The Complete Yes Minister (31 page)

Then I told him to set the wheels in motion.

He argued no further, but took his leave of me in a very frosty manner.

I was full of ideas today. After Humphrey had stalked out I told Bernard to send a minute to each member of the Cabinet.

I also thought of planting a question from one of our backbenchers to the Home Secretary. Something like:
Will the Home Secretary assure the House that none of his Cabinet colleagues has ever been placed under government surveillance?
That will shake him. And it will bring the matter out into the open. We’ll see if it’s just a Home Office matter! I think not!

Finally, I asked Bernard to make an appointment for me to meet Walter Fowler of the
Express
for a quick drink in Annie’s Bar at the House, later this week.

‘What for?’ Bernard wanted to know.

‘First law of political indiscretion,’ I replied. ‘You always have a drink before you leak.’

[
Walter Fowler was the Lobby Correspondent of the
Express.
This meant that he would probably have been their political editor or head of the paper’s political staff. The Lobby was a uniquely British system, the best way yet devised in any democracy for taming and muzzling the press
.

This is because it is hard to censor the press when it wants to be free, but easy if it gives up its freedom voluntarily
.

There were in the 1980s 150 Lobby Correspondents, who had the special privilege of being able to mingle with MPs and Ministers in the Lobby behind both chambers of Parliament. As journalists, however, they were – quite properly – not allowed to sit down on the leather-covered benches. Neither were they allowed to report anything they saw – e.g. MPs hitting one another – nor anything they overheard
.

In return for the freedom of access to Ministers and MPs, they exercised the most surprising and elaborate self-censorship
.

The Lobby received daily briefings from the Prime Minister’s Press Secretary at Number Ten Downing Street, and weekly briefings from the Leader of the House and the Leader of the Opposition. All these briefings were unattributable
.

The Lobby correspondents argued that, in return for their self-censorship, they would learn infinitely more about the government, its motives, and its plans. The politicians loved the Lobby system because they could leak any old rubbish, which the Lobby would generally swallow whole. As they had heard it in confidence, they believed it must be true
.

We believe, with the advantage of hindsight, that the Lobby was merely one example of the way in which the British establishment dealt with potential danger or criticism – it would embrace the danger, and thus suffocate it
.

The Lobby certainly discouraged political journalists from going out and searching for a story, as they only had to sit on their bottoms in Annie’s Bar (the bar exclusively reserved for the press, with the highest alcoholic consumption of any of the thirteen bars within the Palace of Westminster – which was saying something!) and a ‘leak’ would come their way
.

Finally, a word on leaks. Because there was no free access to information in Whitehall, everybody leaked. Everybody knew there was no other way to make the wheels go round
.

Whenever a ‘leak’ occurred there would be cries of moral indignation, and a leak inquiry would be set up by the Prime Minister. Such enquiries seldom reported at the end, for fear of the embarrassing result – most leaks came from ‘Number Ten’ (a euphemism), most budget leaks from ‘Number Eleven’ (another euphemism) – Ed
.]

I met Walter Fowler in Annie’s Bar, as arranged, and leaked my plans for curtailing surveillance.

Walter seemed a little sceptical. He said it was a worthy cause but I’d never see it through. This made me all the more determined. I told him that I intended to see it through, and to carry the Home Office on this matter in due course. I asked him if it would make a story – I knew it would, but journalists like to feel that their opinions are valuable.

Walter confirmed it would make a story: ‘MINISTER FIGHTS FOR PHONE-TAP SAFEGUARDS – yes, there’s something there.’ He wheezed deeply and drank two-thirds of a pint of special.

I asked where they’d run it. He thought fairly high up on the Home News Page. I was slightly disappointed.

‘Not on page one?’

‘Well . . .’ said Walter doubtfully. ‘Can I attribute it? MINISTER SPEAKS OUT!’

I squashed that at once.

