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When the kissing had to stop
There is mutiny in the Labour chorus line over Tony Blair's `betrayal of the arts'. Minette Marrin watches from the wings
Arts Council chairman, Gerry Robinson, has issued an indignant statement complaining of `organised whingeing'
Culture wars have broken out again in this country. In other parts of Europe such conflicts are taken seriously, but in Britain they are usually seen as pleasantly comic; the present skirmishes are no exception. On one side, feeling hurt and angry, we have the Pooterish Secretary of State for Culture, Chris Smith; on the other, feeling eloquently indignant, we have the suave Sir Peter Hall and his new "Shadow Arts Council", launched officially last Wednesday, in protest against the real Arts Council, and against the Government's treatment of the arts in general.
The list of Sir Peter's supporters is long and impressive; it contains many of the greatest names in Britain's theatrical establishment, several outstanding musicians and many others artists and intellectuals of great talent. There are Sir Harrison Birtwhistle, Dame Judy Dench, Sir Simon Rattle, Sir Michael Gambon, Evelyn Glennie, Simon Callow, Harold Pinter, Bryan Magee and many more, most of whom have made no secret of their loathing for Thatcher and the years of Tory philistinism, and of their longing for a highly subsidised New Labour dawn.
That dawn, however, has not turned out to be pink as the artists had confidently expected; whatever Mr Blair may have promised before the election to do for the arts, the bright New Labour day has turned out to be a chilly Thatcherite blue as far as arts subsidies are concerned. The money has not materialised, or not much anyway. Worse still, New Labour is so populist that it appears to be quite unable, as Peter Hall says, to tell the difference between the arts and popular entertainment; the arts establishment is still reeling from the shock of seeing the Greenwich Theatre close for lack of public money while just down the road the Government has poured hundreds of millions into a daft populist dome, which - appalling to relate - has not even got a theatre. Naturally enough, the arts establishment is furious. "Yes, we were naive," agreed Sir Peter Hall on Friday.
Chris Smith is furious too; his much derided paean to "Creative Britain" and his success in bravely squeezing an extra pounds 125 million for the arts out of the fearsome Gordon Brown have not aroused the gratitude and admiration he was expecting. Angry Labour apparatchiks, sounding exactly like Mrs Thatcher, are deriding Not the Arts Council as moaning luvvies: Gerry Robinson, the chairman of the real Arts Council, has issued an indignant statement complaining of "organised whingeing".
One might well smile. It was absurd of the serious arts establishment to imagine that New Labour would actually do anything for them in office. Aren't they grown-ups? Didn't they know that they were dealing with politicians? And with self-styled "people's politicians" at that? And a group of politicians who are quite as indifferent to art as the most benighted of Conservative cabinets, if not more so. This populist Government, by definition, has no time for the elitist arts. It echoes the Harold Wilson era, when the Beatles and Morecambe and Wise were the preferred representatives of the arts at Number 10 Downing Street.
The arts establishment surely ought to know that there are no votes in art, unless it's pop art, or at least very popular. When they complain that the Government is really only interested in videotape culture, they are quite right, but what did they expect?
Incidentally the pop art fraternity has been bitterly disappointed in New Labour too; one of the funnier publications of last year was the edition of the New Musical Express in which assorted pop stars savagely denounced the Blairites for refusing to subsidise their musical aspirations with unemployment benefit, in the time-honoured tradition observed under the Conservatives. And, incidentally, the arts did extraordinarily well under Thatcherism, whatever luvvies think.
It is true that state subsidies dried up, but corporate subsidies grew and many of the arts blossomed, particularly contemporary painting and sculpture. With the increasing wealth of the Eighties, art became cool - it was upon this development of the Tory era that Mr Blair was able to capitalise with his silly and out-of-date notion of Cool Britannia. Such are the absurdities of this scene.
Equally it was daft of poor Chris Smith to imagine that the arts establishment would not turn upon him. Artists and creative people generally are and always have been notorious for biting the hand that attempts to feed them, and then howling that they are hungry. For one thing there is something about the creative temperament and the creative life that is necessarily at odds with authority and the status quo. Besides, artists resent their patrons, and accept whatever is given not with thanks but with a most supercilious sense of entitlement. You see and hear it everywhere in the arts world; hopeful artists of all kinds tend to actually to despise people who do not feel inclined to support their aspirations, if necessary for years on end.
I was astonished at a dinner in Hampstead not long ago, very much within this culture, when several middle-aged actors who hadn't had a part for years solemnly argued that the tax payer has a duty to support their vocations, indefinitely and full time.
This thinking is widespread in the arts, from the third rate to the first rate; it is a quasi-religious conviction in the value of art, and in the duty of subsidising it. The idea that people might object, and indeed do object, hasn't occurred to them. But it has occurred to New Labour, which grudges even the pittance that it offers the arts. Chris Smith might propose but the Treasury disposes, and only a little bit. An extra pounds 125 million (which is quite a lot of money), spread over three years, will do little more than irritate.
All this comic controversy comes from self-deception on all sides. The traditional arts establishment, purely because it is dependent on the taxes of the masses, has persuaded itself that it is not elitist. That is simply untrue. Art is elitist very often, though it can sometimes be popular too. There is nothing wrong with that all - quite the reverse - except when you are talking about state subsidy.
I agree with the argument that civilised societies need flourishing arts, even if only a minority is interested in them, and that the arts disseminate all kinds of fruitful things which are impossible to quantify, even if they are of little direct interest to most people. And I am tempted to support some state subsidies for some arts, particularly for the ones that are particularly expensive, such as ballet and opera. What is ridiculous is to try to defend an elitist position on populist grounds.
On the other side, because of the traditional left-liberal affinity with the arts, the Government has persuaded itself, and others, that it is arts friendly, but actually, because it is dependent on the votes of the masses, it cannot afford to be and isn't; it is crudely populist. The masses don't want the arts, in the sense of Arts Council arts - if they did there wouldn't need to be an Arts Council to prop them up. So in practice the Government promotes money-making, vote-winning commercial pop culture, and spends its modest budgets on inclusive outreach initiatives and access workshops, including a silly scheme to take opera singers into night clubs.
No matter what they say, what interests the Government about the arts is their potential for job creation, exports and for social engineering. Chris Smith has effectively said so in his own inimitable, in his book on Creative Britain. He has a "profoundly democratic agenda", which is "seeing cultural access as one of the egalitarian building blocks of society". It is ridiculous to defend art on those grounds, and alarming, and infuriating to proper artists.
Without any real honesty on any side, this particular culture war is bound to grumble on. There is a way to resolve it, but it is one that neither side seems to see, or even to consider. It is that Government, and all its quangos and cronies and councils, should stay right out of art.
That will never happen; so we must just get what satisfaction we can out of laughing at them all.
The Sunday Telegraph | Sunday, March 28, 1999
