A Very Courageous Decision

by Graham McCann

  The Minister, suddenly wanting to keep his hands clean, protests that they should only be thinking about right and wrong, so Sir Humphrey decides to remind him of how the real world works. ‘Either you sell arms or you don’t,’ he points out. ‘If you sell them, they will inevitably end up with people who have the cash to buy them.’ Hacker, like a man who has just discovered soap, is still horrified by the grubbiness of all, and so, once again, Sir Humphrey feels obliged to give him a refresher lesson in deontological ethics: ‘May I point out to you that something is either morally wrong or it isn’t. It can’t be slightly morally wrong.’

  Hacker, however, is having none of it. Displaying breathtaking hypocrisy, bearing in mind all of the dubious decisions he has happily made – in a spirit more akin to cant than Kant – since he came to office, he now seems to think of himself as a beacon of political virtue in a murky administrative world:

  HACKER:

  For the first time I fully understand that you are purely committed to means and not to ends.

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  Well, as far as I’m concerned, Minister, and all of my colleagues, there is no difference between means and ends.

  HACKER:

  [Sombrely] If you believe that, Humphrey, you will go to hell.

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  [Smiling facetiously] Minister, I had no idea you had a theological bent.

  HACKER:

  You are a moral vacuum.

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  If you say so, Minister.

  Hacker, supremely pleased with his new self-delusion as the shining white knight of Westminster, strides off to alert the Prime Minister. Sir Humphrey, meanwhile, fears another Watergate, with an inquiry into this isolated issue leading ‘to one ghastly revelation after another’.

  Hacker, however, never gets to see the PM. He is headed off by the Chief Whip, who has no time for this kind of ill-conceived crusade, endangering the signing of an international anti-terrorist agreement in ‘a fit of moral self-indulgence’. Just in case he has not scared Hacker enough by barking at him about Cabinet responsibility and party loyalty, the Chief Whip then hints that the Minister might also be on the brink of wrecking his own prospects of taking over the Foreign Office. This is quite enough to slap Hacker back into amorality.

  He now has to silence Major Saunders, who still expects him to expose the dirty deal, but Sir Humphrey knows what will overcome this problem: ‘the Rhodesia Solution’. Back when there were oil sanctions against the country, a member of the British Government was informed that certain companies were flouting those sanctions, but, in order to avoid undermining such covert trading deals, he elected to tell the Prime Minister in such a way as to ensure that he failed to know that he had been told.

  ‘You write a note which is susceptible to misinterpretation,’ Sir Humphrey explains. Dictating to Woolley, he starts drafting the appropriate style of report: ‘My attention has been drawn, on a personal basis, to information which suggests the possibility of certain irregularities …’ Getting Woolley to insert a reference to the relevant piece of legislation (‘Section One of the Import, Export and Customs Powers [Defence] Act 1939’), he moves 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 an inquiry should be put in hand’ – and then he smudges 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’.

  ‘That’s most unclear,’ Hacker observes. ‘Thank you, Minister!’ Sir Humphrey replies. Once the Permanent Secretary has added his finishing touches to the trick, arranging for it to arrive at Number Ten on the day that the Prime Minister is due to fly off for an overseas summit (thus making it harder for anyone to tell whether it was the PM or the acting PM who actually saw the letter), Hacker knows that he, too, is well on his way to Hell.

  Back at home, he lies on the couch, drunk on whisky, and whines to his wife:

  HACKER:

  I’m a moral vacuum.

  ANNIE:

  Cheer up, darling. Nothing good ever comes out of Whitehall. You did what you could.

  HACKER:

  You don’t really mean that.

  ANNIE:

  I do.

  HACKER:

  Nah, I’m just like Humphrey and all the rest of them.

  ANNIE:

  Now that’s certainly not true. He’s lost his sense of right and wrong. You’ve still got yours.

  HACKER:

  Have I?

  ANNIE:

  It’s just that you don’t use it much. You’re a sort of whisky priest. You do at least know when you’ve done the wrong thing.

