Where’s the Conflict in this Deadly War of Words?

Marc Sidwell reviews ‘Called to Account: The indictment of Anthony Charles Lynton Blair for the crime of aggression against Iraq – a Hearing’ at the Tricycle.

Peter Brook once wrote that a man walking across a bare stage is all that is needed for an act of theatre to be engaged. But what if he just sits there?

In this two hour fantasy tribunal, the Tricycle theatre takes its pacifist politics even more seriously than normal, choosing to eliminate any suspicion of conflict from the script itself. Instead, two men in suits take turns to put their jackets on and off while questioning bureaucrats. In a rare moment of tension, a secretary fumbles as she tries to slip her shoes back on before it is her turn to stand up and sit down again. And I made the tension part up. Her feet slip in and out of her heels just as smoothly as I slipped in and out of consciousness throughout the second half.

It would be easy to dismiss this as cheap criticism. But a cheap play deserves nothing better. The reason this play lacks any spark is not just that the devising team have purged it of all normal sources of theatrical diversion and variety, but that the tawdry subject matter wastes our time. We’d all have been better off with our heads down.

The real tribunal plays at the Tricycle, edited from actual, existing transcripts, provided a startling new kind of dramatic realism, dragging onstage characters from the very eyries of contemporary power, their words for once inescapably exact. The action moved towards a real verdict, on which justice and truth hinged. ‘Called to Account’ does nothing of the kind, because it never happened. The writers have fabricated a “tribunal” with the C- and D-listers who suited their agenda and were willing to take part in a phoney exercise, only Richard Perle adding a serious counterweight to Bob Marshall-Andrews and Clare Short (the latter admittedly well-played). It all ends with a sputter, as the fake inquiry fails even to reach a fake verdict.

Yet who cares? With a title like this one, the chatteriat were out in (peacekeeping) force for the press night: from Menzies Campbell to the Guardian’s top-ranking commissars, all revelling in the fantasy that they matter. On Newsnight Review, one critic was so deep into false consciousness she was reduced to praising the play’s bold use of tedium. You don’t realise how hard it is to act dull, she gushed, not remembering it is even harder to watch.

For those of us who haven’t been looking for a voodoo doll of Blair to stick pins in, much better stay home and get some shuteye. This is a fantasy play, a distraction in dangerous times. As David Aaronovitch protested to the blinkered audience in a post-show discussion, where was the play detailing abuses in Darfur and calling for action? That would be to blend investigative journalism with the tribunal play format in a fresh and engaging manner. Where was the reconstruction of a terror trial, as has just ended today? Why not gather a collection of soldiers, journalists and foreign policy advisers and make the case for sticking with the Iraqis, whatever one’s thoughts about the invasion, in the interests of fighting off the murderous fascist gang of thugs now trying to steal their country? A play where we don’t know what we think, or that sharpens our appreciation of moral horrors we could do something to mitigate would be worth watching.

Instead, the Tricycle is sitting still, speaking words that don’t matter to an audience who already agrees about something that is never going to happen. Peter Brook would have understood where their theatrical experiment has ended up. “To make matters worse there is always a deadly spectator, who for special reasons enjoys a lack of intensity and even a lack of entertainment… who emerges from routine performances… reciting his favourite lines under his breath… he lends the weight of his authority to dullness and so the Deadly Theatre goes on its way.”

IN THE PAPERS - In The Times today, the Barbican chief John Tusa expresses his anger against 'ignorant bureaucrats and posturing barbarians'.

I’m sick to death of meddling philistines

Government arts policy is forged by ignorant bureaucrats and posturing barbarians, writes the furious Barbican chief John Tusa

I will put it simply and perhaps too directly. After more than a decade of direct involvement in the arts and the debate about them, there are many things of which I am sick to death. This is not just a spasm of impatience but represents my deep belief that if the attitudes behind the policies I describe did not exist, the arts would be better run, healthier, more effective, more varied and more enjoyable even than they are today. Does arts policymaking, in short, get in the way of creating the arts themselves?

In recent weeks there have been specific criticisms of government attitudes to the arts by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Master of the Queen’s Music, and Charles Saumarez Smith, the outgoing director of the National Gallery. “Max” said that the Government’s attitude was “utterly philistine”, while Saumarez Smith criticised the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, for being “completely deaf” to the importance of saving major works of art for the nation.

I am as — or even more — concerned with the way that arts policy has become so heavily bureaucratised. It should not be necessary for a senior civil servant to spend weeks trying to persuade the Treasury that an additional £22 million will prevent the museums and galleries from spiralling into deficit, as has happened recently. It is a waste of time because £22 million in a national budget of some £560 billion is ignored as the big numbers are added up. The sum of £22 million is just rounded off. It’s loose change.

This is not a special plea for a privileged place for the arts. It is a plea for the application of common sense. Let’s be clear. If the Treasury holds on to that £22 million, it will not make any difference to its room for manoeuvre on any major item of government policy — not health, not education, not welfare, not defence. If it gives it to the museums and galleries, it heads off a looming crisis. What does common sense suggest is the wiser course, the more effective approach? Time spent in meetings arguing over such numbers as if they were life or death issues has wasted hours of time, for arts directors as well as policymakers.

Mine is also a plea for a serious approach to funding the arts. As Tony Blair made clear in his Tate Modern speech on March 6, new Labour is very proud of funding free access to museums and galleries, transforming attendances and hugely increasing audiences for museums and galleries. But we also know that this came about not because of a reasoned belief in the policy, still less from conviction in the values of free admission, but because the Treasury found a significant lump of money lying loose shortly before the Budget was finalised.

