New Masters!

   Almost the last thing Cobb said to Number 2 was that he mustn’t keep his new masters waiting, what new master might they be?

   It is written that the inspiration behind the writing of ‘Free For All,’ Patrick McGoohan’s first script of ‘the Prisoner’ series, would seem to have been the General Election held in Great Britain on the 31^st of March 1966 which resulted in a win for Harold Wilson and the Labour Party. There might have been a change in Government, but not a change in the Civil Service who served the Government in office at that the time. Meaning that members of the Civil Service had to put their own political opinions to one side, and be one hundred percent loyal to whichever Government was in power at the time, whether it was the Conservative or Labour Party.

   I think we can assume that Cobb is a Civil Servant for the British Government, and it could have been that when he had been brought to The Village it was the Conservatives who were the government of the day {that would have been before the 1964 General Election in October of that year and puts Cobb in The Village for 17 months} and there he is, about to leave The Village but with a Labour government of the day. His new masters whom he must serve equally and as loyally as he had the Conservatives.
   So how did Cobb know there had been a change in government if he had been a prisoner in The Village for 17 months? We assume The Village is a British government installation, and would receive news and possibly orders and instructions from their masters outside of The Village, as does happen from time to time during the series. Even if there is no direct telephone link, they could receive news and official documents in a diplomatic bag brought to The Village, transferred from boat and flown in by helicopter. That in turn would make the people in administration in The Village British civil servants, and they would, from time to time, need to know who the government of the day was, and who the Prime Minister. As a change in either could have an effect on The Village, in regard to funding, the running of, nay, its very existence!
   Finally we can bring this question of “new masters” closer to home in The Village. Whenever there is a new Number 2 to take up office, his or her administration pays equal and unquestioning loyalty to the Number 2 of the day, as much as they did Number 2’s predecessor, and as they will to 2’s successor.

Be seeing you