Navel-gazers
Prabhu Guptara
The British Council: The First Fifty Years Frances Donaldson (Cape £16) Who reads histories of organisations? Surely only people passionately in- terested in those organisations. Lady Donaldson's detailed and lithe 365-page account of the Council seems destined to have few readers.
This is unfortunate, for the book is not only a history of the Council, it is also a history of the attitudes that have helped reduce Britain to a second-rate power, and a study of why some British influence still survives overseas.
The central difficulty faced by Lady Donaldson in the writing of this book must have been that the Council is known through its plethora of specific activities, each a response to local demand: how then to convey a sense of its multifariousness along with that of its identity? Lady Donaldson has sifted through and orga- nised the detritus of the Council's history (unearthed by the extended efforts of Dr
Harriet Harvey Wood); and the book covers the struggle to establish the Coun- cil, the various stages through which it has developed, and its continual fight for sur- vival in the face of domestic criticism, hostility and enquiries set afoot by each new Foreign Secretary.
Lady Donaldson's history comes alive pre-eminently in the Epilogue, where she describes warmly her visits to various parts of the world to see the work of the Council. This helps to balance the preoccupation of her main text with more abstract matters of fact and argument, and with the minutiae of reports and memoranda. However, she also relishes a fight, as can be seen from her account of the open war between the Council and the Berrill team from the Government Think Tank in 1976. That report recommended slashing not just the activities of the Council, but of all agencies representing Britain abroad; but its ques- tioning of the whole Foreign and Common- wealth Office raised so many problem* that the report was shelved.
While the book chronicles in depressing detail the nature of the attacks upon the Council, and demonstrates how it has emerged from virtually every test with flYing colours, it does not ask the fun- damental question: why has the Council been attacked so unremittingly? The answer is, however, implied: the Council is highly respected abroad in all the circles that matter — diplomatic, governmental, academic, and artistic — and people from these circles have sprung to the Council's defence whenever it has been attacked. In Britain, few people — even among those who are generally well-informed — know what the Council does (`Something con- nected with the arts?'). Indeed, Lady Donaldson herself, a well-known bio- grapher, and wife of a former Minister for the Arts, was surprised by the range of the Work (including agriculture, medicine and technology) undertaken by the Council. There can be few organisations which have done so much for so many people in such distant parts of the world for this length of rime, and be so little known in their own country. Those who are unacquainted with an organisation and wish to find out about it have three basic questions: What does it do? Are those things worth doing? Are they done efficiently and economically? The third question is always worth asking and it is as appropriate, in this case, for the Council itself to investigate that question as it is for its paymaster, the government. To ask the first two questions as repeatedly as they have been asked is to have been sentenced to perennial navel-gazing; it is a Wonder that the Council has been able to get on with any of the work for which it is supposed to exist. In spite of all this, however, the Council has in fact succeeded in justifying its existence to most investiga- tors, even those who were radically critical of it. Perhaps after Lady Donaldson's account, future Foreign Secretaries will be more loath to uproot, prune and re-direct the Council so frequently.
However, the Council can never be really secure until it is better known by the British public. Most agencies which repre- sent Britain abroad seem to concentrate on lying low. This is quite understandable as the reaction of organisations which have been — and perhaps, feel that they still are — under threat; but they need tb move into the attack, and to give capable and imaginative press and public relations staff the clear job of making the work of these agencies better known at home.
Even in these cynical days, a good name is worth a lot,. as is recognised by the Russians and the Americans — to whose cultural diplomacy the author does not make any reference. She does, however describe the emphasis placed on cultural strategy by France, Germany and Italy, and contrast it with our own lack of consistency. If we want to sell our ideas and products to the world again tomorrow, we must promote ourselves to the world today.
Previous page