Funding free admission was judged to make a good political headline. The arts deserve better than this, a serious debate about arts funding rather than this mix of opportunism, point-scoring and gameplaying.
I’m sick to death, too, with justifying the arts as if there was something specially problematical about doing so, as if funding the arts is irrational or even unnatural. Thinking about the arts, judging their value, explaining particular trends in the arts — this is an essential part of a human activity that takes itself seriously. What is a waste of time is being required to justify the arts as if millennia of arts activity required justifying anew, as if a failure to justify them could — or should — lead to the end of the activity altogether.
This demand for an incontrovertible justification for the arts goes hand in hand with the further cry: “Yes, these reasons are familiar enough, but you cannot demonstrate that they add up numerically or financially.” No one has ever funded the arts because they have convinced the sceptical about their essential utility. Making the demand is an act of posturing only. I am sick to death of senior policymakers having to spend time presenting the record of the arts in detail to Treasury officials and being asked, almost incredulously: “So you’re saying the arts are a success story?” I’m certainly sick to death of being asked by friendly lobbying groups, such as the National Campaign for the Arts — it’s not their fault — to give them real instances of the arts making a difference to people or their society so that they, too, can try to persuade the Treasury. The cost of producing these papers is real.

I do want the Treasury and all politicians to know what the arts achieve. There is plenty to suggest that the mountains of evidence produced through this process are of scant value in the final decision-making process. Is this a policy of attrition? Of obstruction? Of postpone-ment? Probably all three.

Come to that, why is the demand for justification of the arts so often accompanied by the implied slur that those in the arts are engaged in a selfish activity — which they want others to pay for — by representing them as some kind of personal indulgence, constituting a private play-thing? All the evidence points to widespread use made of the arts, the overwhelming support for their funding and the enjoyment that they bring. Why is so much overt public debate founded apparently on such wilfully false assumptions?

I’m sick to death, too, that the arts play such a small part in the activities of local authorities. There are statutory responsibilities on local authorities to provide key services such as education, housing and the police. There is no equivalent statutory responsibility to provide for the arts. Perhaps inevitably, when local authorities do produce a cultural strategy — and more and more of them feel obliged to do so — there is no mention of anything truly recognisable as arts provision. Can you be surprised when the very word “culture” in local authority speak has been debased to include swimming, walking and enjoying parks almost to the deliberate exclusion of the visual and performing arts.

Why are we so supine in not rebutting the accusation that the market’s provision of entertainment makes subsidy of the arts unnecessary and probably unjustifiable? Why do we not challenge the sneer that there are the popular arts and then — wait for it — the unpopular arts? Why are we so weak in ramming home the fact that public subsidy and private funding are partners in creating a broad spectrum, from the most esoteric to the most banal, that actually unites us in the world of arts and entertainment?

The market benefits hugely from the actors, directors, designers, playwrights, nurtured, trained and developed by the subsidised sector. Has anyone ever suggested that the private entertainment sector should pay the state a return on the fruits of this investment in talent and creativity from which it benefits so hugely?
Arguably, this binary approach — state-subsidised arts bad, privately funded arts good — is one of the most damaging and destructive aspects of the public arts debate. It is untrue, it obfuscates, it is intended to damage, and it distracts attention from the fact that however we are funded, basically we are all in the same business.

Arts policymakers judge the education and outreach programme of a major arts institution not by whether it is of high quality and raises the creative awareness of the children it is aimed at, but only whether it is directed at socially targeted groups such as refugees or the socially marginalised.

Valuable as such activity may be, it is far from clear why an education programme dedicated to developing creative understanding in the broadest sense should be limited and defined in this way. Such may well be the priorities of social welfare departments. Why are they the priorities of arts policy-makers? The only possible answer can be that the arts policymakers themselves do not believe in the value of excellence of the arts as such and on their own.

Why do we allow the language of the arts to be bogged down in the impenetrable cant of social science? Why must every document be laden with words and phrases such as “pathways”, “entry points”, “direction of travel” and dozens of such like. If the language is vague, obscure, woolly, impenetrable, then the ideas lurking behind it will be equally vague and woolly.

The principle that those who spend publicly given money should be open about how they spend it is unquestionable. But the manner in which accountability is operated is crucial. Too often the cry of “accountability” is used as a none-too-transparent cloak for interference. The proliferating forms in which accountability is demanded only get in the way of the creation of the arts for which the money is given in the first place. This is not an accident, a byproduct of a bureaucratic tic for tidiness. It is usually a deliberate — and nontransparent — way of exerting control that would not be tolerated in other circumstances.
These attitudes get in the way, they make life more difficult for the artists, the real creators. They do not — to use a management cant phrase — “add value”.

What I love about the best arts organisations that help artists to flourish is the energy and curiosity with which ideas are turned into art. The best of these organisations are alert, intense, questing, dynamic and effective.

What value do the policymakers and their myriad questions truly add to the hard work of creating the new? Incoming governments have often trumpeted a policy of a “bonfire of regulations”. Perhaps a true coda to Tony Blair’s speech at Tate Modern would be for him to free the arts from so many of the supervisory bodies that restrict activity rather than freeing it. Or perhaps the new Gordon Brown Government can ask arts bureaucrats to really justify what they contribute to the health of the arts in the United Kingdom?
Sir John Tusa is the managing director of the Barbican Centre.

From The Times

Something rotten...

According to some reports, 'fears are growing' that the behaviour of the MOD and the fifteen released navel personnel in selling their stories to the media might result in a lessening in public sympathy for them.

Whether there was much there to begin with is highly questionable. This past week, it's not been necessary to be a hard-beaked hawk to have been made utterly despondent first by the remarkable level of public indifference to the crisis, and then by the utter lack of decorum and supine self-justification which characterised the actions and pronouncements of the fifteen, and the soft-ball indulgence with which they have been treated by the broadcast media. A few streets away from me, a house is festooned in banners and balloons in a welcome home to one of the seamen. But so far, neighbourly interest seems to have been rather scant. Indeed I would in other circumstances have been moved to add my congratulations, but on this occasion, when our failings have been so cruelly exposed, I have found it impossible.

Why has television been so craven? This must be because this story fitted perfectly the dumbed-down Diana-fication of the news reporting agenda. It wanted a blubfest, and it's been doing its best to get it. Doubtless this will continue tonight when Faye Turney is interviewed by Trevor McDonald on ITV. Television would have liked this to have been The People's Hostages.

But from Friday's press conference on, only the most hysterically sentimental (who unfortunately, in our society today, make up a large number) would not have had serious doubts and reservations niggling away at the backs of their minds. Most people may not be able to readily articulate it, but they sense that this whole episode says something disturbing about what has happened to us.

