Blair & culture

There you are. Innuendo, accusations, nameless documents, emails that were either sent or not sent, information leaks by whom and for whom and to what purpose I can only guess. What does Mr Blair do? Toddles off to Tate Modern to talk about culture. Sorry, that should probably be Culture. Actually what he was really doing was defending subsidies to the arts.

He was talking to an invited audience. I know not who they were except that they will all have had a personal interest in the continuance of the government gravy-train. So, what are the benefits that government subsidies have delivered. Well, to start with there have been 42 million visits to 'free' museums and galleries.

Sounds impressive, but is it? It actually works out to one visit per adult over the course of the year. Not so impressive. More to the point, would the numbers have been significantly less if it had cost for admission? I think we can probably assume that most of these visitors did not start their journeys from council housing estates around the country and most would have been by middle class visitors who could afford to pay.

The museums in question of course are publicly owned. If we want to see old cars or motor bikes, which reside in privately owned museums, we have to pay. Why should we get to see flint arrow heads for free? Is there some qualitative difference between a chunk of Anglo-Saxon pottery, which you probably routinely dig up in your garden without realising it, and a 1903 De Dion-Bouton? Of course not.

The past is already politicised by the perversions of the heritage industry, aided and abetted by the government and its control of the school curriculum. Subsidies reinforce this distortion by encouraging access to one class of artefacts while restricting access to others.

But what of the performing arts? A similar process operates but the effects are even more discriminatory. Take the theatre. The London theatres generate vast incomes, for themselves, for hoteliers, for restaurants. All, for the most part, without any government cash. Yet the government sees fit to subsidise regional theatres. The logic is simple. If sufficient people wanted to see their offerings they would go and be prepared to pay for the privilege. They certainly do in London, so why not in Nottingham or Leeds.

Ah, but there's the rub. Provincial theatres do not provide productions that the public might want to see. How do we know? Because Mr Blair tells us so. He says that regional theatres, without subsidies, could only exist on a diet of 'light drama'. What a patronising prig the man is. Who is he, or any government lackey or quango leach, to decide what is 'high' and what is 'low' art. What the public should, or should not watch. In fact the public make their preferences very clear. Observe what is most viewed on television, and it's not BBC4 or the Sky Arts channel.

He also tells us that some orchestras might have gone to the wall. So what. Why is tax-payers money being used to keep alive something only a select few want to survive. Popular music receives no subsidy. Pop music recording companies have to invest their own money. Young would-be pop musicians have to save to buy their own instruments. Apparently the music industry is worth £6 billion a year. How much do a few unwanted orchestras contribute to that figure I wonder. Yet the greatest innovations in music over the last forty years have come from the genre of pop.

I happen to like modern jazz. How much subsidy does that receive? So why do we subsidise Covent Garden or English National Ballet? The repertoire of these organisations was originally written because there was either a market for it or a rich individual decided to commission a particular work and sponsor its performance. If individuals now wish to see such pieces performed they should be prepared to pay the price.

What the subsidy of selected performing arts does is to preserve them for the rich. It is a way for an elite to distance themselves from the watchers of Coronation Street. It is criminal that it is those selfsame watchers of Coronation Street who are paying for that elite to enjoy their superiority. It is doubly ironic that it is a Labour government which is promoting such socially divisive policies.