SIR NICHOLAS HYTNER, the luvvie superior at the National Theatre has refused to apologise for a reference in the theatre’s current production of Blood and Gifts by T G Rogers, to his wished for sodomy of Mrs Thatcher for the spending cuts she made whilst in power. If you remember the Great Lady did indeed show much disfavour, particularly to the arts, believing as she did, that if an artist, writer, or musician were worth their salt then the market place would decide their true importance. For, despite resenting the fact, an artist’s true worth is a commercial one; and if financed by the taxpayer through the likes of the Arts Council then the artist’s worth is judged by a committee who are ordained by, presumably, the politicians, to spend other people’s money, to finance what they deem Great Art.
Hytner need not apologise however for the author of a play he has allowed to be performed. But the charge of being inherently Left-wing is another case. According to the Daily Telegraph, it was Libby Purvis who took Hytner to task over the reference to Margaret Thatcher. She asked Hytner if he felt such a reference fashioned a view that his theatre was “Leftie”.
Hytner gave a press conference at which he addressed Ms Purvis’s enquiry with the following comment, “The days when the arts were run by monolithically Leftist individuals have long gone.”
The great man’s repost reminded me of another tribune for the arts. The head of the BBC, who also admitted to liberal bias, but also put it in the past tense. Perhaps Sir Nicholas Hytner took his cue from Mark Thompson, the Director General of the BBC, who recently admitted of a liberal bias at the BBC, but like Hytner, said it was all in the past.
THE ARTS, HISTORICALLY speaking, flourished and found their true worth without state i.e. tax payers intervention. We live today in a society where the arts, of all varieties, have become in some way dependent upon the state. This does not mean that those practicing readily succumb. There are many who manage to survive without aid from the taxpayer.
In the past artists, whether of a literary, musical or an artistic bent, had to take their given ability seriously. For their day to day living depended upon it. Thus in every field of the arts was the very best created.
In such times the state was replaced by a patron . People’s taxes today have replaced the patron .
Sir Nick is quite right in refusing an apology. If such a request is demanded then it must come from the author T G Rogers, who it seems thinks a lot of himself. However, if I judge my modern authors correctly, TG will only seek further acclaim from any such criticism. He (I presume he is a he) will see his work as a success because of the criticism he has attracted and will seek to take advantage of such a controversy in his future writings.
THE NATIONAL THEATRE has itself (if I am not mistaken) lived off the public tit, and like all other such benefactors of the taxpayer’s generosity, they have come to believe that they have a natural entitlement to extractions from the public purse, bequeathed them by whatever of the Muses they seek their inspiration from.
Mrs Thatcher could not understand why the Arts needed encouragement from the taxpayer at all. All any of the arts need in order to flourish is the freedom in which to prosper; to question without fear of imprisonment; to speak freely and to condemn, criticise, and yes, to offend if needs be in the name free expression. All of these democratic entitlements are, Mrs Thatcher’ believed, worth far more to the artist than any kind of financial handout from the state.
Democracy was to her the only handout that any artist should need in order to create. Where there was need for financial help, then the backbone for such aid would be the private sector. If there is a need for state expenditure on the arts then it should be used for the upkeep of our great galleries and museums built from private capital. For instance, the Tate Gallery was built by the finances of capitalism in the form of Tate and Lyle, the producers of a substance that today is regarded almost as sinful as tobacco – sugar.
Once these great cultural institutions have been set in motion by private wealth, then indeed the state does have an obligation to be the insurers of last resort if they face desperate financial straits that may result in closure. This is why our major galleries and museums were told by a Tory government to charge an entrance fee; for such a fee would make them less reliant on the taxpayer while, if not making them wholly self-sufficient, would relieve the tax burden on, not the patrons of the arts, but the ordinary man in the street whose main focus outside of work is the football stadium. For them Old Trafford, Stanford Bridge and (in my case) Carrow Road, are the complimentary cultural equivalences to the National, Tate, or Tate Modern galleries.
DESPITE WHAT THE LIKES OF Sir Nicholas Hytner or Mark Thompson say, the Liberal-Left is still well and truly in charge of all political and cultural activity in this country, and have been since the 1960s.
To pretend otherwise, as I believe both representatives of their particular cultural fields are doing in order to appease what they regard as the dreaded Tory dominated Coalition, as well as to avoid cuts in funding to the Arts and the BBC, is merely a ruse which they hope will be believed, and stands a very good chance of so being believed, because both parties representing the Coalition are themselves of a liberal persuasion.
Liberalism has been the sole occupier of our culture, beginning in the late 1950s. It has, during its period, managed to capture and nurture every aspect of our cultural life and has managed to do so by deriding its ‘antiquated reactionary’ predecessor. By deriding what it perceived as its reactionary past, modern liberalism accomplished the relativist mess we live with today.
The world of the Arts has grown ever larger and ever more dependent upon the taxpayer; but why should they need the taxes of (for instance) a dustman in order to continue with their latest ‘project’?
Why should the arts be exempt from market forces when all other industries are not?
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