The print media, thank goodness, have in its various colours been more restrained, and have either conspicuously kept their council or have been describing the qualms and unease many have felt as the whole episode has unfolded. Interestingly it was a piece in the Guardian by Marina Hyde which summed up, albeit flippantly, what many of us have been thinking.

The West is facing a decades-long struggle. Many people don't get this, which is of course a help to those in the West itself who want so desperately to see it fail. It's up to us to continue to make the case, to do everything we can to get Europe to wake up. In the meantime, it would be helpful if we didn't have to listen to tales of our military sobbing themselves to sleep at night.

James Delingpole tells us How to be Right

On Monday evening, author and journalist James Delingpole gave the NCF the benefit of his wisdom when he talked about his new book How to be Right: a Guide to making Lefty Liberals History. The event was held at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies in London, and drew a good crowd who put James’s A to Z guide to the test after he’d been interviewed by director Peter Whittle.

James and Anthony Browne, chief political correspondent of the Times

To order How to be Right on Amazon, press here

Gerard Baker has an excellent piece in today’s Times

Although it’s mostly concerned with the BBC, Baker's general point about the opinion-setting powers of a metropolitan elite, and their attitudes to the rest of the country, hits the target. As anybody who has worked in television will know, there is in fact little to choose in this respect between those who work in the BBC and most other areas of broadcasting now, but the crucial difference is that, as a public service, the BBC is paid for by us whether we like it on not.

Great City. Shame about the BBC

For someone who has not lived in the city for more than a decade, the occasional trip to London is a reminder of how richly it deserves its new reputation as the world’s capital.

As my colleague James Harding wrote in times2 this week, there’s a vibrancy about London these days that easily eclipses New York or Paris or Tokyo. To many residents, perhaps, life in London may be a struggle against rising crime and a crowded Tube and overpriced housing, but from an international perspective, it is truly the world’s preeminent urban locale.

In fact, in anything other than the most literal, geographic expression of the term, London is really no longer an English city at all. Its great economic dynamo, the City, powers corporations from Shanghai to Seattle. Its labour force, drawn to it by the opportunities of its free markets, is much more polyglot and multinational than any other urban concentration in the world.

But there’s salt to this strawberry. London’s political culture has been uprooted from its English heritage. It is run — if you can call it that — by a sort of postmodern communist Mayor, whose political voice — minus the annoying nasal whine — would sound right at home in Paris, Bologna or San Francisco. It hosts a metropolitan elite that loftily gazes three ways: outward, at the supposed superiority of anything not British; inward, at its own ineffable genius; and down its elegantly pampered nose, at the provincial trivialities that consume the dreary lives of the rest of the population.

But worst of all; much more, much more baleful than any of these irritations, is the political, cultural and intellectual hegemony exercised by the ultimate self-serving metropolitan monopoly, the BBC. Much worse because, unlike mayors and snobs, its domination of the rest of the country is so complete and so permanent.

On a recent trip back to Britain, I happened to hear on the BBC an interview with Helen Mirren, shortly before her Oscars triumph. Amid the usual probing sort of questioning that is the currency of celebrity journalism (“How do you manage to look so young? Is there anyone since Shakespeare who has come close to matching your talent?”) one particular gem caught my attention.

Dame Helen was asked how difficult it had been to play such an “unsympathetic character” as the Queen, the eponymous heroine of her recent film. She replied, quite tartly, that she didn’t find the Queen unsympathetic at all and launched into her now familiar riff about how she thought Elizabeth II really, surprisingly, quite agreeable.

It was a little incident, a small crystal in the battering hailstorm of drivel that pours daily through the airwaves. And yet to my mind it signified something so large. It had nothing to do with politics or Iraq or America. It was so telling in its revelation of prejudices and presumptions precisely because it was on such a slight matter as the sensibilities of an actress.

It betrayed an absolutely rock-solid assumption that the Queen is fundamentally unsympathetic, and that anyone who might still harbour some respect for the monarch — or indeed for that matter, the military or the Church, or the countryside or the joint stock company or any of the great English bequests to the world — must be some reactionary old buffer out in the sticks who has not had the benefit of the London media’s cultural enlightenment.

More than that, the question — all fawning and fraternal and friendly — contained within it an assumption that, of course, every thoughtful person shares the same view.

You really do have to leave the country to appreciate fully how pernicious the BBC’s grasp of the nation’s cultural and political soul has become. The groupthink and assumptions implicit in almost everything broadcast by BBC News, and even less explicitly by much else of the corporation’s output, lie like a suffocating blanket over the national consciousness.

This is the mindset that sees the effortless superiority, at every turn, of benign collectivism over selfish individualism, exploited worker over unscrupulous capitalist, enlightened European over brutish American, thoughtful atheist over dumb believer, persecuted Arab over callous Israeli; and that believes the West is the perpetrator of just about every ill that has ever befallen the world — from colonialism to global warming.

I’m often told, when I take on like this, that I’m ignoring the quality of BBC output. But I spent almost a decade in the employ of the BBC and I can say, without demeaning my gifted colleagues at The Times, that it has probably one of the highest concentrations of talent of any institution in the world. But that, of course, is the problem. It perpetuates its power by attracting and retaining an educated elite that is distinguished by its unstinting devotion to collectivist values. I’ve no doubt it does what it does very well. It is what it does I object to.

A necessary word here about our sponsor. Anything critical of the BBC written by an employee of Rupert Murdoch is instantly dismissed. It’s not an unreasonable instinct. Outside Murdochland it is solemnly assumed that each morning the drones of News Corporation are given their marching orders on how to interpret every event so that it conforms precisely to the commercial and political instincts of the proprietor.

In the real world, not only does the Murdoch media have only a fraction of the reach of the BBC, but a casual glance at its output demonstrates it is far less monolithic in its outlook than is the BBC.

Fortunately, in the US this week, I was struck by an article on the oped pages of The New York Times, the very citadel of leftish political correctness. Written by an apparently completely sane professor at a prestigious US university and entitled “Biased Broadcasting Corporation”, it assailed the BBC’s Middle Eastern services for their consistently antiWestern tone and content.

