Masters of illusion

Reading the party political submissions in recent issues of AP is a little like watching shopkeepers display their wares whilst a fire burns down the distribution depot they rely on for supply. All three are good at setting out their stall but none knows whether their products will be available for long. Culture has never loomed large in electoral campaigns. Its greater profile now is a sign that culture and arts are more central to the political script. But, knowingly or not, the arts have signed a Faustian pact that allows politicians to discuss what and who the arts are for, as well as how they are funded and by how much.

Cultural policy and arts spending are one part of a bigger political debate, now focused on the banking crisis and climate change. Much of that debate is conducted through newspaper headlines, but a series of articles recently suggest a return to deeper thinking about the relationship between the state, the economy and society: issues which will inevitably shape how governments engage with culture. Part of this has been about electoral positioning. The Conservatives need to shake off an image of being regressive Thatcherites purely concerned with the well-off. Labour needs to find a post-Blairite script that will tackle growing public ennui. And the Liberal Democrats just need to be heard.

BIGGER QUESTIONS
Deeper questions lie at the heart of these discussions, about the balance between individual freedoms and community cohesion, about the role of the state, and how the state will pay for its policies. Public funding of the arts emerged as part of a radical post-WW2 public welfare and reconstruction programme. Today, the arts are caught between two quite different political ideologies: on the one hand, welfare-oriented, state-moderated capitalism and, on the other, a neoliberal free market philosophy reliant on low taxation, privatisation and financial services.
New Labour adopted Thatcherite free-market economics and used the profits to pay for increased spending on public welfare (including the arts), but it has used old-Labour centralised, directive statism to run public services. Examples from arts target-setting to the way the McMaster report was implemented demonstrate that the arts have not been immune. In the same way, the Conservatives are now subtly stealing the New Labour script. “There is such a thing as society,” says David Cameron, contradicting Thatcher, “it’s just not the same thing as the State.” And to prove it, Conservatives want to give society stronger powers at local level. This could be fine, so long as there is equality of representation and it’s not just strong voices deciding on priorities for a disenfranchised majority.

REALITY BITES
However, the philosophical debate is being overrun by practical reality. The financial meltdown followed by increasing attention on climate change is starting to challenge some long-held assumptions. Arts managers trying to plan their future want to know whether the subsidy they have fought to grow and maintain will be cut. The commodification of culture has raised its profile and importance, socially and economically. But whether you are looking at culture as welfare or culture as industry, it is reliant on a westernised model of economic growth which the banking crisis has derailed. All political parties are trying to find a way to recreate the financial and social equilibrium. The political focus has shifted from the level of private taxation to the level of public debt and how to reduce it, whether through public service cuts, increased taxation or both. Either way, culture will be affected.
A number of eminent critics, including David Marquand, John Gray, Will Hutton and Andrew Gamble, argue that a global financial system in which continued growth is financed by ever increasing debt is both inequitable and unsustainable. To address the crisis, says Marquand, the British Left is offering a slightly tarted-up version of business as usual: better regulation, smaller banks and a dent in the bonus culture. “But the object of the exercise,” he says, “is patently to return to the pre-crisis, advanced-capitalist merry-go-round, with all its gross injustices, built-in instability and contempt for social need.” It’s a delicate equilibrium. Government debt is shoring up financial markets which in turn decide government credit-worthiness. What we are experiencing, say the neoliberal critics, is not just a corrective blip, but a deep systemic crisis. The longer-term future of arts subsidy may no longer just be a question of spending priorities.
Former Culture Secretary James Purnell is one of a small number intelligently trying to rethink the Left’s future. He argues for economic protectionism guaranteeing jobs for the young, increasing power to individuals and prioritising issues of cultural power. Culture, he says, is vital to allowing people to scrutinise the opinions of others and form their own, whether it be through the mass media or vibrant theatre. Last year marked the 150th anniversary of John Stuart Mill’s celebrated essay ‘On Liberty’. Citizenship, said Mill is a testing and arduous practice, not a right. It cannot not be handed down from on high or guaranteed by a piece of paper. Arts managers contemplating their budgets post 2011 might be starting to feel exactly the same about arts subsidy.