In a recent BBC radio feature about the proposed sell-off of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link – we should refuse to call it High Speed One, which is a preposterous bit of re-branding – no one from any Government department would appear to justify it. The person whose comments were deemed particularly important was someone from accountants Ernst & Young.
This is symptomatic of the removal of any motivating philosophy from what is supposed to be a left-of-centre Government. A useful, fully-functioning and up-to-date railway line – the only one in this country, as opposed to the hundreds of miles that have been built in France, Germany and Spain over the past 20 years – that was funded by public finance, is going to be sold off for a fraction of its cost to build. And it is left to a representative of a private firm of accountants – which will doubtless be well rewarded for doing the sums – to explain why.
What has happened to the principles that brought socialism into being? Would William Morris or John Ruskin recognise any aspects of their philosophy that sought to introduce values other than those of profit into the market place in the machinations of this Labour Government?
Some commentators dismiss Morris and Ruskin as an artist and a philosopher and so idealists rather than realists. But surely it was because they had ideals and attempted to translate these into something concrete that made them influential? What is wrong with idealism – especially if it is rooted in attempts to improve the lot of the many and not just the few, introduce a fairer distribution of wealth and more principled ways of doing business than was invariably the case in this country in the mid-19th century?
The small coach house in Hammersmith, London that hosted the meetings which began the socialist movement is now the site of the William Morris Museum. The ideas espoused there by Morris and his friends were neither wholly impractical nor highly complicated. The aim was to restore a link between art and utility, good practice and decent reward. Their beliefs did not place monetary value and the maximisation of profit at the centre of social activity and relationships. If we cannot accept that such ideas are still relevant, we may as well let accountants run the country, privatise the government of it and appoint a chief executive and a board of directors much like a private firm.
It is true that Morris came from a wealthy background and so could afford to indulge himself when trying to put his somewhat utopian ideas into practice. Ruskin, with his unsuccessful tea shop in Marylebone, was certainly a man of ideas and ideals rather than an entrepreneur. But they did try to develop and foster an alternative form of commerce and economic practice, which included moral, human and even aesthetic dimensions. Unsurprisingly, they were ridiculed by the majority in England – a country that was and is utilitarian and conservative to its core.
But were their ideas really so misplaced? The products made by Morris and his fellow workers found places in the homes of those who could afford them. They are bought, sold and appreciated to this day. In contrast, his project is all but forgotten.
As we hope to emerge from a vile period of celebrity artists, the blurring of advertising and art, the whole Saatchi-funded pomposity, empty gesture and moral equivocation, perhaps it is a good time to reflect on the aspirations of the well-intentioned Morris and Ruskin. After all, a political party grew out of Morris’s meetings. And he was inspired by Ruskin’s writing, as was Gandhi.
Art critic Peter Fuller was one who tried to bring Morris and Ruskin to the fore in his own work. Fuller also warned about the cult of celebrity and the general cheapening of cultural values. Sadly, he was killed in a car crash in 1990. The apologists for the vacuity of “Brit Art” preferred to champion the latest nonsense as clever and avant-garde, rather than as the output of meretricious and calculating people more interested in business than art.
When Labour came to power in 1997, there was a blurring of previously distinct high and low culture. There was confusion between the ethnic background of the artist and the merit of their work, an obsession
with pop musicians and the disastrous equation of the squalid and ugly with veracity and authenticity.
Notions of quality and concern with content, aesthetics, beauty and aspiring to anything at all went by the board. The suggestion that art could have redeeming social value ceased to have much currency.
While definitions of the boundaries between high, low and the invariably derided middlebrow culture can be overly rigid, it is foolish to ditch all distinctions and declare all forms of cultural production to have the same merit. The result is an environment where those make the most noise get the most attention. Artists have become inseparable from pop stars, vulgarity has become “cool”, while cultural intelligence, sensitivity and subtlety are undermined.
While high culture continues to exist in its own diminishing world, the low and middle have been elevated and merged into a
no-brow mess. This does not mean middlebrow culture deserves all the opprobrium it attracts. The contempt in which it is held by many commentators equates to a form of snobbery. But what was Charles Dickens, if not middlebrow?
Football has been embraced by the middle class and is written about and analysed as if Marcel Proust had devised it. Popular music is largely the product and the preserve of the middle class – and always has been. There is more myth than reality to the notion of working-class kids producing pop music as a rebellious activity.
Culture for the masses – as opposed to mass culture – is effective at dividing people along partisan lines and distracting them from meaningful political activity. However, football clubs, for instance, are businesses first and the interests of their supporters are a low priority. When Thames Ironworks started to field paid professionals in its team and charge spectators to watch their games, the employees of the company ceased to be interested. They didn’t see why they should pay to see players allegedly representing them who were earning more than they were being paid to build ships. Thames Ironworks became West Ham United.
Football and pop music are consummate spectacles. They appear to be enlivening and involving, but actually contribute towards individual alienation. They invite you to be part of a mass event, but serve no purpose other than the spectacle.
When football is turned on in a pub, most people’s attention ceases to be on those they are with and becomes focused on the spectacle of paid protagonists acting out a stylised contest. It’s like a general torpor has set in.
John Ruskin’s Unto This Last was translated into Gujarati as “Sarvoday”, which means “The Well Being of All”. What is so wrong with this ideal and this aim? The New Jerusalem is still awaiting construction, but that doesn’t mean we should not try to build it. And shouldn’t that be at the heart of what the Labour Party is all about?