When the editorial pages of The New York Times accuse the BBC of anti-Western bias it is worth taking notice. It is a little like Osama bin Laden accusing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of being a bit harsh on the Jews. It suggests that in other, even pretty unlikely, parts of the world, people are waking up to the menace to our values represented by the BBC. The British sadly, seem curiously content to remain in thrall to it.

In the Times today

University is accused of censoring anti-Semitic Islam lecture, by Sean O'Neill

The University of Leeds was accused of infringing free speech last night when it cancelled a lecture on “Islamic anti-Semitism” by a German academic.

Matthias Köntzel arrived at the university yesterday morning to begin a three-day programme of lectures and seminars, but was told that it had been called off on “security grounds”.

Dr Köntzel, a political scientist who has lectured around the world on the antiSemitic ideology of Islamist groups, told The Times there were concerns that he would be attacked. He said that he was “outraged” that his meetings had been cancelled and had yet to receive an explanation.

The university, which acted after complaints from Muslim students, denied that it was interfering with the academic freedom of Dr Köntzel, and said that proper arrangements for stewarding the meeting had not been made.

The lecture, entitled “Hitler’s Legacy: Islamic antiSemitism in the Middle East”, was organised by the university’s German department and publicised three weeks ago. A large attendance had been expected.

Dr Köntzel, a former adviser to the German Green Party, said: “I have been told that it has had to be cancelled for security reasons. It seems there were concerns that there could be violence against my person.

“I have lectured in lots of countries on this subject. I gave the same talk at Yale University recently, and this is the first time I have been invited to lecture in the UK. Nothing like this has ever happened before – this is censorship.

“It is a controversial area but I am accustomed to debate. I value the integrity of academic debate and I feel that it really is in danger here. This is a very important subject and if you cannot address it on university property, then what is a university for?”

Dr Köntzel, a research associate at the Vidal Sassoon International Centre for the Study of Antisemitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said that he had been shown two e-mails that had been received, which objected to his lecture.

One, apparently written by a student, said: “As a Muslim and an Arab this has come to me as a great shock. The only intention that you have for doing this is to increase hatred as I clearly regard it as an open racist attack.”

Ahmed Sawalem, president of the university’s student Islamic Society, confirmed that he had contacted the office of Professor Michael Arthur, the Vice-Chancellor, to register an official complaint.

“The title of the talk is provocative and I have searched the internet to read his writings and they are not very pleasant,” Mr Sawalem said. “We are not opposed to freedom of expression. We just sent a complaint, we did not ask for the talk to be cancelled.”

The university authorities contacted the German department on Tuesday and asked for a change in the title. The department agreed to relabel the talk as “The Nazi Legacy: the export of antiSemitism to the Middle East”.

Yesterday morning, the head of the German department, Professor Stuart Taberner, was called to a meeting with the Vice-Chancellor’s staff and the head of security. After the meeting, Dr Köntzel’s lecture and workshops were cancelled.

Annette Seidel Arpaci, an academic in the German department, said: “This is an academic talk by a scholar, it is not a political rally. The sudden cancellation is a sell-out of academic freedom, especially freedom of speech, at the University of Leeds.” A spokes-woman for the university said that it valued freedom of speech and added that the cancellation of the meeting had been a bureaucratic issue.

“The decision to cancel the meeting has nothing to do with academic freedom, freedom of speech, antiSemitism or Islam-ophobia, and those claiming that is the case are making mischief,” she said.

Culture Clash on 18 Doughty Street Talk TV

This week – everything you always wanted to ask about being conservative, but were too afraid to ask. We’ll be looking at the new book by journalist and author James Delingpole – How to be Right : The Essential Guide to making Lefty Liberals History. James – a regular and much valued guest on this programme – has written an A to B of all things right-wing – and left for that matter – from Edward Heath to Hunting, and smoking to sexism.

But first, we’ll be discussing a controversial new film about a group of urban vigilantes which has had many critics grinding their teeth in outrage. Director Nick Love, whose previous films include The Football Factory and The Business, was inspired by the true story of a random, violent attack on a Cambridge student, and here follows a group of frustrated and demoralised men who decide that when the forces of law and order break down, the time has come to take matters into their own hands.

With me tonight are the Radio 3 presenter Petroc Trelawny, Damian Thompson, leader writer for the Daily Telegraph and editor-in-chief of the Catholic Herald, and TV producer Michael Attwell.

Watch it Tonight – everything you always wanted to ask about being conservative, but were too afraid to ask. We’ll be looking at the new book by journalist and author James Delingpole – How to be Right : The Essential Guide to making Lefty Liberals History. James – a regular and much valued guest on this programme – has written an A to B of all things right-wing – and left for that matter – from Edward Heath to Hunting, and smoking to sexism.

But first, we’ll be discussing a controversial new film about a group of urban vigilantes which has had many critics grinding their teeth in outrage. Director Nick Love, whose previous films include The Football Factory and The Business, was inspired by the true story of a random, violent attack on a Cambridge student, and here follows a group of frustrated and demoralised men who decide that when the forces of law and order break down, the time has come to take matters into their own hands.

With me tonight are the Radio 3 presenter Petroc Trelawny, Damian Thompson, leader writer for the Daily Telegraph and editor-in-chief of the Catholic Herald, and TV producer Michael Attwell.

Watch it there

Culture Clash asks: Do you trust the BBC?

Can We Trust the BBC?, the much anticipated book by the former BBC reporter Robin Aitkin, has finally been published, and, despite being predictably ignored by the BBC itself, it has once again brought under the public spotlight the ongoing debate about liberal left-wing bias at the corporation.

Aitken was a news reporter for 25 years, and the book deals solely with the BBC’s news and current affairs output and his experience of working in it, but at the same time, he makes the point that the outlook of the whole corporation is influenced by the culture which exists there.

In the chapter ‘Blowing the Whistle’, one of Aitken’s anonymous interviewees sets out what he says are the core beliefs at the centre of this culture. They are: anti-racist, pro-abortion, pro-union and anti-big business, pro-United Nations, pro-government spending, pro-multiculturalism and ethnic minorities in general, anti-Monarchist, anti-American and anti-private education and healthcare.