‘So where did I get the story?’ asked Walter plaintively. ‘I presume I can’t say it was “officially announced” or a “government spokesman”?’

I told him he presumed right.

We silently pondered the other options.

‘How about “sources close to the Minister”?’ he asked after a minute or two.

‘Hopeless,’ I pointed out, ‘I don’t want
everybody
to know I told you. Isn’t it possible for you to do a “speculation is growing in Westminster . . .”?’

Walter shook his head sadly. ‘Bit weak,’ he said, and again he wheezed. He was like an old accordion. He produced a vile-looking pipe from his grubby pockets and stuffed tobacco into the bowl with a stubby forefinger that had a thick black line of dirt under the nail.

I watched fascinated. ‘What about “unofficial spokesman”,’ I suggested, just before the first gust of smoke engulfed me.

‘I’ve used that twice this week already,’ replied Walter, contentedly polluting the atmosphere of central London. I choked quietly.

It was true. He had used it twice this week. I’d noticed. ‘Cabinet’s leaking like a sieve, isn’t it?’

He nodded. ‘Yes – um . . .’ he poured some more bitter past his nicotine-stained molars into his smoking mouth, ‘. . . could we attribute it to a leading member of the sieve?’ I looked at him. ‘Er . . . Cabinet?’ he corrected himself hastily.

I shook my head.

‘How would you like to be an “informed source”?’ he offered.

That seemed a good idea. I hadn’t been an informed source for some weeks.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘That’s what I’ll be.’

Walter chuckled. ‘Quite a joke, isn’t it?’

‘What?’ I asked blankly.

‘Describing someone as “informed”, when his Permanent Secretary is Sir Humphrey Appleby.’

He bared his yellow teeth at me. I think it was a smile. I didn’t smile back – I just bared my teeth at him.

Annie came up to London today from the constituency.

So this evening I told her about the surveillance we’d been under. I thought she’d be as indignant as me. But she didn’t seem to care.

I tried to make her grasp the extent of the wrongdoing. ‘Everything we said on the phone, everything we said to each other – all recorded. Transcribed. It’s humiliating.’

‘Yes, I see . . .’ she said thoughtfully, ‘it is a little humiliating that someone at MI5 knows just how boring our life is.’

‘What?’

‘All will be revealed,’ she said. ‘Or has already been revealed. That what you talk about at home is what you talk about in public – the gross national product, the public sector borrowing requirement, the draft agenda for the party conference . . .’

I explained that I didn’t mean
that
. I meant that all our private family talk had been overheard.

‘Oh dear, yes,’ said Annie. ‘I hadn’t thought of that . . . “Have you got the car keys?” . . . “No, I thought
you
had them” . . . “No, I gave them to you” . . . My God, that could bring the government down!’

‘Annie.’ I was cross. ‘You’re not taking this seriously.’

‘Whatever gives you that idea?’

‘You still haven’t grasped how our privacy has been intruded upon. They might have heard what we say to each other . . . in bed.’

‘Would it matter?’ she asked, feigning surprise. ‘Do you snore in code?’

I think she was trying to tell me something. Only last week she caused me great embarrassment when she was interviewed in some juvenile woman’s magazine. They asked her if the earth moved when she went to bed with me. ‘No,’ she’d replied, ‘not even the bed moves.’

Perhaps this was part of a campaign.

It was. She went on. ‘Look, it’s the Bank Holiday weekend coming up. Why don’t we go away for a long weekend, two or three days, like we used to?’

My first thought was that I couldn’t. Then I thought: why not? And I couldn’t think of a reason. After all, even statesmen need holidays. I agreed.

‘Let’s go to Kingsbury Down,’ she said.

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Where is it?’

She stared at me. ‘Only where we spent our honeymoon, darling.’ Funny, I’d forgotten the name of the place. I tried to remember what it looked like.

‘It’s where you first explained to me your theory about the effect of velocity of circulation on the net growth of the money supply.’

