CENTRE POINT
The e-word that sends a shudder down the spine
SIMON JENKINS
You can see it coming. James Naughtie or Sue MacGregor has some hapless defender of culture in their sights. The sub- ject may be Covent Garden or provincial rep or Shakespeare in schools. A question or two passes, and then the e-word swoops. Horny-handed populists watch from the Today programme's control room: `Use the word,' they mouth through the glass. And out it comes, 'Minister, isn't this all rather elitist?' A sigh of relief rises from a million working-class breakfast tables. The Corpo- ration has done its proletarian duty.
The interviewer, of course, carefully dis- tances himself from the cliché. The word is put into the mouth of our old friend, Many People. 'Is it not the case, minister, that Many People will say your decision to sup- port Surbiton Opera is, shall we say, some- what elitist?' That many people might say no such thing is unthinkable. The inter- viewer has decided on an angle and calls the great British public in mute and unani- mous accord with that angle, like voters in an Iraqi election.
The word 'elitist' has become what lexi- cographers call a 'general term of disappro- bation'. It means little more than ya-boo, though in this context it has overtones of upper-class, exclusive, undemocratic, fiscal- ly regressive and deplorable. The word has been stripped of all former association with excellence, merit, quality or good taste, concepts deeply unfashionable to contem- porary tabloid culture. To be accused of elitism is to find the Black Spot under the plate. It is the shudder down the spine, the thumbs-down from the thought police of our civilisation.
Hence the ministerial response to the `Isn't it . . . ' question, the rising panic in the voice, the cry of, 'Good heavens, no. Me, elitist, never? I assure you, lots of ordi- nary people like Pavarotti.' (Ordinary is the new synonym for working-class.) There is then much waffle about an arts project being nothing to do with art, but really community outreach, or education, or brass bands, or charity, or the Internet, anything but art. 'Please understand,' implores the minister, 'this is anything but art. I never said art.'
Most patrons down the ages, from royal- ist grandees to Keynes and even the late Lord Goodman, would have proudly marched under the banner of elitism. When charged with the term, they would have beamed and replied, 'Yes, thank you.' To them, the purpose of public subsidy was not to raise tax (or a quasi-tax such as a lot- tery) and give it straight back to everyone on a per capita basis. There would be no point in such a vacuous transfer. The pur- pose of taxation is to add value to the life of the community by redistribution. We tax to relieve poverty, to build roads and pro- mote jobs, to benefit schools and universi- ties. We give a modest amount to those arts that appear unable, after due investigation, to support themselves. We do so because communities throughout history have , found in the arts some strange but potent expression of their identity.
In Britain a prejudice has developed that, while such support is valid in theory, it is elitist if granted to an art enjoyed by social groups A, B and Cl. Or so at least claim Many People. It does not matter that the Three Tenors or Nigel Kennedy or the monks of Ampleforth are up there in the pop charts. Nobody notices that twice as many people go to a theatre or a museum as to a pop concert, or that there are 50 per cent more tickets sold to live theatre than to live football matches. The former is for `toffs', while real, ordinary, right-thinking, working-class people are fishing canals, keeping pigeons, playing darts and kicking a football in a backstreet. Nor is this prejudice a matter of income. A ticket to a Premier League football game costs some £25, little different from a ticket to an (unsubsidised) provincial theatre. Most visitors to museums and art galleries are students and pensioners, neither groups known for their wealth. Indeed, I would lay money that the real disposable income of the average crowd at a League football match or a race meeting or Alton Towers — or whatever is judged 'non-elitist' would be above that of visitors to Brighton Pavilion, the Albert Hall, the Walker Art Gallery or the Burrell. These are the resorts of the new poor, thanks in part to subsidy.
London's media 'elite' is lost in a world of Sixties inverted snobbery. Shakespeare had Tudor urchins roaring in the stews of Southwark. Singing, from male voice choirs to music hall to Puccini, was the leisure activity of the urban working class. Classi- cal music is now the staple of Britain's most successful commercial radio station. The so-called ordinary people, or at very least their children, are thronging the libraries, museums, concert halls and galleries of Britain. Whatever else Britain is bad at, it is good at the arts. None of this dents the stereotype. Art is guilty by association with the Grand Tier of the Royal Opera. The- atre and music, opera and ballet, museums and books are accessories after the fact of embourgeoisement. They are declared to be 'elitist' and thus not a fit and proper use of public funds.
Every recipient of subsidy must argue its corner. Expensive ones, such as big opera, must argue it vigorously, especially when the number of beneficiaries is small. Where benefit is widespread, irrespective of class or income, the argument must concentrate on stimulating quality. Yet an artist should not have to explain which socio-economic group he is intending to satisfy. A universi- ty scholar does not have to declare the class origins of his potential readers before receiving a grant. Why should a Covent Garden tenor or a Serpentine artist?
The clichés of political correctness are insinuating every walk of life. Politicians dare not slam the table and say that, yes, subsidy will go to an elite if that elite is committed to excellence. When the lumpen inquisition asks who is to define excellence, they dare not reply, 'I shall.'
Simon Jenkins writes for the Times.
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