If this is true, then what, if anything, should we do about the BBC? To discuss this I’m glad to have with me writer and commentator Douglas Murray, TV producer and journalist Carol Gould, Social Affairs Unit author Adam Smyth and journalist Tessa Mayes.

Watch it on 18 Doughty Street

South Bank Show on Mark Wallinger

The artist Mark Wallinger, whose installation paying tribute to Brian Haw’s anti-war protest is currently on show at Tate Britain, is the subject of this coming Sunday’s South Bank Show. The programme goes out at 11.10pm on ITV 1. We talked to the programme’s producer and director, Susan Shaw.

Susan, why did you decide to do a programme about Mark Wallinger, and why at this time?

To be honest, the Mark Wallinger film was not my idea. As I am known to be connected in the art world, Melvyn Bragg wanted me to make the film. I had a long and chaotic relationship with the art critic Matthew Collings in the 90s and witnessed the birth of the so called YBA movement of which Mark Wallinger was a part. It was felt that Mark's huge and controversial new installation at Tate Britain (a very prestigious commission) would provide an excellent focal point for the film. The work is called "State Britain" suggesting an Orwellian, paranoid view of contemporary British politics.

Mark's installation is a forensic remaking of Brian Haw's peace protest at Parliament Square before it was disassembled and seized by the police in 2006 - they were able to do this under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act, which created a one kilometer exclusion zone around Parliament Square, forbidding spontaneous protest. Under the Act, permission has to be obtained in advance of any protest from the head of the Metropolitan Police.

The Tate Britain installation is, for want of a better expression, political art. When art and politics collide, does it make a difference to how you approach the making of a programme?

Yes, absolutely. As broadcasters we are legally required by OffCom to present a balanced view of political issues although I would say this requirement is unevenly applied. Mark's new work at the Tate is a passionate, quasi religious protest against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This presented a challenge which I relished. In order to present a strong counter argument to Mark's anti war anti Blairite stance, I brought in the brilliant young writer and commentator Douglas Murray. He makes a political critique of Mark's new work, saying that Brian Haw is a totally inappropriate icon of freedom of speech, as a) he continues to protest at Parliament Square although his display was reduced from 45 to 3 metres and b) the greatest threat to freedom of speech in this country comes from Islamism, and not from Blair's legislation or the police. Douglas also makes a very powerful point when he says that strategy and serious conversation about our contemporary political dilemmas have been replaced by emotion in works like Mark's "State Britain". Of course, I also had to give voice to Brian Haw and Mark Wallinger's views - even if I disagreed with them.

Would you say that the art establishment is largely at one with Wallinger’s message?

I would say that there was an awkward assumption by the artist that my own political orientation would be Soft Left, Anti-war and Anti-Blairite. Ironic, as I am employed by a Labour Peer who voted for the war. I think it is fair to say that Mark was taken aback by Melvyn's line of questioning on "State Britain", which was challenging. The YBA movement as a whole was produced by Thatcherism in interestingly contrary directions. While not a single artist that I know of in that movement could be described as expressly Thatcherite or Conservative, and many of the works they produced were direct attacks on Conservative policy, they also epitomised the entrepreneurship that was encouraged by Thatcher, famously organising their own shows in the late 80s and early 90s without the assistance of commercial galleries. Moreover, the sponsor that enabled the explosion of success in their careers was the man who orchestrated Thatcher's electoral victories; Charles Saatchi. Damien Hirst, the leading light in the YBA movement is a famously good businessman and is now one of the richest men in England. The YBA's have enthusiastically embraced their new wealth and are not known for involvement in charity or for political activism at a grass roots level, although Mark Wallinger is perhaps an exception - as a sincerely committed socialist who still makes his political convictions explicit in his work, and unlike Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, has not embraced what can loosely be described as celebrity culture. Although my political views radically differ from Mark's, I do respect him for this. He was also one of the finest painters of his generation but interestingly, he has given painting up in favour of works produced by teams of assistants according to his ideas (as with State Britain) - which is now the norm, for artists like Damien Hirst, Rachel Whiteread and Tracey Emin. They have effectively rejected hand crafted works in favour of industrial production which generates huge earnings for themselves and much, much lower incomes for the artists and technicians that actually make their work. We touch on these issues in my Mark Wallinger film but there simply wasn't time for a thorough going discussion of the economics of the art world now (a television hour is now 48mins 30secs after commercial breaks). I wanted to leave space for a thorough going discussion of the issues surrounding freedom of speech, raised by "State Britain".

You’ve worked in arts programming for a long time. How, in your view, are the arts and arts broadcasting in general handling the Iraq war, and the issues thrown up by the growth in radical Islam?

Personally, as a feminist, I am profoundly disappointed by the quality of discussion surrounding radical Islam in the media. It staggers me that the majority of the chattering classes who are happy to grandstand on the Iraq War and Islam, remain ignorant of the basic tenets of Islam and in particular, the fact that the life of a woman is considered under Sharia Law to be worth half that of a man. It seems to me that while the British Media is very happy to give voice to radicalised Muslim women, those fighting for the right to wear the veil even if teaching in our schools, for example, there has been an absolute failure to represent the views of feminists like myself who regard the veil as a symbol of the undeniable second class status of women under Islam (in all its permutations, sorry) and I have a queasy feeling, echoed by Minnette Marrin at this week’s New Culture Forum event on the theatre, that this is due to fear, after Theo Van Gogh's execution and decapitation for daring to explore these issues in "Submission".

I encountered an intense sensitivity about references to Islam in my Mark Wallinger film. I had to fight to keep references to Van Gogh and the reaction to the Danish cartoons in the film in the context of a discussion of freedom of speech. All of these ironies are summed up for me in one of the favoured slogans of protestors against the Danish cartoons (99.9% male of course): Freedom of Speech = Freedom to Insult. Yes, it does, and the freedom to insult is part of our cultural tradition and heritage in Britain as it also enshrines our freedom of speech. As a woman I have to endure what I see as the insults of radical Islam and yet negotiate what is now an institutionalised paranoia around offending Muslims. In Britain the Suffragettes secured the vote for women through immense personal sacrifice; Emily Davison threw herself under the hooves of the King's horse in 1913 and died for the rights currently enjoyed by women in Britain, including Muslim women, whom I would suggest, would certainly prefer to have divorces and sexual offences considered under British Law rather than Sharia, which deprives them of so many of the human rights we take for granted.

