James Hacker
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| Jim Hacker | |
|---|---|
 Jim Hacker, Prime Minister |
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| First appearance | "Open Government" |
| Last appearance | "The Tangled Web" |
| Statistics | |
| Occupation | Minister/Prime Minister |
| Title | The Right Honourable |
| Spouse | Anne "Annie" Hacker |
| Children | Lucy Hacker |
| Portrayed by | Paul Eddington |
James (Jim) George Hacker, Baron Hacker of Islington KG PC, BSc (Lond.) Hon LLD (Oxon.) (June 18, 1927–November 4, 1995)[1] is a fictional British politician. He is the Minister of the fictional Department of Administrative Affairs, and later the Prime Minister, in the 1980s British sitcom Yes Minister and its sequel, Yes, Prime Minister. He was portrayed by Paul Eddington.
Hacker was an academic political researcher, polytechnic lecturer and editor of a newspaper, Reform, before entering Parliament, where he apparently spent a good deal of time in Opposition before his party won an election. In Yes Minister he is the Minister for the Department of Administrative Affairs (a fictitious department of the British government) and cabinet minister. He is joined by the department's Permanent Secretary, Sir Humphrey Appleby, who as a senior civil servant tries to control the minister and the department himself, and also by his Principal Private Secretary, Bernard Woolley. Hacker received his degree from the London School of Economics, and is frequently derided for this by the Oxford-educated Sir Humphrey. He and his wife, Annie, have one daughter, Lucy, a sociology student who plays a major role in the first series episode "The Right to Know".
Hacker gains an honorary doctorate from Baillie College, Oxford (a possible reference to Balliol College), in the second series episode "Doing the Honours". During the Christmas special episode, "Party Games", he is Party Chair, which gives him the opportunity — with the help of Sir Humphrey and other civil servants acting in their own interests — to become Prime Minister.
Yes, Prime Minister follows on from this, with Hacker and Sir Humphrey raised to the highest levels in British government: Prime Minister and Cabinet Secretary respectively. Bernard remains Hacker's Principal Private Secretary throughout.
An obituary for Hacker, written by his creators, Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, appears in Politico's Book of the Dead. This is the source of certain biographical details above, such as the dates of birth and death, which he shares with Eddington, the actor who portrayed him. Although the series itself ends with Hacker still Prime Minister, this obituary mentions his later career as a member of the House of Lords. After his death, a college is named after him (Hacker College, Oxford).
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[edit] Character
Jim Hacker first appears in Yes Minister having been recently re-elected as Member of Parliament for his constituency, Birmingham East, soundly defeating his opponents. His early character is that of a very gung-ho, albeit naïve politician, ready to bring sweeping change into his department, unknowing that Sir Humphrey and the civil service are out to stop any semblance of change, despite their insistence that they are his allies. Hacker is also noted as having challenged Humphrey while he was in opposition by asking difficult questions of his Permanent Secretary while testifying at a committee: Sir Humphrey stated that Hacker had asked "...all the questions I hoped nobody would ask," showing his new Minister to be an at least reasonably capable politician.
Before long, Hacker begins to note that due to civil service tactics, hardly any of his planned changes are actually being put into practice. Bernard is sympathetic to Hacker's plight and tries to enlighten his Minister as to the tricks and techniques employed by government staff, but his ability to help is limited by his own loyalties in the Civil Service. Hacker learns and soon begins to lose his initial callowness, as he becomes more sly and cynical, using some of these schemes himself. While Sir Humphrey would nearly always get the upper hand, Hacker now and again pulls a trump card of his own, and on even fewer occasions, the two of them work towards a common goal.
Hacker also learns that his efforts to change the government or Britain are all really for naught, as he discovered in the episode "The Whisky Priest", when he attempts to stop the export of British-made munitions to Italian terrorists.
Throughout Yes Minister, there are many occasions when Hacker is portrayed as a publicity-mad bungler, incapable of making a firm decision, and prone to blunders that embarrass him or his party, eliciting bad press and stern lectures from the party apparatus, particularly the Chief Whip. He is continually concerned with what the newspapers of the day will have to say about him, and is always anxious for promotion from the Prime Minister (Hacker once assisted a political ally, the Foreign Affairs Secretary, in an attempt to challenge the Prime Minister for the party's leadership). He is thus equally afraid of either staying at his current level, or even being demoted.