  HACKER:

  Whisky priest?

  ANNIE:

  That’s right.

  HACKER:

  [Thinking it over] Good … Let’s open another bottle.

  ANNIE:

  We haven’t got one.

  HACKER:

  That’s what you think!

  [He opens up one of his red boxes and produces a new bottle.]

  HACKER:

  Who said nothing good ever came out of Whitehall?

  [He unscrews it]

  Do you want one?

  ANNIE:

  Yes, Minister.

  It might not have made complete dramatic sense in the broader context of the sitcom as a whole, but as an episode it was certainly one of the highlights of an uneven third series. Far more effectively rendered than Sir Humphrey’s own personal crisis in ‘The Skeleton in the Cupboard’ (which had seen Nigel Hawthorne overact so wildly – by his own supremely high standards – that he had the preternaturally self-controlled Permanent Secretary contort his face like a gargoyle and stuff a handkerchief inside his mouth), ‘The Whisky Priest’ was a classic Yes Minister comical critique. Perceptive, precise and pertinent, it did what the sitcom did best and made people think at the same time that it made them laugh.

  Even the small, partial failures of the third series, however, had been noble failures, because they were the result of the team’s being bold and brave enough to eschew the line of least resistance and try instead to surprise, enlighten and delight. Watched by an enthusiastic audience each week (which would expand dramatically once the show was repeated on BBC1 in the summer of the following year), the run was as well received as its predecessors had been, and won several more awards, including BAFTAs for Best Comedy Series and, for Nigel Hawthorne, Best Light Entertainment Performance.

  By way of a coda, a brief extra scene was recorded for a special seasonal show, The Funny Side of Christmas, which was broadcast on BBC1 on 27 December. Set on the day before the Minister escaped from Whitehall for the festive break, it had a flustered-looking Sir Humphrey rush into Hacker’s office to deliver an urgent message to the startled Minister:

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  I wonder if I might crave your momentary indulgence in order to discharge a by no means disagreeable obligation which has over the years become more or less established practice, within Government circles, as we approach the terminal period of the year – calendar, of course, not financial – in fact, not to put too fine a point on it, week fifty-one – and submit to you with all appropriate deference, for your consideration at a convenient juncture, a sincere and sanguine expectation, indeed confidence, indeed one might go so far as to say hope, that the aforementioned period may be, at the end of the day, when all relevant factors have been taken into consideration, susceptible of being deemed to be such as to merit a final verdict of having been by no means unsatisfactory in its overall outcome and, in the final analysis, to give grounds for being judged, on mature reflection, to have been conducive to generating a degree of gratification which will be seen in retrospect to have been significantly higher than the general average.

  HACKER:

  What’s he talking about??

  WOOLLEY:

  Wel
l, Minister, I think Sir Humphrey just wanted to crave your momentary indulgence in order to discharge a by no means disagreeable—

  HACKER:

  All – All right, Bernard! Humphrey?

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  At the end of the day, Minister, all things—

  HACKER:

  No, no, just …

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  Yes, Minister?

  HACKER:

  Are you saying ‘Happy Christmas’?

  SIR HUMPHREY:

  Yes, Minister!

  It was a charming way to finish off an eventful year – the third in the lifetime of Yes Minister. The show had come a long way for a popular sitcom. It had established itself, it had polished itself and now it had pushed itself. The question now was: where, if anywhere, could and should it go from here?

  Case Study 3

  Whisky Galore

  In terms of pure comedic charm, the most satisfying episode in the third series had been ‘The Moral Dimension’. It had featured dubious diplomatic deals, surreptitious religious slights and clumsy cupidity, and once again – far more than viewers realised – most of the fiction had been formed by fact.

  Unusually for the show, a considerable amount of the action took place outside of the DAA offices in Whitehall, because Jim and Annie Hacker, along with Sir Humphrey, Woolley and the rest of a large delegation, fly off to the oil sheikdom of Qumran in order to finalise one of Britain’s biggest-ever export orders. The prospect of returning triumphant fills all concerned with a sense of excitement, but, inevitably, one or two problems are encountered along the way.