I am also deeply disappointed by the response of the art world to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There have been few works even addressing the issue - in this sense Mark Wallinger's new work is significant, even if one disagrees with it. Too many of our visual artists are too busy making obscene amounts of money and too enthusiastically embracing the cults of personality and celebrity to bother sticking their necks out in any particular direction, except in the expression of an unpleasant and arrogant contempt for the patrons and collectors who have made them wealthy and famous. These are strange and troubling times.

END.

Our next event - Monday, March 19th

You are invited to hear:

JAMES DELINGPOLE

on his new book

HOW TO BE RIGHT

The Essential Guide to Making Lefty Liberals History


Monday, 19th March, 6.30pm for 7pm

The Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 28 Russell Square, London WC1 (nearest tube Russell Square)

If you think modern Britain has gone mad, then James Delingpole’s How to be Right will confirm your view. Part polemic, part amusing opinion, but mostly hilarious rant, this is a journey into everything that’s wrong with our politically correct society.
As a journalist for the Sunday Telegraph and The Spectator, James Delingpole has expressed his thoughts - articulately and amusingly - on everything from politics to popular music, from school sports days to spliffs. If you’ve thought about it, he’s written about it. In this A-Z collection of brief essays he turns his lively mind to modern society gone mad. And what he discovers is that the older you get, the more mad it seems.Can’t understand why Coldplay are the biggest band in the world? Don’t see why there was such a fuss over Pete Burns’s `gorilla` coat? Wondering what ever happened to good, old-fashioned universities? Well, join James’s club. Pouring scorn on the state of Britain after a decade of Blair and Brown, How to be Right couldn’t have come along at a more appropriate time.

Come and join us, prepare to foam and splutter, and to be seriously entertained.

Please RSVP to events@newcultureforum.org.uk

We would kindly ask for a £5 donation on the evening.

Enlightening Transcript

The New English Review has a transcript from Channel 4's Dispatches - Undercover Mosque.

A Dispatches reporter attends mosques run by organisations whose public faces are presented as moderate and finds preachers condemning integration into British society, condemning democracy and praising the Taliban for killing British soldiers.

N: Kuffaar is an Arabic word meaning: non-believer, an infidel (generic
meaning: non-Muslim) –
AU: “Those kuffaar, they do whatever they want
to do.”

N: It’s a term our reporter was to hear being repeatedly
used in a derogatory way –

AU: “They are liars, they are terrorists
themselves. They will come before the people and talk and they are lying, you
can’t believe them … These are pathological liars.”

N: Green Lane Mosque calls itself a centre for inter-faith communications
welcoming people of all religions, but our reporter filmed there over four
months and found this speaker, Abu Usama, was their main English language
speaker. He says Christians and Jews are enemies to Muslims.

AU: “It has come to pass that the Christians and the Jews, America, the UK, France,
Germany, they have come against the religion of Islam. Why give up your religion
and your long legacy of Islam to please someone who is an enemy to you?”

The full text is there
This film was discussed on Culture Clash by Peter Whittle and his comrades on January 16th along with the US documentary Iraq in Fragments.

Answers on a postcard please

The New Culture Forum’s old friend, ex-BBC reporter Robin Aitken - who spoke at one of our meetings in September last year – has a piece in the Mail on Sunday today to coincide with the much-anticipated publication of his book, Can We Trust the BBC? It should be read by anybody who thinks that criticism of the corporation’s political coverage is the product of loony right-wing paranoia.

Remember Robin Aitken at the NCF

Watch Robin Aitken at the NCF on 18 Doughty Street
Read Daily Mail's piece

... and buy Robin's book here

Politics and the Theatre: What's Left? Tuesday, February 27th 6.30 for 7.00pm

You are invited to

‘POLITICS AND THE THEATRE: WHAT’S LEFT?’

A discussion with playwright Richard Bean, Associate Director of the Royal Court Ramin Gray, Sunday Times columnist Minette Marrin and playwright Shelley Silas

Tuesday, 27th February, 6.30 for 7pm

The Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 28 Russell Square, London WC1 (nearest tube Russell Square)


Last year, the National Theatre’s director Nicholas Hytner said that one thing he would really like to see there in the future would be a ‘good, mischievous, right-wing play.’

The implication in Hytner’s statement - that such a production would be an unusual occurrence, a naughty aberration, a guilty pleasure - would certainly have confirmed many in their conviction that when it comes to politics, the theatre stands firmly behind left-liberal lines. Recent productions in both the subsidised sector and the West End would seem to bare this out. My Name is Rachel Corrie, Drunk Enough to Say I Love You, Guantanamo, Stuff Happens, Playing with Fire…the political approach in these plays remains unvarying. And when there is criticism of the prevailing orthodoxy, it comes firmly from the Left.

But if this is all true, why are there no alternative voices? Is there, or should there be, such a thing as a right-of-centre play? Are there untouchable subjects in the theatre? Would different political approaches bring in new audiences? And why are voices on the Left apparently silent about important issues thrown up by radical Islam and the growing debate about multiculturalism?

Shelley Silas’s theatre plays include Calcutta Kosher and Falling. She has also written extensively for Radio Four - her plays include a co-adaptation of Paul Scott's The Raj Quartet (with John Harvey.) She compiled and edited an anthology of short stories, 12 Days. Her new play, Made in Glasgow, will be produced by Tamasha Theatre in 2008.

Richard Bean has had four plays produced at The Royal Court as well as plays at the National, Bush, Newcastle Live! and at Hull Truck. He was awarded the Critics' Circle Award for Best Play for "Harvest" last year. His political sex farce which looks at the accession of Turkey into the European Union will be produced by Hampstead Theatre in July this year.

Ramin Gray is Associate director of the Royal Court. He is director of Alastair Beaton’s King of Hearts, which opens this week at the Hampstead Theatre

Please RSVP at events@newcultureforum.org.uk
We would kindly ask for a £5 donation on the evening towards drinks.