I remembered it well. ‘Oh yes, I know the place then,’ I said.

Annie turned towards her bedside lamp. ‘Did you get that, boys?’ she muttered into it.

[
A startling development took place on the following day. The Special Branch contacted Sir Humphrey Appleby and Bernard Woolley with the news that a terrorist hit list had been discovered, and Jim Hacker’s name appeared on it as a potential target
.

The list apparently was drawn up by a group calling itself the International Freedom Army – Ed
.]

SIR BERNARD WOOLLEY RECALLS:
¹

We could not imagine who on earth could possibly want to assassinate the Minister. He was so harmless.

Nevertheless, Sir Humphrey Appleby and I were fully agreed that it was not possible to take risks with the Minister’s life, and so the whole paraphernalia of security would have to be brought out to protect him.

[
Hacker’s diary continues – Ed
.]

Bernard greeted me like a mother hen this morning. He asked after my health with an earnest and solicitous attitude.

I thought perhaps it was because I was a little late at the office. I hadn’t slept too well – ‘I feel like death,’ I remarked.

Bernard whispered to Sir Humphrey, ‘Perhaps that’s just as well,’ a comment which I did not understand at the time but which I now regard as having been in the poorest of taste.

I was actually rather cheerful. My leak had worked. A story had appeared in the
Express:
HACKER MOVES TO CURB PHONE TAPS. I was described as an informed source, as agreed, and Walter had not taken a by-line – the story was ‘from our Political Staff’.

Sir Humphrey wondered audibly where they’d got the information, and stared at me. Naturally I admitted nothing.

[
It has been said that the ship of state is the only type of ship that leaks from the top – Ed
.]

‘Anyway,’ I added, ‘this leak only confirms my determination to act on this matter.’

Humphrey asked me if I’d considered all the implications. This is generally the Civil Service way of asking me if I realised that I was talking rubbish. In this case, as it was to turn out, I had
not
quite considered all the implications.

So I replied that free citizens have a right to privacy. An absolute right.

How could I have said such a thing?

But I didn’t know then what I knew just five minutes later. Those bastards hadn’t told me.

‘Suppose . . .’ suggested Sir Humphrey smoothly, ‘suppose MI5 had reason to suspect that these “free citizens” were, shall we say to take a purely hypothetical example, planning to assassinate a Minister of the Crown?’

I made a little speech. I spoke of the freedom of the British people, and how this is more important than the lives of a few Ministers. I said that freedom is indivisible, whereas Ministers are expendable. ‘Men in public life must expect to be the targets of cranks and fanatics. A Minister has the duty to set his own life at naught, to stand up and say “Here I am, do your worst!” and not cower in craven terror behind electronic equipment and secret microphones and all the hideous apparatus of the police state.’ Me and my big mouth.

Sir Humphrey and Bernard looked at each other. The former tried to speak but I made it clear that I would brook no arguments.

‘No Humphrey, I don’t want to hear any more about it. You deal in evasions and secrets. But politicians in a free country must be seen to be the champions of freedom and truth. Don’t try and give me the arguments in favour of telephone tapping – I can find them in Stalin’s memoirs.’

‘Actually,’ quibbled Bernard, ‘Stalin didn’t write any memoirs. He was too secretive. He was afraid people might read them.’

Humphrey succeeded in interrupting us.

‘Minister,’ he insisted, ‘you
must
allow me to say one more thing on this matter.’

I told him that he might say one sentence, but he should keep it brief.

‘The Special Branch have found your name on a death list,’ he said.

I thought I must have misheard.

‘What?’ I said.

‘The Special Branch have found your name on a death list,’ he repeated.

This made no sense. A death list? Why me?

‘A death list?’ I asked. ‘What do you mean, a death list?’

‘An assassination list,’ he said.

He really is a fool. ‘I know what you mean by a death list,’ I said, ‘but . . . what do you mean?’