  This episode was inspired by two real-life incidents, one already widely reported and the other still very much a secret. The former involved a coffee pot, the latter some bottles of Scotch.

  The coffee pot in question had belonged to the Labour MP and former Cabinet Minister Anthony Crosland. He had been given the item, donated by the architect John Poulson, when opening a school in Bradford in January 1966 in his capacity as the then Secretary of State for Education and Science. The gift had gone unreported and largely unnoticed until 1973, when, in the course of investigating the extent of the now disgraced and bankrupt Poulson’s bribery of senior political figures in order to facilitate his business ambitions, court officials discovered that Crosland had not only accepted the coffee pot, but had also written a gushing letter of thanks to Poulson, saying: ‘I tremble to think how much it cost. I shall treasure it as a memory of a very beautiful building’.28

  By the end of a month of intense media and political pressure, a ‘profoundly embarrassed’ Crosland told the House of Commons that he ‘had no recollection’ of receiving the pot, which, once ‘traced’ inside his house by his wife, had been shown to have ‘never been used’ and was actually suspected of being a cheap reproduction. Vowing to send it on ‘to the trustee in bankruptcy for his benefit’, Crosland moaned: ‘All I want is to get rid of the bloody thing. It has never been used. I was unaware of its existence’.29

  Having read all about the incident and remembered it, both Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn had always kept it in mind as a potential anecdote to be exploited, and the right time for it had now arrived. ‘In that episode,’ Antony Jay would reveal, ‘we mixed in the Anthony Crosland coffee pot story, only we changed it to a vase.’30

  While at the reception in Qumran, Hacker is presented with a seventeenth-century rose water vase as a gift from one government to another. Annie Hacker is delighted with the item, so she is greatly disappointed when Woolley explains to her that it will be classified as government property, and that the only way that she would be allowed to keep it – rather than see it put ‘in a basement somewhere in Whitehall’ – is if it were to be valued at less than fifty pounds.

  Taking pity on the Minister’s wife, Woolley sidles off to see if he can find someone able and willing to solve the problem discreetly. Sure enough, one of the Qumrani officials proves only too happy to certify that this ‘very valuable’ rose water vase is actually a mere copy worth just a very convenient £49.95. Delighted, Hacker takes charge of the gift and brings it back home with her.

  Some time later, however, a journalist friend visits Annie, sees the vase on display and, unconvinced that it is a mere replica, calls the Qumrani embassy to enquire as to its real value. The officials there are incensed to hear it suggested that they would have passed off a cheap copy as a precious antique, and the Foreign Office fears that this little matter is in danger of becoming one of the biggest diplomatic incidents in recent years. Jim Hacker, as a consequence, is left to lie his way out of the controversy.

  The other parallel with real life, involving the bottles of scotch, occurred when the team was preparing to touch down in Qumran. Alarmed when Sir Humphrey reminds him that, as alcohol is banned in the country under Islamic law, they are facing hours of sipping nothing more potent than warm orange juice, Hacker is determined to find a way to bypass the ban.

  He first suggests hip flasks, but Sir Humphrey dismisses the idea as far too risky. Undeterred, he then comes up with the idea of setting up a special ‘communications room’ next door to the reception: ‘You know, emergency telephones, telex lines to Downing Street, all that sort of thing. Then we could fill it with cases of booze brought in from the agency’. Sir Humphrey hails the proposal as a ‘stroke of genius’ and pledges his ‘enthusiastic support’.

  Once inside, at the reception, chatting politely to the Qumrani officials, the plan is put into action:

  WOOLLEY:

  Excuse me, sir, there’s an urgent call for you in the communications room. A ‘Mr Haig’.

  HACKER:

  [Bemused] General Haig??

  WOOLLEY:

  Er, no, ‘Mr Haig’. You know – with the dimples.

  HACKER:

  [The penny drops] Ah yes! Do excuse me – most important!