Culture Clash on 18DoughtyStreet tonight at 9pm

Is Islamic Fundamentalism a threat to the Arts?

The issue of how the arts should respond to the problems posed by Islamic belief and Islamic fundamentalism, and whether or not they should fear censorship, or in fact exercise pre-emptive self-censorship, is something which is now exercising the minds of many in the cultural arena.
Arguably the biggest cultural issue facing us is also one which could be the most dangerous. Two years ago Theo Van Gogh was murdered because of his film ‘Submission’. Last year, the Berlin Opera was threatened because a production of Idomeneo featured a depiction of Mohammed. Here, a crucial part of Tamburlaine at the Barbican was cut. Filming of Monica Ali’s book was moved from Brick Lane due to protests.
Should the arts ignore protest from Muslims?
Or it is purely a question of exercising tact?
Furthermore, nowhere, it would seem, are the arts dealing with such issues as, say, Muslim treatment of women, or the position of gays. There is a deafening silence. Why is this?
Is it fair to say that, while Madonna provokes her usual faux outrage by getting up onto a crucifix in the full knowledge that they’ll be no consequences, it’s unlikely that we will ever again see a depiction of Mohammed in a cultural context? With me to discuss these issues are journalist and historian Ruth Dudley Edwards, award-winning author and playwright Shelley Silas, Sunday Times columnist Minette Marrin, and producer and former BAFTA chairman Michael Attwell.

Watch it HERE

Is Party Animals an accurate portrayal of Westminster lives?

New BBC Drama Party Animals aims to bring to the small screen all the fun, glamour and occasional misdeeds of the researchers, lobbyists, journalists and politicians operating in the Westminster Village. Is it an accurate in its portrayal and is it any good? Guests include Culture Clash regulars Dominic Hilton and Dawn Steeves, Robert Stuart Nemeth, researcher to Michael Gove MP and Damian Thompson from the Daily Telegraph. Hosted as ever by Peter Whittle.

To watch Culture Clash, click here

And more on the subject on Party Animals homepage

Same ol' Same ol'

‘But is it original? No, it’s a copy. Does it ask new questions or challenge our preconceptions? No, it merely confirms the liberal consensus. A pro-war, pro-Blair work of art…now that would be radical.’

Tim Teeman in The Times gives his verdict on artists Mark Wallinger’s recreation of anti-war protester Brian Haw’s mini peace camp, which has just opened at Tate Britain. Read the full piece here

A Hawk on Cameron's Shoulder - Jasper Gerard interviews Michael Gove for today's Observer

Journalist and author Michael Gove's hardline views on Islamic terrorism ignited fierce debate. Now he has unlikely allies, he tells Jasper Gerard

Sunday January 14, 2007 The Observer

Suddenly he touches my knee, leans forward and whispers: 'Look!' Michael Gove quivers, as if he has just seen through the mist one of the seven wonders of the world: he has sighted Baroness Thatcher gliding towards us.
But lately it has been Labour grandees beating a path to the Conservative frontbencher, following publication of his uncompromising book on Islamic terror, Celsius 7/7. Among them was Gordon Brown, who stopped to congratulate this key David Cameron adviser on his hawkish work - which will alarm Labour MPs hoping for a gentler foreign policy from Prime Minister Brown.
Gove's was the book that cabinet ministers read during Christmas. Even the Home Office, he discloses, has 'invited me in for a little chat' after he attacked ministers for funding Islamicist groups, which according to Gove merely legitimises terrorism. 'For a long time the Home Office has thought it has to work with these organisations, but I hope it has thought again as a result of this book.' Yet this rigorous intellectual - adopted and raised modestly in Scotland, prior to a stellar journalistic career - confesses the book has gone down less well with Conservative colleagues desperate to appear more 'huggable', including, he hints, Cameron.
Gove's contention is that a small but determined brigade of Muslims has developed 'transnational' loyalties superseding any attachment to Britain. Gove, tipped for high office in a Tory administration, argues that some have been breathtakingly frank; it is just that the government turned a deaf ear.
Understandably the extremist dream of ensnaring everywhere from Catford to California in a caliphate makes this politest of men bristle in his Savile Row suit; but equally striking is Gove's determination to impose a Western way of life on the Middle East. Isn't that hypocritical? 'I am not a relativist,' Gove, a Radio 4 Moral Maze regular, answers firmly. 'I believe multi-party democracy is a superior way to live.' Some Muslims might argue that of Sharia law. 'But then we are lost in a moral desert. We must be clear about what is worth defending.'
He points out that democracies are far less likely to go to war than totalitarian countries, which is what he thinks many Islamic states amount to. But how can we be sure our civilisation is the ideal? Even Western philosophers such as Soren Kierkegaard have argued that civic society of the type Gove extols is merely a staging post to a higher, religious life. Is it right to 'force people to be free'?
'I accept, given some states' history, we cannot give them the American Declaration of Independence and a British parliament and expect them to have it running by Tuesday,' he concedes. 'Nevertheless, I say "these values are better". Rather than the Foreign Office idea of siding with the local sheikh, I am more in the tradition of Palmerston, who supported smaller countries breaking away from feudal empires. My views are closer to some on the left than to, say, Henry Kissinger.' Such are the curious bedfellows of the war on terror.
So his book hasn't gone down too well on the Tory benches? 'Some colleagues disagree, some more than others,' he smiles. 'David Cameron did say "I'm not a neo-con", whereas,' he pauses, 'I am.' He rattles off policies on which he and Cameron agree, but he has the grace to admit the Tory leader also criticised 'the Bush White House in terms of patience and humility'.
Will Gove endorse his leader's criticism? Gove is a sharp debater - he could convince you global warming is great or Coldplay cool - but for once he looks anxious. To buy time, he puts down his teacup and stoops to tie his lace. Eventually he says: 'I have a slightly warmer view of Tony Blair than other Conservatives. The vehemence of the criticism of Blair is so strong and misguided I thought I should defend him - not that it will do him any good.' When Gove sighs 'There are people who want Bush to fail, Iraq to fail,' you wonder if he means the Tory party, perhaps the Tory leader.
Some find Gove too strident; as housing spokesman he has had Tories hopping in their green wellies by suggesting that the market should be allowed to let rip and that houses should be built on farms. He is called, glibly, a 'moderniser'; but while he is liberal on issues such as gay rights, he is largely engaged in finding clever new ways to defend traditional values.
While most in the British establishment emphasise the importance of the Middle East road map, Gove makes only the most perfunctory admission that the failure to find a solution contributes to terrorism. Don't you, I ask, accept that, while Osama bin Laden would not be bought off with an Israel-Palestine peace accord, the situation might draw anger from many Arabs tempted towards violence?
'I see the logic,' he says, which is Gove-speak for 'no'; charm is his weapon, and his deadliest tactic is to sound sympathetic while tearing your argument to shreds. 'When Islamicists talk about occupation they are not referring to the West Bank or Gaza - they object to Israel per se, and any American soldiers on any Arab lands.' A nice point, but this is not the view of many Arabs. 'Indeed, but Islamicists will say, "The West is weakening: one more heave".'
If Islamism is engaged in a to-the-death struggle with the West, how does Gove answer bin Laden's point that al-Qaeda isn't giving a terribly hard time to Sweden? 'France was vocal in its opposition [to the Iraq war], but has uncovered a lot of terrorist plots. So has Spain after withdrawing from Iraq.'
Critics accuse Gove of finding facts to fit his preoccupations. As well as being massively pro-Israel, he is stridently opposed to the Good Friday agreement, which he claims Islamists have taken as Western weakness. Can he really claim that in the caves of Tora Bora they sagely study how Blair caved in on the Royal Ulster Constabulary? 'I think,' he says 'you underestimate their sophistication.'
Does he exaggerate the threat from Islamic forces? Perhaps, but that might be better than underestimating it. His heroine had a phrase for it: the resolute approach.

