WHATEVER HAPPENED TO 'CREATIVE BRITAIN'?
This week the British government tried to close the file on two of their bigger blunders, the Millennium Dome and the re-build of the Wembley Stadium. Both were showcases for the Department of Culture Media and Sport (DCMS), undertaken when Chris Smith was the Culture Minister, both full of promise that turned to disaster.
The importance of the DCMS to New Labour - it had been founded under the outgoing Tory administration under David Mellor - was that the creative industries were going to be at the cutting edge of British competitiveness. In his first term, Prime Minister Blair said that if Britain is no longer the workshop of the world, then it could still be the world's design studio. Flushed with success, the new administration welcomed the attentions of the culturati as a sign of success.
At the time, the shortcomings of the creative Britain strategy were pointed out by the Design Agenda group, in a pamphlet Great Expectations: the creative industries in the New Economy (GBP 8.50 from Design Agenda, 4.27 Beaux Arts Building, 10-18 Manor Gardens, London N7 6JT, UK). They pointed out that the financial gains that design and the arts could make to the British economy were comprehensively overstated by the DCMS' various publications.
Great Expectations explained the illusory nature of the creative Britain dream was explained as the wishful thinking of a government that was trying to explain away Britain's industrial decline. The creative Britain shtick would have been relatively harmless if it had not been made the basis of Britain's economic policy too, with the publication of the Department of Trade and Industry's report on 'knowledge economy'. Written by Charles Leadbeater the DTI report fantasised that Britain could be 'living on thin air', as ideas replaced industry as the basis of wealth.
Not just economy, but society would be cured by the creative balm: 'Because art, culture and sport create meeting places for people in an increasingly diversified, fragmented and unequal society' - meeting places that once were 'provided by work, religion or trade unions'. (The Independents, Demos, 1999, p17) As Design Agenda pointed out 'It is inevitable that UK creative industries will fail to satisfy the great expectations that are invested in them.' And so it turned out.
Before the General Election in June 2001 the DCMS had become a burden instead of a boon to the government. Pop-stars and comedians, at first flattered by the attention of government ministers, took the opportunity to insult them. Fashion and other designers asked for more money, whilst insisting that the government butt out of their business. And the culturati boycotted the Millennium Dome, dooming it to the low-brow and Walt Disney (see In Defence of the Dome, by Lewis et al, Adam Smith Institute). The final nail in the coffin of the ambition to use the arts to promote Britain abroad came when the organiser of the British Council exhibition in New York refused to fly there, out of fear of terrorists, turning the event into an insult to the city.
Without ever understanding that it was their own inflated ambitions that had added to the hothouse atmosphere of the artists, already prone to hysteria, the government retreated from its celebration of Creative Britain. The change in policy was marked by the cabinet re-shuffle after the elections, when the arts-popular Chris Smith was replaced by a conservative New Labour apparatchik Tessa Jowell. Jowell was favoured because of her organisational abilities, not because of any flair - there had been all too much of that under Smith. What few at the time realised was that Jowell's brief was to systematically wind down the standing of the DCMS in the government, from the fourth or even third most important ministry, to one competing with the Department for the Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs for attention.
TOWARDS THE EUROPEAN SUPERSTATE?
Just months ago the European Union was in disarray as Ireland voted against monetary union, leaving European leaders floundering. The long fall of the Euro against the dollar under Wim Duisenberg throughout the previous year had caused deep anxiety, not relieved by the European Banker's reversal of his stated policy against intervention. At the commencement of the War Against Terrorism, criticism of 'lazy' European Commissioner Romano Prodi came to a head, as Britain's Tony Blair hogged all the diplomatic limelight, and the role of America's representative to the world.
At the intergovernmental conference at Laeken last week proposals were made for a convention on the future of Europe, to include a European-wide constitution, with the possibility of a sovereign European assembly. Characteristically, the British Prime Minister nervously played down the prospects of a European superstate, insisting that nothing too dramatic was up for discussion, apart from security and policing cooperation.
It appears that the push for the development of European political institutions comes from economic integration. But despite the adoption of the Euro as national currency by 12 countries in the New Year, there are still limitations to the creation of a single European economy. The European Commission's concession to governments subsidising their ailing airlines shows that the European economies are unwilling to give up their flagship industries, even if that's what the 'free market' dictates.
A more pressing motive for European political institutions is the poor standing of European national governments in the eyes of their electorates. With the political consensus relatively diminished, elites are looking to new sources of authority, mostly in the realm of international cooperation. As the European Commission exercises more regulatory influence on the economies and peoples of its member states, the glaring absence of a sovereign European parliament becomes more embarrassing.
But greater powers for the elected European parliament are unlikely to enhance European democracy, coming as they do in a period when popular participation is falling away rather than rising. Put simply there is no sense of 'we the people' of Europe, and so no such European people can be made sovereign. An enhanced European parliament will only serve to further diminish the political authority and importance of the national assemblies, already close to being a laughing stock.
-- James Heartfield Sustaining Architecture in the Anti-Machine Age is available at GBP19.99, plus GBP3.26 p&p from Publications, audacity.org, 8 College Close, Hackney, London, E9 6ER. Make cheques payable to 'Audacity Ltd'. www.audacity.org