I’m to address a conference on administration. One of the Assistant Secretaries, Peter Wilkinson, has written me an excellent speech. It contains phrases like ‘British Government Administration is a model of loyalty, integrity and efficiency. There is a ruthless war on waste. We are cutting bureaucracy to the bone. A lesson that Britain can teach the world.’ Good dynamic stuff.
However, I asked Humphrey yesterday if we could prove that all of this is true. He replied that a good speech isn’t one where we can prove that we’re telling the truth – it’s one where nobody else can prove we’re lying.
Good thinking!
I hope the speech is fully reported in the London papers.
SIR BERNARD WOOLLEY RECALLS:1
I well remember that Sir Humphrey Appleby was extremely keen for Hacker to go off on some official junket somewhere. Anywhere.
He felt that Hacker was beginning to get too much of a grip on the job. This pleased me because it made my job easier, but caused great anxiety to Sir Humphrey.
I was actually rather sorry to have missed the Washington junket, but Sir Humphrey had insisted that Hacker take one of the Assistant Private Secretaries, who needed to be given some experience of responsibility.
When he’d been away for five or six days I was summoned to Sir Humphrey’s office. He asked me how I was enjoying having my Minister out of the office for a week, and I – rather naively – remarked that it made things a little difficult.
It was instantly clear that I had blotted my copybook. That afternoon I received a memo in Sir Humphrey’s handwriting, informing me of the benefits of ministerial absence and asking me to commit them to memory.
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Bernard
A Minister’s absence is desirable because it enables you to do the job properly.
(i) No silly questions
(ii) No bright ideas
(iii) No fussing about what the papers are saying.
One week’s absence, plus briefing beforehand and debriefing and catching up on the backlog on his return, means that he can be kept out of the Department’s hair for virtually a fortnight
Furthermore, a Minister’s absence is the best cover for not informing the Minister when it is not desirable to do so – and for the next six months, if he complains of not having been informed about something, tell him it came up while he was away
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Anyway, the reason behind the increasing number of summit conferences that took place during the 1970s and 1980s was that the Civil Service felt that this was the only way that the country worked. Concentrate all the power at Number Ten and then send the Prime Minister away – to EEC summits, NATO summits, Commonwealth summits, anywhere! Then the Cabinet Secretary could get on with the task of running the country properly.
At the same meeting we discussed the speech that Peter had written for the Minister to deliver in Washington.
I suggested that, although Peter was a frightfully good chap and had probably done a frightfully good job on it in one way, there was a danger that the speech might prove frightfully boring for the audience.
Sir Humphrey agreed instantly. He thought that it would bore the pants off the audience, and it must have been ghastly to have to sit through it.
Nonetheless, he explained to me that it was an excellent speech. I learned that speeches are not written for the audience to which they are delivered. Delivering the speech is merely the formality that has to be gone through in order to get the press release into the newspapers.
‘We can’t worry about entertaining people,’ he explained to me. ‘We’re not scriptwriters for a comedian – well, not a professional comedian, anyway.’
He emphasised that the value of the speech was that it said the correct things. In public. Once that speech has been reported in print, the Minister is committed to defending the Civil Service in front of Select Committees.
I sprang to the Minister’s defence, and said that he defends us anyway. Sir Humphrey looked at me with pity and remarked that he certainly does so when it suits him – but, when things go wrong, a Minister’s first instinct is to rat on his department.
Therefore, the Civil Service when drafting a Minister’s speech is primarily concerned with making him nail his trousers to the mast. Not his colours, but his trousers – then he can’t climb down!
As always, Sir Humphrey’s reasoning proved to be correct – but, as was so often the case, he reckoned without Hacker’s gift for low cunning.
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I got back from Washington today. The visit was quite a success on the whole though I must say my speech didn’t exactly thrill them. I mustn’t leave speeches to the Department – they give me very worthy things to say but they’re always so bloody boring.
I’ve been met by a huge backlog of work, piles of red boxes, half a ton of cabinet papers, hundreds of memos and minutes and submissions to catch up on.
