In political activity, then, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea; there is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place nor appointed destination.
The first series of Yes, Prime Minister received a very warm welcome. Nothing on television, during the three years since Yes Minister had last been seen, had come close to matching the show’s remarkable combination of intelligence, realism, knowledge and wit. Its return, in revised form, represented a reassuring move at a time when accusations were in circulation that British television was in the process of being ‘dumbed down’.1
There were numerous admiring profiles and respectful interviews in the newspapers and several television promotional features, and a picture of all three stars (photographed outside a mock-up of Number Ten) adorned the cover of the Radio Times. It was, by the relatively restrained standards of the time, an unusually broad and enthusiastic response to the revival of a sitcom that dared to go against the trend for safe, inoffensive and formulaic fare.
The opening episode – which was broadcast at 9 p.m. on BBC2 on Thursday 9 January 1986 – made it clear from the start that this series, now that Jim Hacker had become Prime Minister, was going to be the most ambitious one yet in terms of the nature and treatment of its themes. Within the first two minutes it had Hacker hovering over the button that could trigger a nuclear war.
In what followed, every major aspect of the country’s Cold War nuclear policy was sliced up and satirised, while the dangerous opportunism of those responsible for managing it was subjected to a suitably excoriating comic critique. In one scene, Hacker’s Chief Scientific Adviser dismisses the concept of Britain having its own nuclear deterrent because (as an attack would either be direct and immediate or, more likely, indirect and gradual) the time to press the button would either be too late or too soon, and thus proposes cancelling the purchase of any more nuclear weapons and using the £15 billion saved to build a large conventional army enhanced with high-tech weaponry.
This gives Hacker what a worried-looking Woolley describes as a ‘courageous’ idea. If he did indeed decide to cancel the missiles, use the money to build a large conventional army and reintroduce conscription (which would also provide the idle youth of the nation with ‘a comprehensive education to make up for their comprehensive education’), he would solve Britain’s defence, unemployment and education problems in one dramatic stroke.
Feeling the hand of history upon his shoulder, his voice takes on a Churchillian burr as he decides to name this new policy ‘Hacker’s Grand Design’. Sir Humphrey, of course, is not at all enthusiastic about such an idea and urges the Prime Minister to try ‘masterly inactivity’ instead, but Hacker is adamant.
Sir Humphrey is aghast: ‘You can’t just reorganise the entire defence of the realm just like that!’ Hacker, however, points out that he is the Prime Minister: ‘I have the power’. Sir Humphrey asks, hopefully, if the plan is merely to stop buying Trident nuclear weapons and start buying Cruise missiles instead, but Hacker insists that he intends to stop buying any such type of the means of mass destruction.
Sir Humphrey tries to make his Prime Minister see sense:
Hacker, however, vows to press on. He sounds out the Chief of the General Staff, General Howard, about his plan and, much to his surprise, finds that the Army man is very much in favour of such a move, but doubts that the Royal Navy and the RAF would support it. A solution, he says, would be to appoint someone to the soon-to-be vacant post of Chief of the Defence Staff who has an Army background – someone very much, in fact, like himself – to push the policy through.
The General then bumps into Sir Humphrey, who shocks him with the news that Hacker is not only going to abandon nuclear weapons but is also planning on bringing back conscription. ‘We can’t bring in a mob of punks, and freaks, and junkies and riff-raff!’ the old soldier protests. ‘We must stop him!’
Sir Humphrey assures him that they only need to slow Hacker down. ‘After a few months, most new Prime Ministers have more or less ground to a halt anyway.’
The Cabinet Secretary achieves this aim by warning the Prime Minister that the Americans will be most displeased if Britain stops buying its Trident missiles and fails to replace them with another American-made nuclear weapon. Worse still, as far as Hacker’s own amour propre is concerned, this displeasure would manifest itself initially via the downgrading of his first official trip as Prime Minister to the White House. ‘Your meeting would not be with the President,’ Sir Humphrey informs him. ‘You would be entertained by the Vice-President.’
Hacker is horrified. ‘The Vice-President?’ he gasps. ‘But even Botswana was met by the President – I saw it on the news!’ Sir Humphrey, quietly delighted to see that he can still make Hacker squirm, points out that Botswana had not just cancelled a £15 billion order for Trident. When Hacker admits that the meeting with the President ‘is vital for PR’, Sir Humphrey tells him that he will have to postpone his ‘Grand Design’ and the morally compromised Prime Minister, reluctantly, agrees.
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 consequence, 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: |
|
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: |
|
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 Prime 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:
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: |
|
SIR HUMPHREY: |
And he’s also against repression and persecution in Africa. |
HACKER: |
[Puzzled] So are we. |
SIR 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 the 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.