Still worried about my party problems, I enquired if they had no redeeming features. And my old friend Dr Cartwright piped up cheerfully. ‘Well, it is interesting that…’
Sir Humphrey cut right across him. ‘So if that’s all right, Minister, we can take appropriate coercive action?’
Dr Cartwright had another try. ‘Except that the Minister might…’
Again Sir Humphrey interrupted him. ‘So can we take it you approve?’ It was all beginning to look distinctly fishy.
I decided not to give an immediate answer. ‘It’s a difficult one. They’re friends of ours.’
‘They’re no friends of good administration.’
I refused to be pressured. ‘Give me twenty-four hours. I’ll have to square the party organisation. Get the Chairman invited to a drinkies do at Number Ten or something. Soften the blow.’
And I insisted that we press on to the next item.
As the meeting broke up I noticed Dr Cartwright hovering, as if he wanted a private word with me. But Sir Humphrey took him by the arm and gently guided him away. ‘I need your advice, Dick, if you could spare me a moment.’ And they were gone.
Having thought about this overnight, I think I’ll question Bernard more closely tomorrow.
A fascinating day.
I raised the matter with Bernard as soon as I got to the office. I told him that my instincts told me that there is a good reason not to discipline South-West Derbyshire.
‘Furthermore, Dr Cartwright seemed to be trying to tell me something. I think I’ll drop in on him.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that, Minister,’ he said rather too hastily.
‘Why not?’
He hesitated. ‘Well, it is, er, understood that if Ministers need to know anything it will be brought to their attention. If they go out looking for information, they might, er they might…’
‘Find it?’
‘Yes.’ He looked sheepish.
I remarked that it may be ‘understood’, but it’s not understood by me.
Bernard obviously felt he had better explain further. ‘Sir Humphrey does not take kindly to the idea of Ministers just dropping in on people. “Going walkabout”, he calls it.’
I couldn’t see anything wrong with that. I reminded him that the Queen does it.
He disagreed. ‘I don’t think she drops in on Under-Secretaries. Not in Sir Humphrey’s department.’
I took a firm line. I asked Bernard for Dr Cartwright’s room number.
He virtually stood to attention. ‘I must formally advise you against this, Minister,’ he said.
‘Advice noted,’ I said. ‘What’s his room number?’
‘Room 4017. Down one flight, second corridor on the left.’
I told him that if I wasn’t back within forty-eight hours he could send a search party.
SIR BERNARD WOOLLEY RECALLS:[58]
I well recall the day that Hacker went walkabout. This was the kind of situation that highlighted the dilemma of a Minister’s Private Secretary. On the one hand I was expected to be loyal to the Minister, and any sign of disloyalty to him would mean that I had blotted my copybook. On the other hand, Sir Humphrey was my Permanent Secretary, my career was to be in the Civil Service for the next thirty years, and I owed a loyalty there also.
This is why high-flyers are usually given a spell as Private Secretary. If one can walk the tightrope with skill and manage to judge what is proper when there is a conflict, then one may go straight to the top, as I did.
[
After the Minister left his office I telephoned Graham Jones, Sir Humphrey Appleby’s Private Secretary. I let him know that the Minister had gone walkabout. I had no choice but to do this, as I had received specific instructions from Sir Humphrey that this should be discouraged [
I actually counted out ten seconds on my watch, from the moment I replaced the receiver, so well did I know the distance from his office to the Minister’s, and Sir Humphrey entered the office on the count of ‘ten’.
He asked me what had happened. Carefully playing it down, I told him that the Minister had left his own office. Nothing more.
Sir Humphrey seemed most upset that Hacker was, to use his words, ‘loose in the building’. He asked me why I had not stopped him.
As it was my duty to defend my Minister, even against the boss of my own department, I informed Sir Humphrey that (a) I had advised against it, but (b) he was the Minister, and there was no statutory prohibition on Ministers talking to their staff.
He asked me to whom the Minister was talking. I evaded the question, as was my duty — clearly the Minister did not want Sir Humphrey to know. ‘Perhaps he was just restless’ is what I think I said.
I recall Sir Humphrey’s irritable reply: ‘If he’s restless he can feed the ducks in St James’s Park.’
