The Complete Yes Minister (71 page)

Harry seemed to think that I hadn’t quite grasped the point. ‘Jim,’ he explained slowly, ‘if the club goes to the wall it’ll be a disaster. Look at our history.’

We all looked sadly around the room, which was lined with trophies, pennants, photos.

‘FA Cup Winners, League Champions, one of the first teams ever into Europe,’ he reminded me.

I interrupted his lecture. ‘I know all this. But be fair, Harry, it’s a local matter. Not ministerial.’ I turned to Wilkinson. ‘Brian, you’re Chairman of the Borough Arts and Leisure Committee. Can’t
you
do something?’

Attack is always the best form of defence. Wilkinson was instantly apologising in the same vein as me. ‘You’re joking. I spent half yesterday trying to raise seven hundred and eleven quid to repoint the chimney of the Corn Exchange Art Gallery.’

‘That miserable place?’ I asked. ‘Why not just let it fall down?’

He said he’d love to. But if it did actually fall down on somebody the Council would be liable. The Borough owns the place. And, ironically, they keep getting offers for the site. There was one from Safefare Supermarkets only last month.

It was as he said this that I had one of my great flashes of inspiration. From out of nowhere ‘The Idea’ occurred to me. An idea of such brilliance and simplicity that I myself can, even now, be hardly sure that I thought of it all by myself, completely unprompted. But I did! It is ideas of this quality that have taken me to the top of my chosen profession and will take me still higher.

But first I had a question to ask. ‘How much did Safefare offer for the site?’

Brian Wilkinson shrugged and wiped his hands on his trousers. ‘About two million, I think.’

Then I hit them with it. ‘So – if you sold the art gallery you could save the football club.’

They gazed at me, and then at each other, with wild surmise. Both thinking furiously.

‘Can I have a look at it?’ I asked.

We tore out of Aston Park. The traffic had nearly cleared, the fans dispersed, the police horses had done their Saturday afternoon cavalry charge, and all the hooligans had been trampled on or arrested. We raced through the deserted early evening streets to the Corn Exchange. It was due to shut at 5.30. We got there just after it closed.

We stepped out of Harry’s Rolls in front of the art gallery, stood still, and looked up at our target. To tell the truth, I’d never really
looked
at it before. It is a Victorian monster, red-brick, stained glass, battlements and turrets, big and dark and gloomy.

‘Hideous, isn’t it?’ I said to Brian Wilkinson.

‘Yeah, well, it’s a Grade II listed building, isn’t it?’ he explained.

That certainly is the problem.

Today Brian, Harry and I returned to the art gallery. Fortunately it’s open on Sundays too. Annie was pretty fed up this morning. I told her I was going to the art gallery but she didn’t believe me. It’s not really surprising – I didn’t even go into any art galleries when we went to Italy a couple of years ago. My feet get so tired.

The gallery was empty when we got there. So we found the Curator, a pleasant chubby middle-aged lady, and had a little chat with her. She was awfully pleased to see us and of course I didn’t tell her the purpose of our call. I just made it look like I was keeping a fatherly eye on the constituency.

I asked her how popular the gallery is. She answered that it is very popular, and smiled at me.

‘You mean, a lot of people come here?’

She was careful to be honest. ‘Well, I wouldn’t say a lot. But it’s very popular with those who come.’

A slightly evasive response. I pressed her for details; like, the daily average of visitors through the year.

‘Well into double figures,’ she said, as if that were rather a lot.

‘How well?’

‘Um – eleven, on average,’ she admitted, but she added emphatically that they were all very appreciative.

We thanked her for her help and pottered off to look at the pictures. My feet started aching instantly.

At Harry’s office afterwards we went over the details of the proposition. Eleven people per day at the gallery, fifteen to twenty thousand people every week at Aston Wanderers. There is no doubt in any of our minds that our plan is in the public interest.

And the plan is simplicity itself. Close the art gallery, sell it to Safefare Supermarkets, and use the money for an interest-free loan to Aston Wanderers.

Harry sounded a note of caution. ‘There’d have to be a planning inquiry. Change of use. Art gallery to supermarket.’

I could see no problem. There’s no question that this scheme will be immensely popular round here. There’s bound to be some opposition, of course – there’s opposition to
everything
– but art-lovers aren’t a very powerful lobby compared to the Supporters’ Club. Brian, who is also the Chairman of the Arts Committee, asked me what they could do with the paintings. I suggested that they sell them in the supermarket – if they can!

SIR BERNARD WOOLLEY RECALLS:
¹

Hacker had told me of this plan to save his local football club, but I paid no great attention to it. It seemed to me that it was a constituency matter and not relevant to his Ministerial role.

I was rather surprised to receive a telephone call from Sir Humphrey Appleby about it, asking what – precisely – our political master was up to.

Rather tactlessly I asked him how he found out about it, and was instantly reprimanded. ‘Not from you, Bernard, an omission you may perhaps like to explain.’

He asked for a memo. I sent him one, describing the situation and concluding with my opinion that it would be a very popular move that the local people would support. I received a stern reply, which I have always kept. It is an excellent guideline for all policy matters connected with the Arts.

[
Hacker’s diary continues – Ed
.]

Bernard slipped an extra meeting with Sir Humphrey into my diary, first thing this morning.

My Permanent Secretary wanted to warn me personally that there is a reshuffle in the offing.

Naturally this made me a little nervous, as I wasn’t sure if he was dropping an early hint about my being dropped. This was not just paranoia on my part, because I still don’t know whether my deal with the Chief Whip on the matter of the bomb detonators has redounded to my credit or debit as far as the PM is concerned.

