The conservative neglect of culture

By Roger Scruton.

Nobody knows what a cultural policy should aim at, what means it should use, or how it could lead to legislation or other political initiatives. Hence, in Conservative Party thinking, considerations of culture remain on the margins. Worse, as in so many areas of political life, the Conservatives seem to have abandoned this fertile territory to the Left. Here is an instance of which I have some knowledge: the Arts Council has refused to provide funding to the English Music Festival, an initiative devoted to one of the greatest and least explored legacies of our national culture. The Council objects to the word ‘English’, and to all that it means by way of settled loyalties, old-fashioned decencies, and the love of our country and its past. For the arts establishment culture should be anti-national, disruptive, part of the ‘labour of the negative’ that I described in a previous contribution to this blog. My attempts to get conservative politicians, including the Minister for Culture and the Chairman of the House of Commons Cultural Committee, to take up this cause have been greeted with silence. Who cares about Granville Bantock, Arnold Bax or Ivor Gurney, and what have they got to do with GDP, RPI, VAT, or any other collection of  letters that the government cites in the place of a philosophy?

This neglect of culture is a mistake, and here are three reasons why:

1. Conservatives are, at their best, rounded human beings, who are attached to forms of life and practices which might reasonably be described as cultural: they tend to believe in family values and the rewards of family life, and to have a love of literature, art, music and natural beauty. Their tastes vary, but they gravitate towards the serious and the enduring, and indeed it is their sense of the seriousness of human life that turns them in a conservative direction. It disheartens them to think that there is nothing to conservatism except the bits that can be transcribed as economic policy, and they would be comforted by the spectacle of a party endorsing the cultural values that they share.
2. Policies towards culture may be futile; but policies influenced by culture issue all the time. And when the culture is trivial or ideological the policies can be very destructive – as we have seen in education, multiculturalism, and the rise of the leftist thought police. To be confident in one’s cultural base is therefore a prerequisite for making firm and durable political decisions.
3. It is good for the image of conservatism that it should not be caricatured as a business consortium or a neo-liberal conspiracy. It should be seen also to be tentatively exploring the deeper issues, and making reasonable but non-belligerent contributions to the debates that occupy intelligent people today: for instance, religion and atheism, social media, pop culture, the fate of real music, architecture and the city.

Those three reasons are circumstantial. Less circumstantial is the need to recognise that the heart of conservatism is not economic but poetic. From Burke to Oakeshott our conservative thinkers have been moved by the poetry of their stance, by its appeal to the imagination, and by the echo of ancestral voices in the life and art that surround us. Even today, in our mutilated country, it is the vision of a sacred landscape, settled in endearing ways, and of the texture of daily life and the beauty of simple manners, that win young people to the conservative cause. Our cause is the cause of belonging, founded in a sense of the beauty of given things and of the need to respond to them with gratitude. This is the real reason why conservatives wish to protect our institutions, culture and educational inheritance. It is the real reason why we oppose the leftist desire to sweep everything away for the sake of an equality that can be achieved only when everyone has nothing.

Alas, however: what Oakeshott called ‘the voice of poetry in the conversation of mankind’ is rarely heard by those whom we elect to Parliament. And we surely cannot blame this entirely on Nick Clegg.

Comments

[Sir_Geechie]

Thank you for this beautifully writing piece of work!

[@Lord_Palmerston]

This is an excellent piece. Sadly David Davies' interview in the Guardian today equating pop music with homosexuality undermines the party's standing as an arbiter of culture. As far as culture goes, some of our MPs have the mental capacity of something growing in a Petri dish.

[MartinW]

I heard of the deplorable decision of the Arts Council to deny funding for the English Music Festival (and the scandalous reason they gave refuse it), but had assumed the decision had been overturned. It is shocking to learn this is still the case, and that government has not taken up the case.

[englandism.co.uk]

I see that dear old Boris is a VP of the English Music Festival, good chap. Peculiar that the Arts Council objects to the national identity by which the Arts Council England itself is identified.

One would have thought that the Islington Crew would get off on some ye olde England stuff but they probably prefer the nasal faux-accented folkies carcophanating on about the downtrodden mangel wurzel rebellions of 1676. The solution might be to get some bumblebee faced twerp to randomly ejaculate furious revolutionary screeching during performances.

