A Very Courageous Decision
Page 29
SIR HUMPHREY:
And not helping the goodies occasionally when it doesn’t help us.
SIR RICHARD:
So we avoid discussion of foreign affairs. Or rather, we keep all discussion inside the Foreign Office, and then we produce one policy for the Foreign Secretary – which represents our considered view – and he can act upon it.
WOOLLEY:
What, no options?
SIR RICHARD:
None.
WOOLLEY:
No alternatives?
SIR RICHARD:
None.
WOOLLEY:
What if he’s not satisfied?
SIR RICHARD:
Well, if pressed, we look at it again.
WOOLLEY:
And come up with a different view?
SIR RICHARD:
Of course not! We come up with the same view!
WOOLLEY:
But what if he demands options?
SIR HUMPHREY:
Well, it’s obvious, Bernard: the Foreign Office will happily present him with three options, two of which are, on close inspection, exactly the same.
SIR RICHARD:
Plus a third, which is totally unacceptable.
SIR HUMPHREY:
Like bombing Warsaw or invading France.
SIR RICHARD:
And better still, we occasionally encourage the Foreign Secretary to produce his own policy, then we tell him that it would inevitably lead to World War Three, perhaps within forty-eight hours.
WOOLLEY:
I see. Er, I’m sorry to appear stupid––
SIR HUMPHREY:
Oh, perish the thought, Bernard!
WOOLLEY:
But in my experience, Ministers are somewhat concerned about the effect of policy on domestic political opinion. Now, our system doesn’t seem to allow for that.
SIR RICHARD:
Well, of course not. We take the global view. We ask what’s best for the world.
WOOLLEY:
Well, most Ministers would rather you ask: ‘What’s the Daily Mail leader going to say?’
SIR HUMPHREY:
Oh, Bernard, we can’t have foreign policy made by yobbos like Fleet Street editors or backbench MPs!
SIR RICHARD:
Or Cabinet Ministers.
SIR HUMPHREY:
Or Cabinet Ministers! We take the right decisions and let them sort out the politics later!
Woolley’s mind is whirling at this, but he still manages to ask his superiors how the Foreign Office will respond if, as the Prime Minister thinks likely, the people of St George’s end up appealing to Britain for support. In a charitable mood, Sir Richard avers that the FO will ‘give them every support, short of help’. Exasperated, Woolley then asks them what they will do if the Prime Minister insists on serious action. This prompts them to summarise ‘The Four Stage Strategy’ – the standard Foreign Office response in a time of crisis:
SIR RICHARD:
In Stage One, we say: ‘Nothing is going to happen’.
SIR HUMPHREY:
In Stage Two, we say: ‘Something may be going to happen but we should do nothing about it’.
SIR RICHARD:
In Stage Three, we say: ‘Maybe we should do something about it but there’s nothing we can do’.
SIR HUMPHREY:
In Stage Four, we say: ‘Maybe there was something we could have done but it’s too late now’.
With Woolley failing to broker a mutually satisfactory deal, the internecine fighting breaks out once again. The Foreign Office quietly overrules Number Ten about abstaining from the UN vote (‘The White House will do its nut!’ Hacker exclaims upon discovering the deception), and so Number Ten bypasses the Foreign Office to send a British airborne battalion to St George’s on ‘a goodwill visit’.
As in fact, so in fiction, there is no neat and tidy resolution to this struggle for power and influence. The Prime Minister might have won this particular battle on points (by doing just enough to placate his American friends), but the war, it is clear, will go on, and on.
While ‘A Victory for Democracy’ thus exemplified the quality of the show’s content, ‘The Bishop’s Gambit’ did the same for its form. It was sometimes overlooked, thanks to the dazzling dialogue and the sharp satirical insights, that Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn were also brilliant masters of the craft of creating a thirty-minute sitcom story, and this particular instalment was a fine demonstration of that skill.
