Ignorant and Proud of it
"I'm told that the Prime Minister recently went to see a play at the National Theatre, but asked that his visit be kept private", reports our Arts Editor, David Lister, in this Saturday's Independent. "I wonder", he goes on to ask, "if such a request for privacy would be made over a visit to a football match. There's something very odd, and a little disturbing, that the Prime Minister and his opposite numbers are uncomfortable talking about culture."
Sadly, there is nothing odd about it. Despite some brave words on lifelong learning from David Blunkett in the high noon of New Labour idealism back in 1997, Mr Brown's reticence about his cultural tastes is entirely consistent with Labour's record in office. In 2006, during her tenure as Culture Secretary, Tessa Jowell flew at the taxpayer's expense to see Britain's floundering World Cup squad not once but twice. If she's ever been to a first night at the National, she has kept very quiet about it. In 2003, when he was Education Secretary, her colleague Charles Clarke remarked that medieval studies were "an adornment" and that there was "no need for the state to pay for them" (this at a time when both President Bush and Osama bin Laden were invoking the rhetoric of the Crusades).
It was not always thus. Once, the watchword was that "nothing is too good for the working classes", and politicians and educationalists strove to make the achievements of western culture available to all, regardless of income or social background, through institutions such as the LSE, founded by the Fabian socialists Beatrice and Sidney Webb in 1895, the Workers' Educational Association, established in 1903, and the City Lit in London, founded in 1919. Such idealism persisted within the Labour Party as late as the Wilson government, which set up the Open University in 1969.
Now, however, we are all middle class and proud of our ignorance, and no politician would dare go against the grain. One of the less welcome products of the 1960s - compounded by the market fundamentalism of the Thatcher years - was the idea that any work of art that required (and repaid) effort was "elitist". To reach for a dictionary and look up a word one does not know, to persevere with a book one finds difficult, to return to a piece of music one doesn't grasp at first hearing - well, who's got the time nowadays?
It's curiously selective, this notion of elitism. No one dismisses the pursuit of athletic excellence as elitist, or denies the need for application, effort and self-discipline to achieve it. Who would not want the national football team to be made up of elite players (if only...)? And everyone accepts that to enjoy a football match to the full, one must understand its rules, know the history of the teams and players, have a memory of other games.
Why should art be any different? Yet imagine a senior politician of any mainstream party drawing up a list of records for Desert Island Discs that consisted of, say, Bach's Well-Tempered Klavier, one of Beethoven's late quartets, Schubert's Winterreise, Schumann's Opus 17 Fantasia ... you get the picture. The spin-doctors would bin the list immediately and insist on its replacement by something more "accessible".
We are constantly being told to "aspire", to "live your dream"- as long, that is, as we dream of something as banal as being rich, famous, on TV and in the pages of 'Hello!' magazine. But aspire to an understanding of art, music, literature, not because of any kudos or competitive advantage it might bring, but simply for the mental stimulation and spiritual uplift it offers, and one is branded an intellectual snob.
Meanwhile, the Government agonises over the poor educational attainments of British schoolchildren compared with their contemporaries in other European countries, while they themselves spread the message that it's uncool to be a boffin.
That's because, whatever the common opinion is, we are not "all middle class now". When it comes to values, social mobility, opportunities - or for that matter, thirst - for self improvement, and even income nowadays, we are all increasingly members of a deluded working class which swallowed the prevailing lies hook, line and sinker.
So we are pointing out our plasma screens and holidays abroad as evidences that "we made it", while our dreams and aspirations are, as you say, becoming increasingly banal and low-rent. And increasingly out of reach as well. Footballers? Celebrities? Working class people used to dream of their children becoming doctors or lawyers, and while these prospects were more useful to society, they were also far more realistic that the cheap and tawdry "dreams" we are now being sold day-in, day-out.
Somebody (can't remember who though, or I would link to it) recently proposed a new indicator for the class division: you are middle class if you can afford at any time to leave your job for at least six months. If you can't, consider yourself working class, a wage slave like the rest of us and stop showing off the gadgets paid for by credit card.
Posted by: Arnaud | Monday, 07 January 2008 at 05:05 PM
All very interesting, Arnaud, but consumption of the Arts has no link to "class" membership.
Tessa Jowell was undoubtedly the worst Culture Minister in British history. She spent her time in-post on two issues only. First was gambling and casinos (which she wanted to expand, because she was so astoundingly ill-educated herself that she believed they were "culture"). The other was "Size 0 Models".
However, when Proms Concerts (surely popular enough even for Tessa Dimbo Jowell?) were being cancelled... because orchestras couldn't take their instruments on planes any longer (due to pig-headed legislation by John Bovver-Boy Reid, another Labour philistine)... where was the Culture Minister? Answer - nowhere. She did NOTHING, nothing whatsoever.
But coming up to date - Nyoo Laba has just presided over the sharpest cuts in Arts Council funding in decades. The axe has fallen most sharply on Arts in the Regions, especially in smaller towns where there won't be a hue & cry that will reach mainstream media. Most outstanding utter stupidity was spending £2M to restore a theatre to use, only to immediately close it down once the building work had been done?
What else did we expect from the Party of Philistines?
Posted by: Neil McGowan | Monday, 07 January 2008 at 11:02 PM
Sorry Neil, one of my hobby-horses, I am afraid...
But if you think that consumption of the arts - and culture in general - is totally independent from class and income, you are a bit... well, wrong is the mildest way to put it.
As Chris said, there used to be a tradition of educating the general public, of making "higher culture" accessible to the general population, both from public minded individuals and from the State. No doubt that it could sometimes be a bit patronizing but the intentions were sound. It was all part of this "nothing is too good for the working class" mindset. Now the position seems to be that with museums all over the place, culture is there for those who like it and there is no need for the government to risk losing votes by - gasp! - boring the electorate.
Kind of what is happening with the constant dumbing down of the BBC...
Because that's what is truly patronizing: New Labour is not so much a party of Philistines (like most British politicians, they had the benefits of a exhaustive education) as of hypocrites, considering the very people whose interests they have been elected to defend as ineducable yokels. Very much a question of social class, I am afraid...
(Free entrance to museums, now that was a good idea. A reminder that, contrary to the evidences, there probably was at some point a cultural policy somewhere in the original New Labour manifesto, before it was buried to the tune of Cool Britannia.)
Posted by: Arnaud | Tuesday, 08 January 2008 at 01:02 AM