The Arts as a Weapon of War

Britain and the Shaping of National Morale in World War II

Jorn Weingartner

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780857739001
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: History

In 1834, Lord Melbourne spoke the words that epitomised the British government's attitude towards its own involvement in the arts: 'God help the minister that meddles with Art'. However, with the outbreak of World War II, that attitude changed dramatically when 'cultural policy' became a key element of the domestic front. Not only a propaganda tool, it aimed to boost morale and prevent a wartime cultural blackout. "The Arts as a Weapon of War" traces the evolution of this policy from the creation of the Committee for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts, in 1939, to the drafting of the Arts Council's constitution in 1945. From the improvement of the National Gallery to Myra Hess' legendary concerts during the blitz, Jorn Weingartner provides a fascinating account of the powerful policy shift that laid the foundations for the modern relationship between government and the arts.

The only reason, or, at any rate the most important reason why those of us who do not tend in the direction of believing in State management, Government management or municipal management, have come to the conclusion that the scheme now here before the House is the only suitable in the circumstances, is that this particular Service differs fundamentally and essentially from almost any other enterprise that can be imagined. (...) Consequently, we who are not wedded to theories, but believe in practical business, come to the State and say: ‘Without the aid of the State and Post Office machinery, this vast business cannot go on. We will use it on a rational and sensible basis.’²⁰⁰

IV. INDICATORS OF EXTENDED STATE INFLUENCE ON THE ARTS

It is a commonplace that despite the noble British reticence in terms of state patronage before 1940, there have been solitary acts of arts sponsorship in Britain a long time before the outbreak of the Second World War.²⁰¹ The most notable examples are the creation of the British Museum in 1753 and the Reform Acts of 1845 and 1850, the Museums Act and the Public Library Act. However, these few examples show that there hardly was a thought out idea of state funding behind the respective interventions. They rather form a series – and not a very long one at that – of occasional state interference breaking with, though not upsetting the basic political thoughts of the day as shown in the previous chapters. Also, if the focus of interest lies with the arts stricto sensu, sponsorship before 1940 did not go beyond the funding of the visual arts. There had not been any financial aid to the theatre or to music in Britain on a national level, and in a very limited scale on the municipal level.²⁰² Finally, the introductory passage taken from a debate in the House of Commons about the setting up of the BBC by Royal Charter in 1926 shows that even this most far-reaching intervention in the sphere of culture before the Second World War, has to be distinguished in its form and content from other acts of state interference and was justified only by the fact that the BBC formed an entirely new service. Although this study concentrates on music, the theatre including opera and ballet and on the visual arts, the inclusion of museums in this chapter seems worthwhile because it sheds light on the motivation of the governing class to invest in culture in general. The development of state patronage is inextricably linked with the idea of public education and social improvement,²⁰³ although during wartime these aims were at times pushed in the background of politics.

The two institutions that were privileged to receive occasional funds from the Treasury before the middle of the nineteenth century were the British Museum and the National Gallery in London. The provinces were entirely excluded from the financial spreading of sweetness and light by the state. Although both mentioned homes of art and culture were funded before, it was the Prince Consort Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, coming from a German background where state patronage was accepted as a political principle, especially in states which could not compete in terms of economic or military power, who was a driving force in the encouragement of arts in Britain.²⁰⁴ Both Reform Acts of 1845 and 1850 fell into his reign. Though temporal nexus does not necessarily imply a causal nexus it is noteworthy that the funds for the British Museum dried up in the 1860s, after Albert’s death in 1861.²⁰⁵ But even those days were hardly marked by lavish spending on the arts. Minihan reports of royal loans of paintings – though no financial donations – to the Royal Academy’s British Institution for Promoting the Fine Arts, which led her to the unfavourable comparison of Britain with other powers in Europe: ‘Great Britain, arbitrating the affairs of Europe in 1816, lagged sadly behind in the civilised arts, and the victor on the battlefield was threatened with dishonour in the art gallery.’²⁰⁶

Things began to change in 1845 and 1850, when Parliament passed the Museums Act and the Public Library Act respectively. Both pieces of legislation empowered municipalities of more than 10,000 inhabitants to levy rates of ½d for the establishment of museums of art and science or a public library with an admission ceiling of 1d. For Thomas Kelly, this act did not only aim at the education of the poorer classes who previously were debarred from access to such institutions of edification or as an attempt of the ‘philanthropic and conscience-stricken middle class (...) to alleviate the lot of the poor’, but also to ‘circulate habits of honesty, sobriety and obedience.’²⁰⁷ Especially sobriety was an aim pursued with state interventions in Victorian Britain. One of the reforming MPs, Henry Cole, gave his estimation of the moral value of museums and their accessibility for the poor:

