UK Cultural Policy - Labour

Last year the Conservative Party launched their first ever Cultural White Paper. This comes as the second ever to be published by the government, 51 years after Labour’s Jeenie Lee launched her original National Policy for the Arts back in 1965.

Detailed in a remarkably concise 18 pages, Lee had set the agenda for a publicly-funded, expanding national Arts policy – one that promoted larger regional funding and wider participation across different socio-economic classes. In the following years after Lee’s White Paper, Harold Wilson’s Labour government increased public funding in the Arts by 30%, leading to a golden age in British cultural production.

Unfortunately, the last 40 years of UK Cultural Policy has left much of Lee’s manifesto still to be desired.

Beginning with Edward Heath’s government of 1970, the Arts have come under consistent attack from the Conservative Party. Indeed, it was his government that was responsible for the Art’s first major funding cuts since the end of the Second World War, and in 1974 there came the imposition of mandatory entry fees to all national museums and galleries, ‘in order to decrease dependency on the state’ – a piece of legislation championed and ultimately enacted under the then Secretary of State for Education, Margret Thatcher.

This trend has persisted throughout Conservative policy until the present day.

Firstly, it was Thatcher that systematically under-funded the Arts throughout the 80s, overseeing a radical restructuring of Arts funding from the state to corporate sponsorship. Her immediate cut of 4.8% to the Arts Council was felt across the nation, with substantial museum and gallery closures.

Even those who sought an independent and creative resolution to the problems of the decade were persecuted. The Telecommunications act of 1984 – an original and still-controversial bill in the development of contemporary data-surveillance – gave new powers to the state to enter properties and detain pirate radio broadcasting equipment – a media form very popular with under-represented voices in Britain during the 1980s.

The massive reorientation of arts organisations to a culture of entrepreneurship, managerialism and corporatism left figures such as the then director of the National Theatre, Peter Hall, lambasted for the cheek of even mentioning a sincere concern over under-funding in the Arts. Whilst brands such as Andrew Lloyd Weber and the emergence of popular British musicals such as Cats, The Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables were celebrated for ushering in a new era of cultural profitability.

The succeeding Labour governments came as a double-edged sword. On the one hand, in real-terms the Arts saw a substantial increase of 35% of its state funding, translating to £186.6 million in 1998–1999 to £452.9 million in 2009–2010. Culture Secretary Chris Smith re-introduced free admittance to national museums, increasing attendance by 30 million and a further 30% surge in attendance from those of lower socio-economic backgrounds.

Unfortunately, whilst amazing flagship projects were being completed across the country, such as the opening of Tate Modern, the Lowry in Salford or the Sage-Baltic in Gateshead, many criticised New Labour for solidifying and promoting several tendencies within UK cultural policy – the increasing role of corporate sponsorship; the running of cultural institutions like private businesses; and the shift from cultural to economic and social qualifications – that were originally instigated by Thatcher in the previous decade and continue into contemporary Conservative austerity politics.


This current wave of cuts, beginning with the 2010 coalition, have hit the Arts hard. Over 35% cuts to grant-in-aid funding, with 1 in 5 regional museums at least part-closed in 2015 alone; the Conservative’s ’Ten Point Philanthropy Plan’ hardly a convincing antidote to the problem.



Under Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party our cultural budget will rise to meet the European average of 0.6% GDP, restoring the £42.8 million cut to Arts Council Funding that has been implemented since 2010. An immediate moratorium on privatisation of Museums, Galleries & Libraries will protect the centres of our communities from further attack, keeping them in public ownership. And a £160 million boost to public education funding through an Arts Pupil Premium, a policy aimed at – as Corbyn himself explains – making sure “all school pupils have the chance to learn an instrument, take part in drama and dance, and have regular access to a theatre, gallery or museum in their local area.” A set of policies easily paid for from the reverse of George Osborne’s 2016 Capital Gains Tax cut, which will raise £670 million for the government.

Whilst there was no mention of the popularly debated issue concerning STEAM – adding arts to the government’s focus on science, technology, engineering and maths – a broad set of policies including a new cross-departmental cabinet committee on Arts and Creative Industries, a commitment to devolved cultural budgets and great local influence on funding, and a National Library policy to enforce local authorities to provide comprehensive library & digital services, all provide hope for that under a new Labour government the Arts in Britain will undergo a great rejuvenation, the likes of which are long overdue and thoroughly deserved.