Just prior to the start of Yes, Prime Minister, Hacker shows a zeal for making speeches and presents himself as a viable party leader after the Prime Minister announced his resignation, in the episode "Party Games". He is given embarrassing information about the two front-running candidates, and manages to persuade them (by insinuating that secret information pertaining to both may be revealed to the public) to drop out of the race, and lend their support to him. With help from the recently promoted Sir Humphrey and other senior civil servants, Hacker emerges as the alternative candidate and thus becomes head of his party and Prime Minister.
In Yes, Prime Minister Hacker develops all the skills needed to be a statesman, by practising more grandiose speeches, dreaming up "courageous" political programmes, and honing his diplomatic skills, nearly all of which land him in trouble at some point.
In a Radio Times interview to promote the latter series, Paul Eddington stated, "He's beginning to find his feet as a man of power, and he's begun to confound those who thought they'd be able to manipulate him out of hand."[2]
Hacker becomes a more competent politician by the end, primarily interested in his personal career survival and advancement, but — unlike Sir Humphrey — viewing Government as a means rather than an end in itself.
[edit] Interests and habits
Hacker has many prominent habits that feature throughout the series:
- Drinking. Hacker enjoys various alcoholic beverages, particularly harder liquors, including scotch whisky: "the odd drinkie", as he likes to call them. He is seen drunk on more than one occasion, and even was caught drinking and driving in the episode "Party Games". He used his political immunity to escape charges.
- Disdain for certain types of culture. Sir Humphrey thinks Hacker to be a cultural philistine, unaware of the importance of protecting Britain's artistic heritage. Hacker believes it only important to the upper-class snobs (such as Sir Humphrey himself), and several other "wet, long-haired, scruffy art lovers", arguing that operas created by Italians and Germans are not representative of Britain's cultural heritage. However, upon becoming Minister for the Arts (in "The Middle-Class Rip-Off"), Hacker asks Humphrey if he could tag along on a gala night at the Royal Opera House. Humphrey is delighted by the volte-face and declares, "Yes, Minister!" enthusiastically. It should also be noted Hacker and his wife enjoy seeing foreign films, and in the same episode Hacker demonstrates some grasp of art, enough to make a strong case that a disputed art gallery in his constituency is not worth saving. (See also "Football" below.)
- Pomposity. Hacker is often seen going off into sentimental, overly pretentious speeches either to himself or to Bernard and Sir Humphrey, holding his lapel on his suit jacket in a very royal manner. He also mimicked Napoleon by slipping his hand in the front of his suit jacket upon hearing he was selected by the party to become party leader and hence Prime Minister. However, it appears that Hacker's political idol is Winston Churchill: he occasionally speaks in the statesman's gruff style and is seen reading biographies of him.
- Football. Hacker believes that sport is of a greater cultural importance and is even willing to sacrifice a local art gallery in order to bail out his constituency's football team, the fictional Aston Wanderers, that was being threatened with bankruptcy. He didn't support the team though, and was mentioned as being an Aston Villa supporter in the first episode.
[edit] Trivia
- The party that Hacker represents in Parliament is never named: this was a deliberate ploy by the series' creators to prevent the show, ironically, from becoming overtly politicised. However, in one episode of Yes, Prime Minister, Sir Humphrey notes the political differences between Conservative and Labour when either party is in power. It could therefore possibly be assumed that Hacker represents neither of them. This view is reinforced by the opening scene of the pilot episode, when the victorious Hacker's party rosette is white, as opposed to the red and blue ones worn by the other candidates.
- In a radio broadcast spoof of Yes Minister performed by both Eddington and Nigel Hawthorne, both of whom played their respective parts from the show, Hacker is a Minister in the government of the day, that of Margaret Thatcher, who also played herself as Prime Minister. In the sketch, she asks that Hacker and Sir Humphrey abolish economists.