Minette Marrin on Simone Clarke

Minette Marin has a good piece in the Sunday Times today about Simone Clarke, the so-called BNP ballerina, Sugar Plum Fairy vs forces of Darkness, in which she calls on the arts to protect all freedom of speech. She makes the point, quite rightly, that many creative figures have been apologists for disgusting regimes, such as Mao’s Communist China and the former Soviet Union. Nobody however would suggest that such names should have lost their jobs because of their views. You either have freedom of speech or you do not. However much one might disagree with somebody’s politics, it is an extremely dangerous situation to have arrived at when people with unpalatable views can be forced out of their livelihoods. The reason usually given – that the person’s political position could adversely affect the job they do – is often spurious, and is especially absurd in the case of Clarke, a classical dancer. Overall however, this case is yet another example of the totalitarian tendency which exists on the Left, which seeks to silence all dissenting voices.

Minette Marrin's piece in The Sunday Times, Sugar plum fairy v the forces of darkness
Also, Simone Clarke and Yat-Sen Chang's website

What we want to read...

This week in The Spectator, two of our favourite most recent reads get very interesting reviews. Graham Stewart on George Walden's Time to Emigrate and Michael Gove on Mark Steyn's America Alone - THE dream ticket for NCF's Team members.

Our Best of:

I know that for many of my fellow panty-waisted, cheese-eating, surrender monkeys being harangued about our propensity for cultural suicide by cheerleaders for Bush can grate a little. But it would be a mistake to dismiss the author of America Alone as simply a jester at the court of King George W.(...)

That many of Steyn's conclusions will be unpalatable to the European consensus only underlines how much a failure to face harsh truths has characterised the European response to the scale of the terrorist threat we face.(...)

One of the biggest questions in contemporary European politics is how our societies manage relations between Muslim citizens and others, and that’s been reflected in the debate over the veil, the agonised questioning which followed the death of Theo van Gogh, and the controversy over the Danish cartoons.(...)

Steyn’s specific contention is that the problem is not so much multiculturalism as biculturalism. The danger as he sees it is the inherent tension between an increasingly liberal and hedonistic, yet diffident and uncertain, de-Christianised civilisation and an increasingly religiously zealous and culturally assertive Islamist movement. (...)

And a mention to Melanie Phillips in Michael's conclusion, what a treat!

But Steyn, like Melanie Phillips in her very different way, has done us all a service by ensuring that questions some would prefer to pass over are posed in a way it is impossible to ignore.

The full text is available here

And of course, you can still register to hear Michael Gove at The New Culture Forum on January 22nd - Are we seeing the emergence of an Anti-islamist Intelligentsia?

FG

Our January Event

You are invited to hear:

MICHAEL GOVE MP

Are We Seeing the Emergence of a New Anti-Islamist Intelligentsia?

Monday, 22nd January, 7 for 7.30pm

The Attlee Suite, Portcullis House, Westminster, London SW1A 2LW

(next to Westminster Tube)

The British intelligentsia has traditionally been characterised by its adherence to the doctrines of multiculturalism, cultural relativism and internationalism.

But as Western values face an onslaught from a hostile and increasingly emboldened Islam, and established political allegiances either fracture or make disturbing new alliances, are we witnessing a major new intellectual shift?

Some of the foremost literary figures of our time - Martin Amis, Ian McEwan and Salman Rushdie - have spoken about the threat which Islamism poses to Western culture. Prominent left-of-centre journalists and academics, disturbed by much of the left’s unthinking anti-Americanism and seeming fondness for dictators, have formed the Euston Manifesto Group. And amongst the left/liberal-leaning cultural and media establishment, attitudes are hardening as issues of cultural ‘sensitivity’ and self-censorship in relation to Islam come increasingly to the fore. Is a new anti-Islamist intelligentsia emerging?

Michael Gove, Member of Parliament for Surrey Heath and Shadow Minister for Housing, is one of Britain’s leading writers and thinkers on terrorism and foreign affairs. Michael was founding chairman of Policy Exchange, and is a founder member of the Henry Jackson Society. As well as being a columnist for The Times, he has been a frequent panellist on Radio 4’s The Moral Maze and BBC2’s Newsnight Review. His most recent book, Celsius 7/7, was published last year.

Do join us for what promises to be an important and fascinating talk. It will be followed by a Q & A session.

Please RSVP at events@newcultureforum.org.uk
We would kindly ask for a £5 donation on the evening towards drinks.