The Complete Yes Minister

I must say, though, that even I didn’t grasp the full significance of this move that afternoon. I didn’t even fully comprehend, in those days, why Humphrey had persuaded Hacker to sign the document on the pretext that it was urgent.

‘It was not urgent,’ he explained to me later, ‘but it was important. Any document that removes the power of decision from Ministers and gives it to us is important.’

I asked why. He rightly ticked me off for obtuseness. Giving powers of decision to the Service helps to take government out of politics. That was, in his view, Britain’s only hope of survival.

The urgency was true in one sense, of course, in that whenever you want a Minister to sign something without too many questions it is always better to wait until he is in a hurry. That is when their concentration is weakest. Ministers are always vulnerable when they are in a hurry.

That is why we always kept them on the go, of course.

[Hacker’s diary for that day continues – Ed.]

It’s always hard to find something to make a speech about. We have to make a great many speeches, of course – local authority elections, by-elections, GLC elections, opening village fetes or the new old people’s home, every weekend in my constituency there’s something.

We must try to have something to say. Yet it can’t be particularly new or else we’d have to say it in the House first, and it can’t be particularly interesting or we’d already have said it on TV or radio. I’m always hoping that the Department will cook up something for me to talk about, something that we in the government would have to be talking about anyway.

Equally, you have to be careful that, in their eagerness to find something, they don’t cook up anything too damn silly. After all, I’ve got to actually get up and say it.

Most civil servants can’t write speeches. But they can dig up a plum for me (occasionally) and, without fail, they should warn me of any possible banana skins.

Today I planned to make a sort of generalised speech on the environment, which I’m doing a lot of recently and which seems to go down well with everyone.

Hacker was persuaded to pose for the above photograph against his better jugement, because he was unwilling to appear ‘a bad sport’ in public. He subsequently had the photograph suppressed but it was released under the Thirty-year Rule (DAA Archives)

At the City Farm we were met by a brisk middle-class lady called Mrs Phillips. She was the Warden of the City Farm. My party simply consisted of me, Bill Pritchard of the press office, and Bernard.

We were asked to drive up to the place two or three times in succession, so that the television crew could film us arriving.

The third time seemed to satisfy them. Mrs Phillips welcomed me with a singularly tactless little speech: words to the effect of ‘I’m so grateful that you could come, we tried all sorts of other celebrities but nobody else could make it.’

I turned to the cameraman from the BBC and told him to cut. He kept filming, impertinent little man. I told him again, and then the director said cut so he finally did cut. I instructed the director to cut Mrs Phillips’ tactless little speech right out.

‘But . . .’ he began.

‘No buts,’ I told him. ‘Licence fee, remember.’ Of course I said it jokingly, but we both knew I wasn’t joking. The BBC is always much easier to handle when the licence fee is coming up for renewal.

I think he was rather impressed with my professionalism and my no-nonsense attitude.

We went in.

I realised that I didn’t know too much about City Farms. Furthermore, people always like to talk about themselves and their work, so I said to Mrs Phillips – who had a piglet in her arms by this time – ‘Tell me all about this.’

‘This is a piglet,’ she replied. Asinine woman. Or perhaps I should say piginine.²

I told her to tell me about the farm. She said that there are over fifty such City Farms, built on urban wasteland to give children who seldom see the countryside a chance to understand livestock and food production. A wonderful idea.

I was photographed with Mrs Phillips, meeting the staff, with the children and with the piglets. [Everybody’s a ham – Ed.] Then it was time for my speech.

There was a moment of slight embarrassment when I realised Bernard had given me the wrong speech, but that was soon overcome.

SIR BERNARD WOOLLEY RECALLS:³

Slight embarrassment does not begin to describe the general reaction to Hacker’s speech.

There was confusion over who had the copy of his speech, I or he. I distinctly remembered giving it to him. He denied it, and demanded I look in my briefcase. There was indeed a speech for him there. And he grabbed it and read it.