‘The Bishop’s Gambit’ sets up three seemingly unrelated storylines. First, a British nurse has been detained in the Islamic state of Qumran for possession of a bottle of whisky and is facing ten years in prison as well as forty lashes; second, the Prime Minister is due to consider the two candidates put forward by the Church of England for the vacant diocese of Bury St Edmunds; and third, Sir Humphrey is sounded out by the Master of his Oxford alma mater, Baillie College, about succeeding him when he eventually retires.
The episode then proceeds to twist these three disparate strands together. Sir Humphrey discovers that the only obstacle to him becoming the next Master is the current Dean, who dislikes him intensely, so he starts plotting to persuade the Prime Minister to appoint the Dean as the new Bishop of Bury St Edmunds; and, realising that there are already two candidates for the post, he contrives to provide the Dean with the possibility of a game-changing personal triumph by packing him off as an emissary to Qumran to negotiate the release of the nurse. It is thus with a delightfully swift and subtle structural sleight of hand that Jay and Lynn, within the first two-thirds of the show, have all three storylines running smoothly towards their shared denouement.
They also suffused each subsection with more, and better, comic lines than many other sitcoms of the period managed in three times the amount of minutes available. There were barbs, for example, aimed at academics (MASTER: ‘He never reads a new book, never thinks a new thought.’ SIR HUMPHREY: ‘I see. So being an Oxford don is the perfect job for him’); bishops (‘Bishops tend to have long lives – apparently the Lord isn’t all that keen for them to join him’); religious modernists (SIR HUMPHREY: ‘The word “modernist” is code for non-believer.’ HACKER: ‘You mean an atheist?’ SIR HUMPHREY: ‘No, Prime Minister, an atheist clergyman couldn’t continue to draw his stipend, so, when they stop believing in God, they call themselves “modernists”’); theologians (‘Theology is a device for enabling agnostics to stay within the Church’); Church versus State (‘It’s interesting, isn’t it, that nowadays politicians want to talk about moral issues and bishops want to talk politics?’); and the Civil Service versus the Government (‘The Foreign Office never expect the Cabinet to agree to any of their policies – that’s why they never fully explain them’).
The resolution itself is just as assured as what has gone before. The Dean does indeed help free the nurse, coming home in a blaze of personal glory, and all that is left is for Sir Humphrey to pave the way to the diocese for him by depicting his only rival as a dangerous radical:
SIR HUMPHREY:
He tends to raise issues that often governments would prefer not to have been raised. He’s a trenchant critic of abortion, contraception for the under-sixteens, sex education, pornography, Sunday trading, easy divorce and bad language on television. He would be likely to challenge the Government policy on all those subjects.
HACKER:
But these are subjects on which the Government is hoping to have no policy. Our policy is not to have a policy!
SIR HUMPHREY:
Well, quite. He’s against your no-policy policy.
WOOLLEY:
You see, he’ll demand that you ban abortions, Sunday trading, contraception for the under-sixteens––
HACKER:
Yes, yes, thank you, Bernard, yes, I get the picture.
SIR HUMPHREY:
And he’s also against repression and persecution in Africa.
HACKER:
[Puzzled] So are we.
S
IR HUMPHREY:
Yes, but he’s against it when practised by black governments as well as white ones.
HACKER:
Oh! You mean he’s a racist?
SIR HUMPHREY:
[Smiling sweetly] But you can choose him if you like.
Now convinced (‘on mature consideration’) that the lazy, eccentric but harmless Dean is the right man for the job (as well as the right man in the news to lend Number Ten some good publicity), Hacker is pleased to think that all of this has happened just because Sir Humphrey, for once, has put aside all thought of professional or personal gain and actually done the decent thing, even though, by his own admission, he and the Dean cannot abide each other. ‘Well done,’ Hacker says warmly. ‘Helpful, impartial advice: the best traditions of the Civil Service!’ Sir Humphrey bows his head slightly and, trying for a shy smile, replies: ‘Yes, Prime Minister.’
