1980 – Humphrey and Jim
“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.” With these words we are introduced to the world of government, as Bernard Woolley, Principal Private Secretary, responds to Jim Hacker, Minister for Administrative Affairs, as he requests a different, non-swivel chair for his office. This is 1980, and the opening episode of ‘Yes, Minister’. We are about to meet the third, critical character in this series, Sir Humphrey Appleby, Permanent Secretary of the Department. A few minutes later, as the three sit in his office, Hacker asks, “Who else is in this department?”
‘Sir Humphrey: Well briefly, sir, I am the Permanent Under Secretary of State, known as the Permanent Secretary. Woolley here is your Principal Private Secretary. I too have a Principal Private Secretary and he is the Principal Private Secretary to the Permanent Secretary. Directly responsible to me are ten Deputy Secretaries, 87 Under Secretaries and 219 Assistant Secretaries. Directly responsible to the Principal Private Secretaries are plain Private Secretaries, and the Prime Minister will be appointing two Parliamentary Under-Secretaries and you will be appointing your own Parliamentary Private Secretary.
Hacker: Can they all type?
Sir Humphrey: None of us can type. Mrs. Mackay types: she’s the secretary.
Minister: Pity, we could have opened an agency.
Sir Humphrey: Very droll, Minister.
Hacker: I suppose they all say that, do they?
Sir Humphrey: Certainly not, Minister. Not quite all…’
[All quotes are from Wikiquotes, https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Yes,_Minister]
Already laughing, we settled down to watch another brilliant BBC comedy, following the adventures of Hacker, Appleby and Woolley in the labyrinthine world of government. The series worked so well because it used the British (and Australian) system as its basis; the US has a much fuzzier set off interlocking parts and relationships. In the Westminster system, there are three key areas: the legislature (parliament) with elected members in the House of Commons, and a House of Lords as a review body comprising hereditary members and life appointments; the government, comprising ministers and their staff, ministers also being members the House of Commons or House of Lords; and the public service, various departments agencies, overseen by ministers. For this series, parliament is largely ignored. So is the judicial system (the other important part of the overall system). Our attention is on a minister, a department head, and the minister’s adviser.
It’s a relationship designed for comedy! A minister in the Westminster system depends on his department to execute the various proposals, laws and regulations the government has developed or inherited. However, the head of the minister’s department is not employed by the minister, nor is he appointed by the government. He works for the civil service (as it’s called in the UK; Australia calls it the public service). The interests of the minister and a department head are not exactly aligned. The minister wants to see the government’s agenda implemented. A permanent head’s concerns often include maintaining influence through growing the department and the scope of areas it oversees. As for that poor political adviser, the Principal Private Secretary, he’s in the invidious position of advising the minister, while simultaneously needing to keep in the good books of the head of the department if he wants his or her career to progress, or even keep his job! With some pride, I have to point out that the British are brilliant at devising this sort of intricate system.
The first series began following a general election in which the incoming government had been the opposition party in the previous administration. The newly appointed Prime Minister had offered Jim Hacker the position of Minister of Administrative Affairs. New to the role, and yet to confront the Civil Service, that opening scene is when Hacker first meets Appleby and Woolley. While all three roles are exceptionally acted, I have a soft spot for Sir Humphrey Appleby, who pulls off the task of being apparently deferential to his minister while ably frustrating almost everything he seeks to achieve. Battles were inevitable: the new government wanted to implement several policies, of which Hacker’s responsibilities included reducing bureaucracy and slimming the Department of Administrative Services; Appleby knows success for him is stopping this, while even increasing staff numbers and budgets. Bernard Woolley does a great job of being somewhat, well, woolly, trying to support Hacker as best he can, but doing so without falling foul of Sir Humphrey.
As the series progresses, many of the issues focus on Sir Humphrey’s need to find ways to frustrate the plans Jim Hacker wants to introduce. However, Sir Humphrey also wants to help his rather naive minister. I loved this interchange, also from early in the series:
Sir Humphrey: Minister, Britain has had the same foreign policy objective for at least the last five hundred years: to create a disunited Europe. In that cause we have fought with the Dutch against the Spanish, with the Germans against the French, with the French and Italians against the Germans, and with the French against the Germans and Italians. Divide and rule, you see. Why should we change now, when it’s worked so well?
Hacker: That’s all ancient history, surely?
Sir Humphrey: Yes, and current policy. We had to break the whole thing [the EEC ] up, so we had to get inside. We tried to break it up from the outside, but that wouldn’t work. Now that we’re inside we can make a complete pig’s breakfast of the whole thing — set the Germans against the French, the French against the Italians, the Italians against the Dutch … The Foreign Office is terribly pleased; it’s just like old times.