‘The working man comes to this Museum from his one or two dimly lighted cheerless dwelling-rooms, in his fustian jacket, with his shirt collar a little trimmed up, accompanied by his threes, fours, and fives of little fustian jackets, a wife, in her best bonnet, and a baby of course under her shawl. The looks of surprise and pleasure of the whole party when they first observe the brilliant lighting inside the Museums show what a new, acceptable, and wholesome excitement this evening entertainment affords to all of them. Perhaps the evening opening of Public Museums may furnish a powerful antidote to the gin palace.’²⁰⁸

From this fragment it is obvious that patronage of arts and the increase of their accessibility to the working people always entailed a moment of patronisation and social control of the audience. By 1940, the vocabulary had slightly changed, the ‘gin palace’ was exchanged for the cinema as the main enemy of culture,²⁰⁹ and ‘wholesome excitement’ was replaced by ‘worthwhile entertainment’. The spirit, though, basically remained the same.

Before turning to four examples of extended state influence in the realm of arts and entertainment, it seems appropriate to give a brief sketch of the political and social processes in the interwar years which form the context of these developments. In order to assess the impact of the Second World War for the taking up of cultural policy in Britain, it is – in order to avoid the pitfall of mistaking post hoc for propter hoc – necessary to assess also other possible origins and developments. This will enable a conclusion whether the war was merely an accelerator of existing processes – ‘hastening a society’s progress along its old grooves’, as Angus Calder alleged – or whether the war caused a discontinuity with existing processes.

The most important process which might have paved the way for a more active role of the state in the sphere of culture is the wider context of the development of the interventionist state.²¹⁰ Roughly speaking, the genesis of the interventionist state began in the 1880s posing a challenge to the liberal ideal of the so-called nightwatchman state.²¹¹ In the following years, further social legislature was introduced which gradually and slowly began to erode the liberal principle. The first acts of social legislation were the Social Insurance, Old Age Pensions and Unemployment Acts of the years 1908 and 1911, introduced by the Liberal Asquith government under the guidance of Lloyd George and Winston Churchill. Although these Acts represented a change in the outlook of the government and its responsibilities, interventions in terms of social policy remained piecemeal and attuned to the liberal concept of the state. It took the disruptions of the First World War to finally throw over this liberal ideal shared to various degrees by both great parties of the day.

During the interwar years, interventions by the state were confined to ‘hard social facts’ such as unemployment, health and old age pensions according to the financial needs of the day during a time of prolonged depression which put strictures on the government budget.²¹² Art was excluded from such treatment as a luxury commodity or, in the words of J.B. Priestley, as an ‘icing on the cake.’²¹³ Still, after the First World War with its vast nationalisation of industries and the increase of state intervention which to a certain degree was retained in peace time, the state took a more active role in shaping society which eventually paved the way for the assumption of state responsibility for the recreation of its citizens and the proliferation of the arts in Britain. As an ironic side aspect one might suggest that the more active role of the state in the aftermath of the First World War including higher taxation for the redistribution of wealth helped to abolish the wealthy private patron of the arts and hence contributed to the beginning intervention by the state, replacing private benefactors, also in this field.

In the time between 1913 and 1934, four institutions were set up – or in the case of the National Theatre attempted to be set up – which might indicate that the principle of neutrality was already being eroded before the Second World War broke out. An analysis of the BBC, the British Council, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the National Theatre will show whether the establishment of CEMA only continued the trend of a state entering the field of provision of cultural recreation or whether the mentioned exceptions only proved the rule.

1. The BBC

In 1926, the BBC emerged as a public corporation from its private predecessor, the British Broadcasting Company founded in 1922. The Company was the result of the co-operation of the manufacturers of wireless sets, who had been granted a monopoly for broadcasting.²¹⁴ This was a rather surprising move facing the strong belief in free competition in Britain. Consequently, it was acrimoniously debated in Parliament whether such kind of organisation was consistant with the British way of doing business. The main reason why Parliament had opted for a monopoly of the Company was the fact that the precedent of the commercial broadcasting system in the United States had resulted in what was called ‘chaos on the ether’.²¹⁵ With no control of wavelengths, the vast number of stations resulted in a ‘“jumble of signals” and a “blasting and blanketing of rival programmes”’,²¹⁶ which raised criticism even in the United States.