The series, after impressing in all of these ways, came to an end on 27 February with an episode – ‘One of Us’ – that explored the subject of espionage. Once more, without the writers trying too hard, it reached the screen seeming topical.
In 1979, Margaret Thatcher had responded to rumours about a clandestine security scandal by naming Sir Anthony Blunt, a former officer in British intelligence and personal adviser on art to the Queen, as the ‘fourth man’ in the infamous Cambridge spy ring of the 1950s, which had also included Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and Kim Philby. Although he had privately confessed his involvement back in 1964, gaining immunity from prosecution in return for agreeing to reveal to MI5 all that he knew about the Soviets, Thatcher decided, fifteen years later, to make his guilt a matter of public knowledge. ‘I believe she did it because she didn’t see why the system should cover things up,’ her Press Secretary, Bernard Ingham, later claimed. ‘This was early in her Prime Ministership. I think she wanted to tell the Civil Service that the politicians decide policy, not the system. She wanted them to know who was boss.’11
Public interest in espionage issues was further heightened six years later, in September 1985, when the Attorney General began proceedings in New South Wales to prevent Peter Wright, a former assistant director of MI5, from publishing his book Spycatcher, which contained an account of alleged irregularities and illegalities by members of the security service.12 Reports of the continuing legal battle would rumble on for three years,13 and were thus very much in the minds of many viewers when Yes, Prime Minister turned its attention to the matter.
‘One of Us’ saw Hacker receive a visit from Sir Geoffrey Hastings, the Director General of MI5, who has some top-secret and disturbing security news. Echoing the real-life case of Sir Roger Hollis (whom Peter Wright had recently accused in Spycatcher of having been a Soviet mole), Sir Geoffrey confides that his predecessor, the late Sir John Halstead, has now been revealed – thanks to the confession he bequeathed to the Government – as a Russian spy. Although an earlier inquiry into suspicions about his activities had cleared him, Sir Geoffrey points out that it had not been as rigorous as the matter had actually required:
SIR GEOFFREY:
They missed some rather obvious questions and checks so obvious that, well, one wonders …
HACKER:
[Knowingly] Yes … [Puzzled] Er, what does one wonder?
SIR GEOFFREY:
Well, one wonders about the chaps who cleared him. Whether they were … you know …
HACKER:
I see … er, whether they were stupid, you mean?
SIR GEOFFREY:
No, Prime Minister. Whether they were also, um …
HACKER:
Spies? My God! Who headed that inquiry?
SIR GEOFFREY:
Oh, Lord McIver, but he was ill most of the time.
HACKER:
Ill?
SIR GEOFFREY:
Well, er, gaga. So effectively it was the Secretary who conducted it.
HACKER:
Well, who was the Secretary?
SIR GEOFFREY:
Er, Humphrey Appleby.
Hacker’s eyes light up at this news. The prospect of seeing Sir Humphrey squirm never fails to excite his imagination. Sir Geoffrey, however, is quick to reassure him that there is no evidence that Sir Humphrey, who after all is clearly ‘one of us’, had ever been tempted to cover up for ‘one of them’.
Hacker suggests that, in that case, they might as well forget all about it, but Sir Geoffrey points out that, if they did nothing about it, and then at some later stage it was found that Sir Humphrey, who is now the Cabinet Secretary and the ultimate keeper of secrets, did indeed do something wrong, then it would not look at all good for the Prime Minister.
Hacker agrees, and decides to broach the subject, privately, with the man himself. Sir Humphrey laughs off the suggestion that Halstead was a spy, only for Hacker to shock him with the news that MI5 now has his posthumous confession. ‘Well,’ gasps Sir Humphrey, ‘this certainly leaves a lot of questions to be asked.’ Hacker glares at him and says: ‘Yes, and I’m asking you the first of them: why didn’t you ask him a lot of questions?’
Sir Humphrey is stunned and rather hurt at what is being implied. He was, for one thing, very busy at the time, and for another, ‘the whole object of internal security inquiries is to find no evidence’, so he simply cannot see, as a good civil servant, what he did wrong.
