The Stage

Arm’s length hopes found outside the main parties

Published Tuesday 19 April 2005 at 12:35

There are two certainties at least regarding the present General Election. Namely, arts issues will not decide who is the victor in even one constituency and the Liberal Democrats need not hold their breath, should they be preparing for government on this particular occasion.

That said, time spent on the periphery can be employed to positive effect. Both Beveridge and Keynes were Liberal in inclination at a time when the party’s prospects were far less rosy. Yet they were crucial in shaping much of the socio-economic policy of the later 20th century.

We had better hope governments remain amenable to this sort of thing because there is much being said by those outside the usual two parties of government which would benefit this industry. The curious thing is that, looking at the broad sweep of the Liberal Democrat arts policy, there is little to it in theory which ought to be anathema to either Labour or the Tories.

Its central platform relates most to the level of political control exerted from the centre and the raiding of the National Lottery. However it is dressed up, the New Opportunities Fund is a device to allow lottery money to fund activities which should be the responsibility of Whitehall. The motive here is less one of forcing the toffs of the arts world to share their spoils with the deserving poor than of making government’s job easier.

The direct and unwholesome intervention of the executive is a factor elsewhere too. If Don Foster’s sweeping prescription for the Creative Partnerships scheme is less than convincing, his central premise that government must be re-educated in the virtues of arm’s length funding is not.

Far from perfect it might be but less worrying than a culture secretary who frets over the abolition of the DCMS and the “pot luck” of relying on local government, while overlooking the emasculation of four national organisations which head the arm’s length system. Or than Tories who attack Labour’s use of the arts as a tool for social engineering on the grounds that this leads to greater bureaucracy. Tenuous and not necessarily true but easier for their supporters to accept than a principled defence of the intrinsic value of the arts.