There was an extraordinary editorial – leader as it is known in the trade – in the Sunday Telegraph recently. What’s new?, you may ask. Leaders in newspapers are often more than a little weird. But this one was weirder than the industry average.
Headed ‘The arts can flourish without state subsidy’, it congratulated the playwright Mark Ravenhill for a speech opening the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in which, allegedly, he had given at least tacit approval to the end of state patronage of the arts. Coming from him, this was a bit rich – or poor, as he seems to wish to become. For the same Mark Ravenhill is himself a prominent beneficiary of a system that, according to the Sunday Telegraph, he wouldn’t object to seeing dismantled.
He is writer in residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company and the author of the well-known Elizabethan classic, ‘Shopping and F******’ (the asterisks are all mine). He is now also a pet of the right-wing press, which can be depended upon to resurrect his Edinburgh speech every time there is political opposition to continuing subsidy of the arts. He seems doomed to become a court favourite of the philistine classes.
Still, it felt like a good idea to read the speech rather than the potted version presented in the weekend papers. In fact, he wasn’t calling for an end to state patronage; he was predicting it. This important distinction eluded the journalists, or perhaps they just wilfully ignored it. Mr Ravenhill’s main point was that, because of the ‘meltdown of capitalism’ (as he sees it), there is unlikely to be a future in the UK for state subsidy of the arts. He was careful to add that, if Scotland goes its own way, a government in Edinburgh might take a friendlier view.
There is not a great deal of evidence to back Mr Ravenhill’s doomsday maunderings. It is true that grants to Arts Council England have been cut by around 5%, but the UK government continues to spend £450 million a year on the arts and the National Lottery invests a further £485 million. The capitalist meltdown has left the arts dripping, but no worse off than any other sector of national life. In arts-friendly Scotland, meanwhile, the stage is littered with such corpses as the Byre, 7:84, and Borderline; Scottish Opera is a shadow of what it was; and Creative Scotland, the funding agency, is a national joke. We have nothing of which to be especially proud, and no reason for complacency.
Keeping the arts alive
For an insight into how it felt to keep the arts alive in a seriously damaging environment, Mr Ravenhill should read the diaries of Richard Eyre in his early days as director of the National Theatre, which coincided with the final throes of the Thatcher regime. (‘National Service’ is the book of those diaries.)
On 15 May 1990, Eyre was invited to a dinner party in the house of Lord McAlpine – yes, that Lord McAlpine – with Jeremy Isaacs (then director of the Royal Opera House), David Puttnam and Richard Attenborough. The idea was to put a case for the arts to ‘friendly’ Tory ministers such as Geoffrey Howe.
It soon became clear that there was to be no more money for the arts. ‘He [Howe] thought that the main problem for the arts was convincing those within his own party that the arts were worth supporting. Do you mean convincing the Treasury?, said Jeremy. No, said Geoffrey, convincing the Cabinet. He cited Norman Tebbit as the principal enemy of subsidy.’
So there is nothing unusual about the vulnerability of the arts to the philistinism of politicians. The last UK administration which properly invested in them – probably the only one in history – was the Wilson government of 1964-70, which appointed a dedicated arts minister (Jenny Lee) and gave her a decent budget. Lee, with Wilson’s help, switched on lights in dark places; her achievement was noble and enduring. The present administration in London is far from noble, but nor is it unusually hostile to the arts. There is no Tebbit in the coalition.
Plan B? There is no Plan B
Having predicted the end of state subsidy, Mr Ravenhill went on to suggest that ‘Plan B’ – no subsidy – might actually be good for artists by freeing them to be ‘challenging, disruptive, naughty, angry’ (his words). It is true that artists need to be challenging, disruptive, naughty and angry – what’s the point of them, otherwise? The rest is just a pretty picture or the Eurovision Song Contest. But it is public subsidy that enables artists to be all of those things that Mr Ravenhill wants them to be. It is the subsidised arts that have produced almost everything of cultural value in Britain in his lifetime, as well as a revolution in the theatre (at George Devine’s Royal Court) 10 years before he was born.
The alternatives to subsidy are darkened theatres, or theatres charging ticket prices beyond the reach of all but a tiny minority. The alternatives are out-of-work actors, musicians, artists and writers. The alternatives are safe little musicals and tame little exhibitions. The alternatives are thousands of amateurs in the self-regarding asylum of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Mr Ravenhill was misrepresented. And in those bits of his speech that were not misrepresented, he may have been playing the fool. It’s largely his fault if he has suffered the ultimate dignity: the warm endorsement of the Sunday Telegraph. He has got the press he deserved.
There is no Plan B. The duty of every artist, and every friend of the arts, is to fight for Plan A. Mr Ravenhill must keep his job, after all.
This article was originally published by Scottish Review.