Hacker, however, is clear on this. He has a real problem: it has to be incompetence or collusion.
There is a certain steeliness about the Prime Minister as he scrutinises the anxious reaction of his Cabinet Secretary. It seems as if Hacker senses – like Ingham said of Thatcher at the start of the Anthony Blunt affair – that this might be an ideal opportunity for a new Prime Minister to show ‘the Civil Service that the politicians decide policy, not the system’.14
Sir Humphrey rushes off to seek advice from his predecessor, Sir Arnold Robinson, who, from his position of leisure, is able to give a calm and sober analysis of the situation. If Sir Humphrey is proved to be innocent, he will still be viewed as incompetent, and, as the Prime Minister could quite easily have swept the matter under the carpet by blaming the ‘gaga’ peer, it seems that the real intention is to remove Sir Humphrey from his position, after which all of his subordinates in the Civil Service would be exposed to the PM’s sweeping scythe.
Sir Arnold’s solution is simple. Sir Humphrey must make himself appear so valuable to the Prime Minister that there is no way he can be sacrificed.
Sir Humphrey knows exactly what to do. For some time now, he knows, Hacker has been fussing over opinion polls that suggest that his personal standing with voters is on the decline, and, in the last day or so, he has been complaining that the evening news bulletins have been more interested in reporting on the plight of an eight-year-old girl’s sheepdog (which has strayed onto the artillery range on Salisbury Plain) than they have been in noting his latest performance at Prime Minister’s Questions. What thus needs to be done is to have Number Ten intervene to save the dog, let Hacker lap up the subsequent good publicity and accept his own thanks in private.
Hacker, as always more interested in personal popularity than principles, accepts Sir Humphrey’s plan and then settles back on his sofa to watch the suitably sentimental news reports. ‘Say no more about it,’ he beams at Sir Humphrey the next morning, as he brushes aside any calls for a new inquiry and concentrates instead on all the favourable front-page headlines. ‘Completely forgotten!’
There is only one matter left to be dealt with, says Sir Humphrey, with a glint in his eye. He then proceeds to discuss Hacker’s favoured defence cuts, and lets it be known that the cost of rescuing the dog was the huge sum, for that period, of £310,000. Such a disproportionate expense, at a time of supposed swingeing cost-cutting, will not look good in Parliament, let alone the papers, and Hacker knows it only too well.
‘I think I may have been a little hasty,’ he says, disguising the start of a shiver. ‘Yes, Prime Minister,’ replies Sir Humphrey, disguising t
he start of a smirk.
Once again, the power dynamic between Hacker and Sir Humphrey had taken another tip. It left viewers eager to see what would happen to the relationship in the next set of episodes to be screened.
Consistently topping the ratings for BBC2, this first series of Yes, Prime Minister had averaged an audience of 6.8 million, with a high of 7.5 million,15 receiving the usual positive reviews. Nigel Hawthorne won yet another Best Light Entertainment Performance BAFTA – his third for this role – and the series was named Best Entertainment Series by the Broadcasting Press Guild.
The show was also honoured by the organisers of the Campaign for Freedom of Information. They presented both Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn with a special award in recognition of their ‘unique and unparalleled contribution to wittily exposing the cynicism of Whitehall secrecy’.16
The return had been a genuine triumph on every level. Artistically, critically and commercially, it had matched, and arguably even surpassed, all of the high expectations that news of its revival had encouraged.
More popular, relevant and influential than ever, it reminded all those who were bemoaning the dumbing down of British television of what the medium could, and should, do when it respected the intelligence of a broad audience. It lifted standards as well as spirits, and, for its many admirers, another series could not come too soon.
Case Study 4
Thank You for Not Smoking
The ability of the show to turn old facts into new fictions had been evident right from the start, but, increasingly, the sitcom also demonstrated an equally remarkable gift for anticipating future incidents, issues and trends. In ‘The Smoke Screen’, for example, we can now see a fiction that later became a fact.