldfish bowl’ of Number Ten, hemmed in by the ever-present nosy journalists and gawking tourists, and with blank-faced security men patrolling the corridors and intruding into the rooms, he only really has his job, and it is obvious that, like all of his predecessors, he is still not quite sure what that is.

  Sir Humphrey, on the other hand, is like the pedigree cat that now has all of the best-quality cream. Having always seemed far more wedded to Whitehall than to his wife, he is simply delighted to have reached the pinnacle of his chosen profession, the master of all he surveys.

  Hacker, unnerved by being the highest head above the parapet, keeps talking about how powerful he is in order to distract himself from his own nagging feelings of impotence. Sir Humphrey, calm and safe inside his carapace of conservatism, has no need to boast about his own great power because he is far too busy making full use of it.

  Hacker is still painfully aware that he could lose everything by committing one bad mistake. Sir Humphrey, secure in the permanence of his own position, is happily aware that, if he so wished it, he could ensure that Hacker would lose everything by allowing him to go ahead and make that one mistake.

  This contrast in the two men’s moods and means would continue until midway through the series, with the arrival of the episode entitled ‘The Key’. This would be the moment when, just like in earlier series, the contest between them was, to some extent, evened up.

  The plot of ‘The Key’ concerned the intrusion into Hacker and Sir Humphrey’s closeted shared environment by the political adviser Dorothy Wainwright. The Cabinet Secretary has decided that she is an ‘impossible woman’ who might ‘confuse’ the Prime Minister, so he has taken the necessary steps to move her office as far away as possible from the centre of power – to the front of the building, three floors up, along the corridor, down two steps, around the corner and four doors along to the right, next to the photocopier.

  When Hacker discovers what was so special about the location of her previous office – it is in the key strategic position, opposite the gents’ loo, where she was able to eavesdrop on every potential plan to plot against the PM – he snaps into action and orders Woolley to put her back where she once belonged. Sir Humphrey, once he hears about this, is outraged, and tries to reassure Hacker that there is no need for any outsider to be allowed so far inside:

  HACKER:

  I need someone who’s on my side.

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  But I’m on your side. The whole Civil Service is on your side. Six hundred and eighty thousand of us – surely that’s enough to be going on with?

  HACKER:

  Yes, but they all give me the same advice.

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  Which proves that it must be correct!

  Wainwright, however, proves to be just as cynical and crafty as Sir Humphrey, and convinces Hacker that he needs to clip Sir Humphrey’s wings. If, she suggests, he were to take away Sir Humphrey’s other role as Head of the Home Civil Service, and hand over all of its powers to the Permanent Head of the Treasury, his influence would be greatly diminished. Hacker, upon hearing this, and contemplating a ‘divide and conquer’ strategy for the bureaucracy, is excited: this seems to be his best chance to tame his chief tormentor.

  Bernard Woolley, bending weakly whichever way the wind blows, is used to block Sir Humphrey from straying from the Cabinet Office and wandering into Number Ten. Spurred on by the ferociously determined Dorothy Wainwright, he does as he is told and tells Security to change all the locks so as to stop Sir Humphrey from entering.

  Sir Humphrey, upon realising that his key no longer fits, marches off to the front door of Number Ten and tries to enter there, only to be stopped by the resident policeman. He is then driven to leaping out of a back window from his office in Whitehall, racing through the garden and triggering security alarms by trying to force open the windows to the Cabinet Room.

  After finally bursting in to where Hacker, Wainwright and Woolley are huddled, he complains about his situation:

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  Prime Minister, I must protest in the strongest possible terms my profound opposition to a newly instituted practice which imposes severe and intolerable restrictions upon the ingress and egress of senior members of the hierarchy and which will, in all probability, should the current deplorable innovation be perpetuated, precipitate a constriction of the channels of communication, and culminate in a condition of organisational atrophy and administrative paralysis which will render effectively impossible the coherent and coordinated discharge of the functions of government within Her Majesty’s United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

  HACKER:

  You mean you’ve lost your key?

  It was actually one of the least convincingly realistic episodes in this or any of the previous series – not only would it have been highly improbable (though not impossible) that any mere Principal Private Secretary would have dared to side with a transient Prime Minister (and a here today, gone tomorrow special adviser) over a permanent and hugely powerful Cabinet Secretary, but it would also have been completely out of character for the hyper-cautious Bernard Woolley to defy Sir Humphrey Appleby (who, in any case, was usually far too wily to be outwitted in such a way). It was, nonetheless, actually based on a real-life scenario (‘The then Cabinet Secretary, John Hunt, was desperate to get a key to get into Number Ten,’ Bernard Donoughue later revealed. ‘And the Principal Private Secretary, Robert Armstrong, was keen to see that he didn’t have one. It wasn’t true he climbed in, but, as soon as I talked about it, Jonathan spotted that immediately as the basis for an episode’3), and, more importantly, it did provide Hacker with a collaborator, however cartoon-like, to defend Westminster against Whitehall.

