At Arm's Length: recollections and reflections on the arts, media and a young democracy

This is a wise, stylish and often witty book. The author has important things to say about UK quangoland in the early 21st century, notably about centre/periphery tensions and the role of intelligent, informed debate. The subtitle (“recollections and reflections on the arts, media and a young democracy”) is a fair description. The important commentary on ITV, BBC, print media and arts quangos in their social, economic and changing political contexts is illuminating and convincing.

The author’s great strength is that he is neither prey to the knee-jerk nationalist’s customary mixture of parochial complacency seasoned with paranoia, nor a card-carrying member of the Taffia that so baffles outsiders trying to comprehend Wales. He has played major roles inside and outside Wales in the arts and media, enabling him to offer a sharp, independent-minded critique from an acute journalist’s perspective. He is rightly proud of his identity and heritage, but has been a successful operator in much bigger ponds while still being a lifelong believer in devolution. This perspective enables him to analyse and lament the “rhetoric/reality gap” and observe the prevalence of “Wales’s disputatious habits” alongside its characterisation as “the land of the pulled punch”.
Like his great compatriot Raymond Williams, Davies understands that although the Welsh people have been oppressed by the English state for over seven centuries, so have the English for even longer. His comparative context embraces Ireland, Scotland, the English regions and contemporary Europe. Within that broad sweep he can pinpoint “the endemic centralising trends of all aspects of British life and government and, particularly, the drift of cultural power to London and the South East”. He is very sensitive to what a former Chairman of mine from northern England termed “changing their trousers at Crewe” syndrome.
[[He is an informed sceptic about the untutored ambitions and cross tactics of un-housetrained politicians]]Wales – with its grave public/private imbalance – is the only part of mainland UK where tinkering with broadcasting structures can be a threat to the language, identity and nationhood. This makes the story a fascinating study relevant to what is going on everywhere else against the background of the decline of the Westminster Parliament, emasculation of local government and “bogus ministerialism of local government cabinets”.
There are detailed chapters covering Thatcher’s disastrous ITV auction, the BBC’s internal culture and the operation of the duopoly. There is a dramatic and important chapter on the Welsh Assembly’s 2004 ‘bonfire of quangos’ (with Arts Council Wales in and out of the woodpile) in which the author, ACW Chair at the time, shows commendable restraint. He is an informed sceptic about the untutored ambitions and crass tactics of un-housetrained politicians and the ingrained habits of civil servants aiming to satisfy ministers’ appetites (with central control always the default position in response to major change) in a volatile mix with self-obsessed arts egos.
Davies deplores (in contrast with Ireland) Wales’s intolerance of critical debate or mobilisation of intellectual resources to positive effect nationally, and its lack of any coherent post-devolution discourse about the place of the arts in society or government. He is passionate and convincing on the need for the media to build the missing bridges between the democratic institutions and the public.
Serious passages are often leavened with terrific anecdotes (the abrasive BBC Chairman Sir Christopher Bland getting his comeuppance from a Welsh trade unionist is a classic). Many of the Welsh names may not mean a great deal to outsiders, but they are an essential part of the larger story. There’s a helpful and excellent index. A friend of mine who used to live and work in Wales always claims that the national sport isn’t really rugby – it’s committees. To some extent this book provides depressing confirmation, but the key cultural and political concerns take precedence in a landscape of transient managerial fashions.