Feature: Dame Joan Bakewell and Lord Melvyn Bragg discuss the arts and other important matters

Published: 10 February, 2011

DAME Liz Forgan is not without her champions and allies. Indeed, two of her Primrose Hill neighbours, newly ennobled Dame Joan Bakewell, who lives in Chalcot Square, and the social statistician Lord Moser, whose home is in Regent’s Park Terrace, were on their feet when the House of Lords debated the coalition’s cuts to the arts last Thursday.

So too was Lord (Melvyn) Bragg, the Labour peer, author and arts presenter, who lives in Hampstead Hill Gardens, who spoke with a vociferous burst of venom against the government. Yet there has been little coverage in the media on the subject, which is so much more diffuse than 400 library closures, which brings protesting people on to the streets, to protect the good things in our battered society.

With her background in TV, chair of the National Campaign for the Arts, a member of the boards of the National Theatre, Aldeburgh Festival, BFI and other appointments, Baroness Bakewell pointed out that she was perhaps “to the manor born” in making her maiden speech:  “My grandfather, an iron turner in a Salford factory, died at the age of 33 and my father was sent to Chetham’s Hospital, then an orphanage for poor boys in Manchester and now a world-famous music school,” she revealed.

“My father grew up loving books. The importance of libraries in the life of a child could not be underestimated. He left school at 13 to work in a foundry and enjoyed a career in engineering. My mother, the daughter of a cooper in a Manchester brewery, also left school at 13. Many years into their marriage they made up for the lost years by studying at the Workers’ Educational Association.

“I am a child of their aspirations. I grew up in the 40s and 50s, enjoying a grammar school and university education without fees and without debt. My life is a testament to social mobility. My arrival in this House is surely its crowning glory.” She turned to the arts “to understand the world about me” and added: “I be­lieve profoundly that the arts are more than the enter­tainment that awaits us at the end of the working day – a light relief from the real business of living. I believe the arts to be a core essential in shaping and sustaining our human values. So it is not surprising that I am passionate that the rewards should be available to everyone in our society.”

Lord Moser pointed out that, economically, the “creative industries” earn 7 per cent of our GDP and employ two million people, boost tourism and invisible exports, as well as help to regenerate poor communities and “enhance the quality of life and happiness of all of us.” The cuts would cause inevitable and visible damage and though private philanthropy was now being promoted, he pointed out that the proposed donation of £8million to the arts wouldn’t go far over four years. What was vital were taxation changes to encourage financial donations.

“What matters most is the atmosphere created by the government,” he told the Lords. “We want, not least from the Prime Minister himself, encouragement for everybody in the arts world in line with the words of President Kennedy: ‘The life of the arts, far from being an interruption, a distraction, in the life of a nation, is very close to the centre of a nation’s purpose – and is a test of the quality of a nation’s civilisation’. ”

Then Lord Bragg entered the fray. “We are seeing a rather mindless scything down across the land – ‘swish, swish’ goes the scythe, and down come the weeds, but down too come the crops and the blooms,” he protested.

“And who is scattering the good seed on the land? They swish and chop away, the Coalition cutters, with little discrimination and less differentiation, but above all they fail to identify that which will grow the future – the knowledge industry, niche, high quality, intelligent, globally marketable. We are good at it, and have been for a very long time, in the sciences, technology and the arts.”

He told how he made a film about the composer Howard Goodall, which had inspired children to learn music, play an instrument, sing, finding joy, self-respect and the pleasure of learning through the arts.

“I suggest that this debate is not only about funding of the arts or the strength of the unique UK tripod of public funding – 30 years in the making – through a newly effective Arts Council, of business investment and the box office. It is about giving fuller, democratic advantage to people, especially the children of this country, so that through knowledge and skill in the arts they can have a chance to make the best of themselves and the best of a society that badly needs to look after its own more carefully.

“This debate is in many ways every bit as much about funding our future as it is about funding the arts.”