BACK in the days when I was a sub-editor, painstakingly inserting
errors into otherwise blameless copy, the New Year messages issued by
the great and good were always the low point in a slow season. Somehow
the year ahead was always going to be historic or memorable. Somehow it
never was.
The world being what it is, that was hardly surprising. The only thing
that ever really changes on January 1 is the calendar. Yet this week, as
usual, the messages of misplaced optimism have been wending their way
towards the dustbin of history while their authors pray that no-one will
remember them 12 months from now.
Sir Alan Peacock, for one, must be hoping that the gift of prophecy
has not deserted him. Nineteen ninety-one, says the retiring chairman of
the Scottish Arts Council with remarkable understatement, ''was a tough
year''. The recession hit attendances and sponsorship alike, as arts
workers are only too well aware. What Sir Alan fails to note is that
those same people are as demoralised as they have ever been, largely
because of his efforts.
Peacock's arrival at the SAC was greeted with dismay from more than a
few of us. How safe could the publicly-funded arts be in the hands of an
arch-priest of the free market whose prescription for commercial
broadcasting was, if anything, worse than the scheme eventually adopted
by the Government? And how much encouragement can you take from the
prognostications of a man who thinks the ''consumer'' is king?
Not very much, if the New Year message is anything to go by. While the
Office of Arts and Libraries has obtained a ''gratifying'' increase of
13.77% for the next fiscal year -- after a decade of undefunding -- Sir
Alan has been embroiling the SAC in Lord Palumbo's National Arts
Foundation and the Foundation for Sport and the Arts. He seems not to
have inquired what these two brainchildren of the property developer
lord mean for the council's role.
Meanwhile, he also says that the SAC is in favour of a national
lottery to fund the arts. As with the iniquity of sponsorship, however,
he is careful to state that such an exercise should be ''as a complement
and not a substitute for government provision''.
We've heard this sort of thing before, and each time we hear it we
know the principles on which the SAC was founded are being further
undermined. It's a matter of political culture. For people like Sir Alan
there is nothing sacred in the idea of public funding -- quite the
reverse. The ''market'', whatever that might be in this context, is more
relevant than corporatist principle.
Yet a survey released last month by the SAC itself demonstrates the
dangerous dependency created by the free market enthusiasms of Sir Alan
and his kind. Business sponsorship of the arts rose by 2% last year (a
drop in real terms) compared with a 15% increase the year before. The
glamorous companies and events -- Scottish Opera, Ballet, the RSO, the
SCO and the Edinburgh Festival -- mopped up 67.5% of sponsors' money, of
which 90% went to the central belt. Glasgow, in its year as European
City of Culture, took the lion's share among the population centres.
In other words, under Sir Alan the SAC chased sources of funding which
might be characterised as elitist, unreliable and outside public
control. Now he fancies a lottery, a source more vulnerable to recession
than most.
No-one seems to question this. Yet year by year the SAC is drawn
further from its original purpose and from any thought of real
accountability, however many mountains of paper are generated in pursuit
of a ''Charter for the Arts''.
Put it another way: if this year turns out to be a good one for the
arts in Scotland it will be because Sir Alan has departed from the SAC.
IT'S a pity that the Edinburgh Festival seems to have forgotten about
Hugh MacDiarmid in the centenary of his birth. Some of us would have
relished the chance to dissent from the benign conspiracy surrounding
our greatest poet, whereby his virtues are magnified and his vices,
intellectual and literary, are forgotten. It would have been fun to
discuss how it came about that an iconoclast was turned into an icon.
As things stand, Brian McMaster's first festival as director appears
to have no place for a piece of MacDiarmid in the jigsaw of its
programme. Given the poet's reputation, that's worrying enough. What is
more troubling is Mr McMaster's belief, according to reports, that
literature has no part to play in his event.
The director seems to think it a great pity that there is no book
festival this year to take the MacDiarmid problem off his hands. After
all, he points out, the man ''was primarily a poet''. I wonder what he
thinks Shakespeare was.
CALL me sentimental, but I'm delighted that Eleanor McLaughlin has
decided to ignore a daft tradition and stand again for Edinburgh
District Council after her term as Lord Provost ends. While we're at it,
I hope her Labour colleagues have the sense to ensure that she hangs on
to the regalia.
It suits her, after all. Bad lord provosts are easy to come by, as the
citizens of the capital are only too well aware. But anyone who can
conduct herself with dignity, be popular, at ease with people of all
classes, represent her city as it deserves, remain a good socialist, and
put the likes of Robert Maxwell in his place when the need arises, is a
valuable commodity. Not that I'm biased, you understand . . .
THE news that Edinburgh could become home to Scotland's first liver
transplant unit is, of course, welcome. But was it tasteful to make
plans for the development public on Ne'er Day, when some of our livers
were not, shall we say, quite themselves?
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