  Hacker then rushes off to the special room, where a junior official opens up a red despatch box to reveal a full bottle of Haig whisky. The Minister, once his glass of orange juice has been ‘improved’ with several measures of the hard stuff, returns to the reception eager to keep the plan going:

  HACKER:

  Ah, Bernard, you’re wanted in the communications room: a ‘Mr John Walker’.

  WOOLLEY:

  Johnny Walker?

  HACKER:

  Yes, from the Scotch Office – Scottish Office.

  ANNIE:

  Isn’t there a message for me, darling?

  HACKER:

  Yes, of course, there is. Bernard’ll get it for you if you give him your glass – er, if you give him your glass, he’ll get you some more orange juice as well!

  It does not take long before another call comes in:

  HACKER:

  Ah, Bernard, any, er, messages in the communications room?

  WOOLLEY:

  Oh, well, there is one for Sir Humphrey, Minister. Yes, the Soviet Embassy is on the line, Sir Humphrey: a ‘Mr Smirnoff’.

  HACKER:

  Are you sure there isn’t one for me?

  WOOLLEY:

  Oh, well, there was a message from the British Embassy compound, the school – a delegation of Teachers.

  HACKER:

  Ah! I must go and greet the teachers. Before the Bell’s goes – er, bell goes!

  Hacker, upon his return, is now swaying slowly from side to side, but still the ruse goes on:

  WOOLLEY:

  Oh, there was a message for you in the communications room, er, er, the VAT Man – your 69 returns.

  HACKER:

  What??

  WOOLLEY:

  VAT 69.

  HACKER:

  Oh? Ah! Yes, thanks!

  As he staggers off, spilling ‘orange juice’ as he goes, Sir Humphrey looks concerned: ‘I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion, Bernard, that the Minister has had almost as many urgent messages as he can take!’

  Baroness Symons, who was a middle-ranking civil servant at the time when the episode wa
s first broadcast (but who would become a Foreign Office Minister in Tony Blair’s Government), would later recall her reaction to the scene: ‘I didn’t know the Foreign Office as well as I do today. At the time, I thought it was extremely funny, but I thought it was fanciful. I’m pained to say that, having now been in the Foreign Office/Ministry of Defence for the best part of eight years, I don’t think that was quite as fanciful as all that. I think there was a good deal of an echo of the way in which things are handled.’31

  Indeed, as far-fetched as this aspect of the episode might have seemed in those days, something remarkably like it had actually happened. Jay and Lynn learned about it, secretly at the time, from the closest of their own special advisers, Bernard Donoughue.

  In January 1978, in his capacity as Head of the Number Ten Policy Unit, he had accompanied a delegation led by the then Prime Minister, James Callaghan, on a ten-day tour of the subcontinent, taking in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. The two-fold aim was to stimulate various trade links with Britain and strengthen diplomatic relations. It was close to the end of the trip, as they headed into Pakistan, that an ingenious clandestine operation, devised and led by Donoughue, took place:

  We were facing a very long evening there, with a very long reception followed by a two-hour after-dinner speech from the President, with only water or orange juice to drink. So I – along with Tom McNally, who was then Callaghan’s Political Secretary – plotted ahead of it, working out how we could deal with this and get ourselves something stronger, such as whisky, to drink. And I came up with this story about how we’d need to be in urgent touch with Downing Street, so we’d have to have our desk with a telephone very close to the huge reception room and the dinner room, so that we could be in immediate contact with Number Ten in case there was a crisis. And hidden in the desk drawers were several bottles of whisky. And it worked out very well. Every now and again, some of us would go out to this desk with our glasses half full of orange juice, and top them up from the desk drawers with very good whisky. You could tell who our ‘inner team’ were by the fact that they were going around with these glasses full of suspiciously brown orange juice! Callaghan wasn’t part of the inner team, I should point out. He didn’t drink. A very fine Prime Minister, but he was a puritan, and Tom and I were cavaliers, so he wouldn’t have approved of what we were up to!32