  Dorothy Wainwright’s attitude towards Jim Hacker would echo that of Marcia Falkender towards Harold Wilson. Bernard Donoughue, who witnessed it at first hand during his own time inside Number Ten, would write about Falkender’s wildly volatile mixture of positivity (‘Instinctively [she] goes like a knife to the heart of matters’4) and negativity (she ‘frightens everyone’, and ‘behaves appallingly when she is removed from the centre of things’5), and how she would constantly boss the Prime Minister around (doing everything from withholding the ‘reward’ of a sandwich until the ravenous PM had dutifully signed the required number of documents and telling him when to go to bed, to arguing with him about the right time to call an election6), while also noting how Wilson ‘loves it when she shouts at him, corrects him, opposes him’.7

  Wainwright would behave in a similar, if slightly toned down, manner towards Hacker.8 Brisk, brusque and belligerent, she would often address the Prime Minister as if he was a dim little schoolboy, and, though a little shaken, he would never seem to object. Although no more democratically representative, and hardly any more accountable, than Sir Humphrey himself, she would, nonetheless, act with the air of someone who thinks that she has far more legitimacy than a mere civil servant, and it was this brazen (albeit misplaced) self-confidence and brutal directness that would make her such a striking contrast to the Cabinet Secretary as they competed for Hacker’s attention.

  Hacker’s dealings with Sir Humphrey, as a conseque
nce, would seem rather more complex, and complicated, than before. Distracted by the many other duties and schemes that now came with his broader brief, Sir Humphrey would sometimes learn a little later than he used to about possible crises and concerns, and would thus be more worried about who might be influencing the Prime Minister in his absence. Hacker, meanwhile, would appear both relieved and unnerved by the slight increase in freedom that he has in Number Ten to seek out alternative sources of advice.

  In the sharp-brained and seemingly fearless Wainwright, who craves change at any cost, he has a potentially vital political accomplice to help him battle against the bureaucrats, but he also realises that in Sir Humphrey, who values stability above anything else, he has an indispensable ally to help him overcome his own failings – a man who knows more, has experienced more and has solved far more problems than any transient special adviser would either have the wish or the will to do. When push comes to shove, therefore, it remains highly likely that Hacker will trust Sir Humphrey more than Wainwright to keep him in power.

  The relationship between Hacker and Sir Humphrey, though, would take second place, for most of this series, to the issues that bothered them both. More prominently than before, ideas would drive this sitcom on, dictating its structure and scenes.

  Along with the already firmly established themes of administration versus government, public duty versus party loyalty, open and honest communication versus cynical political spin and the moral problem of dirty hands, many new preoccupations were added, including the proper and improper form of foreign policy, the nature of a modern defence strategy, the tension between the pursuit of wealth and the promotion of virtue, security and surveillance, the use and abuse of patronage, the concept of the United Nations and the supposed ‘special relationship’ between Britain and North America.

  In the second episode, for example, the theme of smugly specious democratic responsiveness is satirised with striking accuracy when Sir Humphrey explains to Woolley how parties and governments manage to manipulate public opinion:

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  You know what happens: nice young lady comes up to you. Obviously you want to create a good impression, you don’t want to look a fool, do you? So she starts asking you some questions: ‘Mr Woolley, are you worried about the number of young people without jobs?’

  WOOLLEY:

  Yes.

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  ‘Are you worried about the rise in crime among teenagers?’

  WOOLLEY:

  Yes.

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  ‘Do you think there is a lack of discipline in our comprehensive schools?’

  WOOLLEY:

  Yes.

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  ‘Do you think young people welcome some authority and leadership in their lives?’

  WOOLLEY:

  Yes.

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  ‘Do you think they respond to a challenge?’

  WOOLLEY:

  Yes.

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  ‘Would you be in favour of reintroducing National Service?’

  WOOLLEY:

  Oh … well, I suppose I might be.

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  ‘Yes or no?’

  WOOLLEY:

  Yes.

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  Of course you would, Bernard. After all you’ve said you can’t say no to that. So they don’t mention the first five questions and they publish the last one.

  WOOLLEY:

  Is that really what they do?

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  Well, not the reputable ones, no, but there aren’t many of those. So, alternatively, the young lady can get the opposite result.

  WOOLLEY:

  How?

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  ‘Mr Woolley, are you worried about the danger of war?’

  WOOLLEY:

  Yes.

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  ‘Are you worried about the growth of armaments?’

  WOOLLEY:

  Yes.