Hacker: But surely we’re all committed to the European ideal?
Sir Humphrey: [chuckles] Really, Minister.
Hacker: If not, why are we pushing for an increase in the membership?
Sir Humphrey: Well, for the same reason. It’s just like the United Nations, in fact; the more members it has, the more arguments it can stir up, the more futile and impotent it becomes.
Hacker: What appalling cynicism.
Sir Humphrey: Yes … We call it diplomacy, Minister.
Here you see the true brilliance of the series. Not only are the exchanges funny, but they are always just on the edge of being utterly believable, sometimes only a minute shade away from being true. To add to the credibility of the exchanges, almost all the scenes take place in the Minister’s office or Sir Humphrey’s. You feel you are witnessing the ‘real stuff’, not the pantomime of parliament. At the few times we are away from these offices, two other characters are crucial. One is the head of the civil service, with whom Sir Humphrey meets to exchange war stories, to explore how government agendas are being implemented, or, more likely, frustrated. The other key person is Annie Hacker, Jim’s wife, who acts as a foil to Jim’s bemused thinking and rambling commentary to point out what he should be doing – by offering very straightforward and sensible advice!
On a few occasions I was able to use an episode in a training program, either for public servants or for people in government. My reason was quite simple: for both sides, the key issue was to know the enemy! Here’s an example, ideal for discussion. Hacker has received some intelligence on sanction breaking, which he can’t but must pass on to the Prime Minister. What to do?
Bernard: I was just wondering, Minister, if we may not use the Rhodesia solution.
Sir Humphrey: Bernard! You excel yourself! Of course, Minister, the Rhodesia solution!
Hacker: What are you talking about?
Sir Humphrey: Oil sanctions, remember? A member of the government was told about the way British companies were sanction-busting. … He told the Prime Minister in such a way that the Prime Minister didn’t hear him.
Hacker: Would you mean I should mumble it or something in the division lobby?
Sir Humphrey: No, Minister, you write a note.
Hacker: In very faint pencil? Please, impractical.
Sir Humphrey: No, Minister, it’s awfully obvious; you write a note which is susceptible to misinterpretation.
Hacker: Oh, I see. Dear Prime Minister, it has come to my attention that the Italian Red Terrorists are getting hold of British top secret bomb-making equipment—how do you misinterpret that?
Sir Humphrey: You can’t. … So you don’t write that. You use a more circumspect style, and you avoid any mention of bombs, or terrorists, or any of that.
Hacker: Wouldn’t that be rather difficult? Is that what it’s all about?
Sir Humphrey: You say—Bernard, write this down—My attention has been drawn, on a personal basis, to information which suggests the possibility of certain irregularities under Section… [snaps fingers]
Bernard: Section 1 of the Import, Export and Customs Powers Defence Act 1939 C.
Sir Humphrey: Thank you, Bernard. You then go on to suggest that somebody else should do something about it. Prima facie evidence suggests that there could be a case for further investigation; to establish whether or not enquiries should be put in hand. And then you smudge it all over. Nevertheless, it should be stressed that available information is limited, and relevant facts could be difficult to establish with any degree of certainty.
Hacker: I see.
Sir Humphrey: Then, if there were an inquiry, you’d be in the clear, and everybody would understand that the busy PM might not have grasped the full implications of such a letter … so the whole thing is written off as a breakdown in communications, everybody’s in the clear, and everybody can get on with their business.
Bernard: Including the Red Terrorists.
Sir Humphrey: Exactly.
The series also offered an outstanding perspective on ways of speaking, especially using jargon and obfuscation. Here’s Sir Humphrey, responding to a request to directly answer a question, yes or no: “Well Minister, if you ask me for a straight answer, then I shall say that, as far as we can see, looking at it by and large, taking one thing with another in terms of the average of departments, then in the final analysis it is probably true to say, that at the end of the day, in general terms, you would probably find that, not to put too fine a point on it, there probably wasn’t very much in it one way or the other. As far as one can see, at this stage.” Well said, Humphrey!