But Humphrey made it quickly clear that he was actually talking about a departmental reorganisation – what he called ‘a real reshuffle’. He was warning me that we may be given extra responsibilities.

God knows if we want them! I certainly feel that I’ve got quite enough on my plate. But Humphrey was in no doubt that it would be a definite plus.

‘We want all responsibilities, so long as they mean extra staff and bigger budgets. It is the breadth of our responsibilities that makes us important – makes
you
important, Minister. If you want to see vast buildings, huge staff and massive budgets, what do you conclude?’

‘Bureaucracy,’ I said.

Apparently I’d missed the point. ‘No, Minister, you conclude that at the summit there must be men of great stature and dignity who hold the world in their hands and tread the earth like princes.’

I could certainly see his point, put like that.

‘So that is the reason,’ Humphrey continued, ‘why every new responsibility must be seized and every old one guarded jealously. Entirely in your interest of course, Minister.’

A real overdose of soft soap. In my interest perhaps, but certainly not
entirely
in my interest. He must think I was born yesterday.

I thanked him for the information and courteously dismissed him. I can really see through him nowadays.

As he was leaving he enquired about the Corn Exchange Art Gallery proposal. I was surprised he’d heard about it as it’s not a matter for central government.

To my surprise he heaped abuse upon the scheme. ‘It’s a most imaginative idea. Very novel.’

I wondered what he’d got against it, and invited him to go on.

‘Well . . .’ He returned from the door to my desk, ‘I just wondered if it might not be a little unwise.’

I asked him why.

‘A valuable civic amenity,’ he replied.

I pointed out that it is a monstrosity.

He amended his view slightly. ‘A valuable civic monstrosity,’ he said, and added that it contained a most important collection of British paintings.

He’s obviously been misinformed. In fact, as I told him then and there, the collection is utterly unimportant. Third-rate nineteenth-century landscapes and a few modern paintings so awful that the Tate wouldn’t even store them in its vaults.

‘But an
important
representative collection of unimportant paintings,’ insisted Sir Humphrey, ‘and a great source of spiritual uplift to the passing citizenry.’

‘They never go in,’ I told him.

‘Ah, but they are comforted to know it’s there,’ he said.

I couldn’t see where this was leading, what it had to do with Humphrey Appleby, or how he could possibly have any views about this collection of paintings at all. He’s hardly ever been north of Potters Bar.

I took a stand on a principle. I reminded him that this is a constituency matter, that it concerns the Borough Council and me as constituency MP – not as Minister – and that it was nothing at all to do with him or Whitehall.

He pursed his lips and made no reply. So I asked him
why
he was interested. To my surprise he told me that it was a matter of principle.

This astonished me. Throughout our whole fight on the question of the bomb detonators he had insisted with religious fervour that principles were no concern of his. I reminded him of this.

‘Yes Minister.’ He conceded the point. ‘But principle is what you’ve always told me that government is all about.’

I was baffled. ‘What principle is at stake here?’

‘The principle of taking money away from the Arts and putting it into things like football. A football club is a commercial proposition. There is no cause for subsidising it if it runs out of money.’

He seemed to think that he had just made an irrefutable statement of fact.

‘Why not?’ I asked.

‘Why not what?’

‘Why is there no cause? There’s no difference between subsidising football and subsidising art except that lots more people are interested in football.’

‘Subsidy,’ he replied, ‘is to enable our cultural heritage to be preserved.’

But for whom? For whose benefit? For the educated middle classes. For people like Humphrey, in other words. Subsidy means they can get their opera and their concerts and their Shakespeare more cheaply than if the full cost had to be recouped from ticket sales. He thinks that the rest of the country should subsidise the pleasures of a middle-class few who want to see theatre, opera and ballet.

‘Arts subsidy,’ I told him simply, ‘is a middle-class rip-off. The middle classes, who run the country, award subsidies to their own pleasures.’

He was shocked. Genuinely shocked, I think. ‘How can you say such a thing? Subsidy is about education and preserving the pinnacles of our civilisation. Or hadn’t you noticed?’ he added scathingly.

I ordered him not to patronise me. I reminded him that I also believe in education – indeed, I am a graduate of the London School of Economics.

‘I’m glad to learn that even the LSE is not totally opposed to education,’ he remarked. I rose above his pathetic Oxbridge joke, and remarked that there is no possible objection to subsidising sport. Sport is subsidised in many ways already. And sport is educational.

Sir Humphrey’s sarcasm was in full swing. ‘Education is not the whole point,’ he said, having said that it
was
the whole point not two minutes earlier. ‘After all, we have sex education too – should we subsidise sex perhaps?’

‘Could we?’ asked Bernard, waking up suddenly like a hopeful Dormouse. Humphrey scowled at him.

I was enjoying the cut and thrust of our intellectual debate, particularly as I seemed to be doing most of the cutting and thrusting.

I proposed to Humphrey that we might, in fact, choose what to subsidise by the extent of public demand. I certainly can’t see anything wrong with the idea. It’s democratic at least.

Humphrey normally ignores me when I’m being provocative, unless a serious policy decision of mine is at stake. But for some reason it seemed important to him to persuade me to change my mind.

‘Minister,’ he said, pleading for me to understand his elitist point of view, ‘don’t you see that this is the thin end of the wedge. What will happen to the Royal Opera House, on this basis? The very summit of our cultural achievement.’

As a matter of fact, I don’t think that the Royal Opera House
is
the summit of our achievement. It’s a very good case in point – it’s all Wagner and Mozart, Verdi and Puccini. German and Italian. It’s not
our
culture at all. Why should we subsidise the culture of the Axis Powers?