[adrian clarke]

Culture is at the heart of society and individuals.It should not be a government enterprise.It should be down to the private sector and individuals to promote and support cultural events.This is the problem with MP's of all parties.They believe they are elected to run our lives as they see fit.It is why the rural community can't have fox control by hunting.Why they try to force gay marriage on a hetrosexual community.Interfere ,interfere ,interfere.
If they concentrated on the economy, the law and protecting British citizens,we would need a lot less government

[belby la farge]

The heart of conseratism is not poetic, it is emotionalistic.

Cultural conservatism, however, has a big future since cultural conservatives will attempt to lead a war against new technologies such as full immersion virtual reality, driverless cars and AI on the basis that they mean the "end of man" and dampen the relationship between "effort and reward"

This is what I mean by emotionalistic, although another phrase would be meanness of spirit.

[Frankland macdonald Wood]

I regret to observe that the Conservative Party has always maintained a rather common-sensical, Philistine and even anti-intellectual attitude to the arts and culture in general. In that, it rather reflects the Crown and the Court where decidedly low-brow attitudes obtain: "If it does not involve horses we are not interested!"

A devoted Thatcherite as I was, her markedly low-brow views on culture were a major disappointment. There have been notable poets, novelists and historians in the party, but only as a small minority, sometimes barely tolerated. One recalls the awful criticism of the great thinker Ian MacCleod, that her was "...Too clever by half".

Mr Scruton is right to highlight this dull area of the party. One has only to recall the ConservativeHome analysis of the 2010 new intake on preferences in music to see what an uncultivated and banal lot there mostly are.

[john parkes]

Perhaps if we can escape from the idea that this is yet another area of our lives in which we depend on direct government patronage, we might see a spontaneous eruption of individual and corporate moves to accept responsibility for support for cultural developments.
Spoonfeeding is for infants though and individual curiosity can still be fostered by media outlets. The meretricious tat disseminated by the BBC on all of its TV Channels might be improved to advantage in accordance with its public service role.

[Paul Marks]

Sir.

As you know the "Arts Council", and so on, was only created during and after World War II.

Was not culture in this land better off BEFORE all this government intervention?

As for the idea that having a Conservative party gcvernment would make a fundemental difference to government cultural interventionism - was that idea not discredited by the period 1979 t0 1997?

Time to get rid of the "Arts Council" and all the rest of such interventionism. And, surely, time to get rid of the BBC also.

[Martin Sewell]

Our dominant artistic ethos has become what I call " The Cultural of the Transgressive".

This is not accidental.

The 60's radical left was schooled by the philosophical thinking of Gramski and Alinski - something I seriously doubt is taught at Eton or even maybe Oxford PPE. In this if you want to win power you seek and win cultural hegemony.

It explains why BBC comedy shows ALWAYS critique from the Left; the young like and respond to humour: this makes it hard for youngsters to say - actually I agree with Conservatism.

Until the Conservative Party addresses this issue it will have a regular deficit amongst younger voters and I know people in their sixties who openly recognise a correct policy when they see it but then add " but I could NEVER vote Tory".

Maybe the big panjandrums never meet these people but we do and the failure to listen to those who have identified the problem is the same metro liberal stupidity that has landed the party with the gay marriage cock up.

[Martin Sewell]

Correction

culture of the transgressive

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[Jules Evans]

I was shocked by Eric Pickles telling Tristram Hunt that the only people who cared about library closures were 'luvvies'.

Perhaps Hunt caught Pickles on a bad day, but even so, it suggested a deep philistinism and disregard of the importance of libraries to local communities and to ordinary people's desire to better themselves. As you say, Conservatism should be culturally informed, not merely the philosophy of shop keepers.

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[Sasha Scriabin]

Fine piece. However, you appear to commit the common error of mistaking "The Conservative Party" with conservatism and traditional values. These opportunistic crooks, be- suited sharks and psychopathic liars are interchangeable with the "Liberal" or "Labour" clones that are offered in a mocking illusion of democracy and choice

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