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  ‘Do you think there is a danger in giving young people guns and teaching them how to kill?’

  WOOLLEY:

  Yes.

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  ‘Do you think it is wrong to force people to take up arms against their will?’

  WOOLLEY:

  Yes.

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  ‘Would you oppose the reintroduction of National Service?’

  WOOLLEY:

  Yes.

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  There you are, you see, Bernard. The perfect balanced sample.

  The new theme that ran from start to finish, providing a sense of continuity within and between episodes, concerned the Prime Minister’s determination to define his time in power, to stamp his signature on the Premiership, with the implementation of a Big Idea. This, again, was reflecting a real political tradition.

  Machiavelli had encouraged it when he remarked: ‘Nothing enables a ruler to gain more prestige than undertaking great campaigns and performing unusual deeds’.9 It would be a lesson that all leaders, including British Prime Ministers, were extremely keen to learn.

  Sometimes the attempt has been bold and practically precise, such as Lord Grey’s Reform Bill in the early 1830s, and sometimes it has been bold but practically imprecise, such as Harold Wilson’s promise to harness ‘the white heat of technology’ in the early 1960s, and sometimes – many times – it has been craven and incoherent, but, in some shape or form, it has usually been there, hovering over the new Prime Minister like a homemade halo as he or she enters Number Ten, prompting civil servants to find ways to make it happen or contrive ways to make it fail and fade away.

  In Hacker’s case it is his ‘Grand Design’, with which, in spite of Sir Humphrey’s succession of stalling tactics, he doggedly persists from one episode to the next all the way to the end of the series. There are times, such as in ‘The Ministerial Broadcast’, when it is right at the centre of the story, and other times, such as in ‘The Smoke Screen’, when it lurks out on the periphery, but it is always there, serving as a symbol of Hacker’s tenuous but tenacious hold on the sense that he is still the master of his own destiny.

  In a series that was consistently thought-provoking and entertaining, there were arguably two instalments that, for different reasons, stood out. For sheer intellectual and satirical audacity, ‘A Victory for Democracy’ was exceptional, and, as a model of classic sitcom structure, plotting and pacing, ‘The Bishop’s Gambit’ was a gem of the genre.

  ‘A Victory for Democracy’ represented Yes, Prime Minister at its most uncompromisingly ambitious. Inspired partly by the Falklands War of 1982 and partly by the US invasion of Grenada in 1983,10 the story concerned a clash between Number Ten and the Foreign Office, with the Prime Minister eager to ingratiate himself with another country, and his foreign policy specialists anxious to avoid Britain being dragged into another country’s dubious military venture.

  The Anglo-American alliance has been undermined by the news of Hacker’s Grand Design, so when Hacker hears about plans for America to interfere in the Commonwealth realm of St George’s Island to prevent a potential communist coup d’état, his self-protecting political instincts tell him to pledge Britain’s support to the campaign.

  Sir Richard Wharton, however, in his capacity of Permanent Secretary to the Foreign Office, is disturbed to hear of such a move, reasoning that the situation in St George’s – which is a modest little island in the Indian Ocean – is very messy, with Soviet and Libyan-backed guerrillas lurking up in the mountains and a set of front-line African states ready to take offence at any meddling emanating from elsewhere, while Britain has a lucrative contract in place to build a new airport and harbour installation on the island provided it avoids backing the wrong side. The FO, therefore, would prefer it if Number Ten kept its snout out of the whole sorry business.

  ‘He must understand,’ Sir Richard tells Sir Humphrey about the Pri
me Minister, ‘that once you start interfering in the internal squabbles of other countries you’re on a very slippery slope. Even the Foreign Secretary’s grasped that.’

  There is, however, a further tension. It seems that Hacker also thinks it would play well with the White House if Britain was to abstain when the UN comes to vote on a forthcoming motion by the Arabs that condemns the recent actions of Israel. Sir Richard, on the other hand, dismisses the suggestion as just one more example of Number Ten ‘sucking up to the Americans’, notes that both sides in the Middle East are almost as bad as each other and, on this occasion, is in favour of backing the Arabs (and their oil supplies).

  With these two rival interpretations of realpolitik thus determining the intentions of two different branches of the same Government, an internal struggle ensues. Number Ten is ready to dirty British hands for America, while the Foreign Office is ready to dirty British hands mainly for money.

  It falls to the well-meaning Woolley to try to end the stalemate by sounding out Sir Richard and Sir Humphrey about finding a possible compromise, but all he receives for his troubles is an explanation of why this kind of division exists (‘Diplomacy is about surviving until the next century. Politics is about surviving until Friday afternoon’) and a classic lesson in how British foreign policy forms and functions:

  SIR RICHARD:

  The problem is that the interests of Britain nearly always involve doing deals with people that the public think are the baddies.