When people praised Tony Jay and me for Yes Minister’s prescience, we accepted the compliments graciously. But the reason the TV series always seemed up to date, and still does 40 years later, is that nothing ever really changes. When I was writing the sequel Yes, Prime Minister in 1986, I went to the Daily Telegraph’s offices in Fleet Street to read stories from 1956. I was curious to see how much things had changed. Guess what? They hadn’t.
The biggest story was about war in the Middle East (the Suez crisis). The government had lied about its Middle East adventure, which was an abject failure, and the truth was seeping out in spite of its attempt to suppress it. Soviet troops invaded Hungary, creating a refugee crisis in Europe. The “special relationship” with the US was in doubt because of Washington’s disapproval of UK and French defence policy. Questions were raised about the impartiality and independence of the BBC. There was fear of inflation, and a plan to improve regional disparities. I could continue but you get the idea.
Last month there was a story about the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson. She had promised legislation to protect freedom of speech and to protect academics from their students. But 370 university teachers, including three Nobel laureates, accused her of kicking it into the long grass. Followers of Yes Minister know that just because a minister wants something done, that doesn’t mean it will be. My guess is that some officials in the department were not unhappy to see professors cancelled, and they obstructed it.
‘Most people thought civil servants were silly chaps’ … Nigel Hawthorne, Paul Eddington and Derek Fowlds in the TV series Yes, Prime Minister, 1987. Photograph: Radio Times/Getty Images
Before our programme, most people thought that civil servants were silly chaps who wore bowler hats and sat around drinking tea. That’s how they were usually portrayed in comedy shows. We revealed that Whitehall employed 3,000 clever, highly educated people who were unknown to the public and discreetly ran the country. This is one of the reasons politicians loved Yes Minister. It gave them an alibi.
We didn’t actually reveal it. Richard Crossman did. His Diaries of a Cabinet Minister were serialised by the Sunday Times, and the government of which he had been an important part sued Jonathan Cape, the publisher. From 1964-66 Crossman had kept detailed notes of cabinet meetings, and the attorney general asked for an order “restraining” the book because of breach of confidentiality which, he alleged, threatened collective responsibility. This was nonsense. As always, the government simply wanted to avoid embarrassment, but it lost this landmark case. It was a huge victory for freedom of the press, and our first major source for Yes Minister.
In the diaries Crossman’s private secretary says “Yes, minister” when he means “No, minister” and when Crossman is confronted by an overflowing inbox, the private secretary explains that if he simply transfers everything from the inbox to the outbox the civil service will take care of it. The minister need do nothing more. Very few people read political memoirs and the general public still didn’t know how things were done, or rather not done. Reading the Crossman diaries was a revelation and confirmed to us that there was a comedy series waiting to be written.
People said that the series, the books and the new play I’m Sorry, Prime Minister were about politics. But we were writing about government, which is not the same thing. At its best, politics is the legitimate conflict of vested interests, a struggle over the best way to improve society for the people. At its worst it is simply a struggle for power – power over one’s fellow citizens, power for the pleasure of it.
Like most politicians, our minister (later prime minister and now master of an Oxford college) Jim Hacker started out with the best motives, a desire to make the world a better place. But he is like Graham Greene’s whisky priest. As you climb what Disraeli called “the greasy pole”, you support many policies you think are wrong because, as they used to say in the US Senate, “you have to go along to get along”.
Why? Because even though you’re not quite sure what you believe any more, you want the power to carry it out. And you want to win the next election. Otherwise you’re out in the cold, politically frozen on the green opposition benches. In the immortal words of Snoopy creator Charles M Schulz: “Winning isn’t everything. But losing isn’t anything.”