While Sir Humphrey finds his way round almost every obstacle, Hacker lacks such subtlety, and often speaks without reflecting on the consequences of his observations, especially those that might be applied to himself. Here he is, replying to Annie about a deputation of backbench members of parliament whom she had sympathetically described as underpaid. “Underpaid? Backbench MPs, Darling? Being an MP is a vast subsidised ego trip. It’s a job for which you need no qualifications, no compulsory hours of work, no performance standards. A warm room and subsidised meals for a bunch of self-opinionated windbags and busybodies who suddenly find people taking them seriously because they got letters “MP” after their names. How can they be underpaid when there’re about two hundred applicants for every vacancy? You could fill every seat twenty times over even if they have to pay to do the job.” Also true of ministers? Over time, Jim Hacker proved he wasn’t a complete fool, learning from Humphrey Appleby to eventually become rather devious himself.
To balance against Appleby’s weasel words and Hacker’s pontificating, every so often, we are treated to Bernard Woolley’s ability to lose himself in reflections that have little to do with the point at issue. Hacker remembers a line about bewaring Greeks bearing gifts. Bernard takes over: “No, well, the point is, Minister, that just as the Trojan horse was in fact Greek, what you describe as a Greek tag is in fact Latin. It’s obvious, really: the Greeks would never suggest bewaring of themselves, if one can use such a participle (bewaring that is). And it’s clearly Latin, not because timeo ends in “-o”, because the Greek first person also ends in “-o” – although actually there is a Greek word timao, meaning ‘I honour’. But the “-os” ending is a nominative singular termination of a second declension in Greek, and an accusative plural in Latin, of course, though actually Danaos is not only the Greek for ‘Greek’; it’s also the Latin for ‘Greek’. It’s very interesting, really.” Yes!!
Here’s another lovely explanation from Woolley for Hacker: “Well, take the Foreign Office. First you get the CMG, then the KCMG, then the GCMG; the Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George, Knight Commander of St Michael and St George, Knight Grand Cross of St Michael and St George. Of course, in the Service, CMG stands for ‘Call Me God’, and KCMG for ‘Kindly Call Me God’.” Hacker asks, “What does GCMG stand for?” “God Calls Me God” ! It took me a while to realise Bernard wasn’t just funny; he was a dab hand at illustrating the gulf between the professionals (in the civil service) and the short-term amateurs (members of the government).
Every episode contained gems and snappy observations (if not always politically correct!):
Sir Humphrey: The only way to understand the Press is to remember that they pander to their readers’ prejudices.
Hacker: Don’t tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers: The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by the people who actually do run the country; The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; The Financial Times is read by people who own the country; The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country; and The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.
Sir Humphrey: Oh and Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?
Bernard: Sun readers don’t care who runs the country as long as she’s got big tits.
Yes, and there’s more. The writers knew how to play to the audience’s prejudices. Not just in terms of views about newspapers, but on other matters. Here’s an interchange that went right to the heart of a key issue in international relations that every Englishman would know. Hacker is talking about having an independent deterrent in international diplomacy:
Hacker: …Anyway, the Americans will always protect us from the Russians, won’t they?
Sir Humphrey: Russians? Who’s talking about the Russians?
Hacker: Well, the independent deterrent.
Sir Humphrey: It’s to protect us against the French!
Hacker: The French?! But that’s astounding!
Sir Humphrey: Why?
Hacker: Well they’re our allies, our partners.
Sir Humphrey: Well, they are now, but they’ve been our enemies for most of the past 900 years.
If they’ve got the bomb, we must have the bomb!
Hacker: If it’s for the French, of course, that’s different. Makes a lot of sense.
Sir Humphrey: Yes. Can’t trust the Frogs.
Hacker: You can say that again!
I could happily add page after page of excerpts from the screenplays. All these years later, the humour is as fresh and pointed as it ever was. Jim Hacker was a stereotype of a politician, but his behaviour was close to that of many you find in office. Sir Humphrey Appleby was exceedingly devious, but so are many real-life public servants. Bernard Woolley did get lost down his own by-ways, but so do others. If that was all, it made for sharp commentary and good fun.
However, ‘Yes, Minister’ did much more than that. It opened a window, cynical and exaggerated for sure, on what goes on in government; it helped outsiders make sense of the often extraordinarily strange events that get reported in the press; and, most important, it illustrated the checks and balances that kept the Westminster system running successfully for a very long time. Over the years, I have talked about the series to many in the public sector, and the conversation inevitably has followed the same path. We would recall some of the better moments (like the explanation in Episode 5 on how to make an inconvenient report ‘disappear’!). Then we would move on to talking about some of our own experiences. It seems all public servants have met their versions of Humphrey Appleby and Jim Hacker, and they all have their own tales to tell. Smart ministers, and others who were rather credulous; devious heads of departments busily building empires and controlling the government agenda, and others who spent their time passing around the latest jokes they’d heard. The characters in Yes Minister were fiction, but they were oh so real!