The heated debate of 1922 became even more stormy in 1926 when the licence of the Company expired and the creation of a public corporation by Royal Charter was suggested implying the ‘nationalisation’ of the broadcasting service. This was seen as an act of socialism by a number of MPs²¹⁷ – although the Government of the day was Conservative with Stanley Baldwin as Prime Minister – and thus strongly rejected. The MP Harney compared the BBC with the press and came to the conclusion that

‘there is not a single argument that can be used in favour of the liberty of the Press that is not equally applicable to the liberty of the wireless. There is not a single objection to censorship and interference with the dissemination of written words that is not equally applicable to the dissemination of spoken words.’²¹⁸

Finally, an argument was reiterated that had proved to be the most powerful to prevent any government interference in the arts:

‘However well the Civil Service can run the Post Office, and how well the Civil Service could, I believe, run the mines of this country, and many other great monopolies, the last thing they ought to have anything to do with is art, or the entertainment industry, or giving news, or an educational service. Those are the last things that a Government can run.’²¹⁹

The assumption that the state would actually run the BBC was exaggerated, if not entirely wrong. It was not proposed to introduce a system under which the BBC would be reduced to a government department.²²⁰ Rather, the BBC was assured by the then-Postmaster-General, Mitchell-Thomson, ‘the greatest possible liberty, within the terms of the Charter, to do anything that comes within its terms of that they may think desirable in the best interest of the service as a whole.’²²¹ The construction, under which this greatest possible liberty was to be ensured, the public corporation, is a typically British form of administration, previously employed at the Central Electricity Board and the London Passenger Transport Board. The idea of a public corporation is to entrust a private concern to act on behalf of the ‘national interest’ in return for a guaranteed monopoly position. The looseness of parliamentary control guaranteed the BBC’s ‘virtual autonomy’,²²² which it had gallantly fought for during the General Strike in 1926 against Winston Churchill’s craving to take over the BBC as a government department.²²³

In the debate in the House of Commons it was the argument, that such a new service technology needed some policing by the state in order to work properly and in the interest of the nation, that carried the day for ‘nationalisation’. Another aspect of the national interest was the preservation of certain standards of programmes. Since there was no advertisement on the ether in Britain, the sole source of income of the Company being the share in licence fees, the programme planners of the BBC could freely decide what to give to the public without any opportunity of commercial interference. The first Directing Manager of the Company, Sir John Reith, had a clear vision of the opportunities to lift cultural and moral standards by the choice of programme.²²⁴ In his testimony to the Crawford Committee, the enquiry committee appointed to make suggestions for the future of broadcasting after its first five years, Reith defended the monopoly system as necessary to ensure ‘efficiency and economy in operation’ of the service, but at the same time insisted on the ethical side of broadcasting which made it essential that ‘one general policy may be maintained throughout the country and definite standards promulgated.’²²⁵ Whether this was the real reason for the monopoly and the incorporation of the BBC by the government or whether it was indeed the prevention of ethereal chaos remains open to debate.²²⁶ That it had an impact on the decision, however, is beyond doubt. Still, even six years after the incorporation of the BBC, the MP Richard Law could without contradiction state in th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• About the Author
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• I. Introduction
• II. The political reasons for state neutrality in the sphere of arts in Great Britain
• III. The cultural élites and state intervention
• IV. Indicators of extended state influence on the arts
• 1. The BBC
• 2. The British Council
• 3. Birmingham
• 4. The National Theatre
• V. The Cultural Blackout and the Phase of the ‘Welfarist Approach’
• 1. The Cultural Blackout
• 2. The Setting up of CEMA
• 2.1. Music
• 2.2. Drama
• 2.3. Art
• 3. CEMA’s policy January – June 1940
• 4. CEMA and the Ministry of Labour and National Service
• 5. CEMA’s policy June 1940 – January 1942
• 6. Conclusion
• VI. John Maynard Keynes and the ‘standard approach’: CEMA’s policy from January 1942 to September 1944
• 1. John Maynard Keynes
• 2. The changes in organisation
• 3. The changes of policy
• 3.1. Art
• 3.2. Music
• 3.3. Drama
• 4. Entertainment Tax
• 5. The Ministry of Labour and deferment
• 6. CEMA and the audience
• 7. Conclusion
• VII. From CEMA to the Arts Council of Great Britain, September 1944 to June 1945 and beyond
• 1. The discussion on CEMA’s future within the Treasury, September 1944 to January 1945
• 2. CEMA’s work in the transitory period September 1944 to December 1945
• 3. The financial arrangement
• 4. The departmental responsibility
• 5. The constitution of the Arts Council
• 6. Conclusion
• VIII. Conclusion and Outlook
• References
• Bibliography