Labour must rescue the arts from years of neglect under the Tories

It was a Labour government that founded the Arts Council, a Labour arts minister who produced the first ever White Paper for the arts, and it could, possibly, be Labour that rescues the arts from years of neglect under the Conservatives.

The manifestos have yet to be published but, in March, Sir Keir Starmer spelt out his party’s vision that the arts are “essential to our economic growth and our national identity”.

That’s easy to say – even Boris Johnson trumpeted the importance of the arts while slashing arts funding – but the Labour leader announced what looked like a considered strategy, more detailed and hopefully more deliverable than the usual unfunded political platitudes about art being a great social leveller.

Speaking at the Labour Creatives Conference in London, Starmer outlined policies including the creation of a new National Music Education Network, which would help parents find music teachers and instrument banks, and offer guidance about music exams and applications to national ensembles, conservatories and universities.

There was also a plan to ban ticket touting, which does more than so-called elite cultural institutions to make arts experiences inaccessible, as anyone knows who queued in vain for Proms tickets (much cheaper than the Premier League or Glastonbury), later on sale by touts at double the price.

Encouragingly, the shadow culture secretary behind the arts blueprint, Thangam Debbonaire, trained as a classical musician, first at Chetham’s in Manchester and then at the Royal College of Music, and played the cello professionally before entering politics.

After 12 forgettable Conservative culture ministers since 2010, musicians and arts organisations will be cheered if a politician with such a rare understanding of the sector becomes their champion in a Labour government.

It is almost 60 years since that cultural pioneer Jennie Lee, a Scottish miner’s daughter and the UK’s first arts minister, published a seminal White Paper, A Policy for the Arts.

Lee recognised that the arts needed to be embedded in the education system and there are echoes of her foresight in Labour’s new proposals, which maintain that every child should have access to a high-quality music education.

This would mark a major departure. The Tory education secretary, Gillian Keegan, cut funding for performing and creative arts courses, and local authority support for the arts has been so downgraded that orchestras are becoming the preserve of the privately educated.

Dame Kathryn McDowell, managing director of the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO), warned last year that the demands of the national curriculum, budget constraints and a shortage of dedicated music teachers mean that children in state schools are often not able to learn to play an instrument.

How far we have let arts education slide. Sir Simon Rattle, a former LSO music director and Britain’s top musical export (to Germany), who grew up in Liverpool, said his family would not have been able to afford music lessons without his free tuition, “one of the glories of the UK” in the Sixties.

Restoring music teaching in schools – and creating the artists and audiences of the future – will require a spending commitment difficult to defend against competing interests, so all the more important for Starmer to appoint a minister with serious intentions.

His other main pledge, to review Arts Council England (the devolved administrations have their own bodies), is also to be welcomed following the disaster of the current set-up, which seems determined to destroy Britain’s cultural heritage.

Historically, it was funding from the Arts Council that enabled the ENO to give out free tickets to all under 25s, introducing new generations to opera, but now that company, and other great institutions, are under threat in a misguided attempt by the arts quango to socially engineer audiences.

The arts world’s confidence in the Arts Council is at rock bottom, said Richard Morrison in the Times, following its Let’s Create policy that “puts more emphasis on community work and ‘DEI’ (diversity, equity and inclusion) — the sacred cow of our times — than on artistic excellence in traditional concert halls and theatre”.

There seems to be no imagination, or money, to disseminate arts largesse throughout the country without laying waste to our best orchestras and opera companies.

Even the principle that “something that is artistically first-rate deserves funding more than something that is third-rate” seems controversial, said Sir Mark Elder, outgoing music director of Manchester’s Hallé.

In the Commons this week, Labour shadow culture minister, Chris Bryant, listed the government’s failings over the creative industries: “Two music venues closing every week, British artists prevented from touring in Europe, the UK art market falling from second to third in the world.”

Bryant wasn’t done yet: “A-level music students down by 45 per cent, museums and galleries struggling with the cost of living, ballerinas told to re-train, theatre and opera touring slashed, an apprenticeship levy that doesn’t work for the creative industry”.

Can Labour stop the rot? More importantly, can it affect a dramatic shift away from the classical cultural cringe, not invented but perpetuated under Tory rule, that sees higher art forms as classist?

Why could Denis Healey enjoy the opera and choose eight out of eight classical standards for his 1978 appearance on Desert Island Discs, while Gordon Brown had to pretend to like the Arctic Monkeys, and Angela Rayner was pilloried (by Dominic Raab) for going to Glyndebourne?

If Labour does one thing to restore national faith in our finest artistic accomplishments it will be to dispel the myth that art and art lovers are an elitist embarrassment, and once again make cultural pursuits an acceptable and vital facet of public life.

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