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Saturday 22 November 2008

The Spectator's Notes

In the cut and thrust of debate, David Cameron won easily against the Chancellor in the Budget battle.

It may be that the government’s plan for oaths of allegiance for 18-year-olds in schools won’t work, but I am suspicious of the argument that it is ‘unBritish’ to make a song and dance about Britishness. In fact, a song and dance could be literally, and exactly, what are needed. Being essentially a political rather than an ethnic idea, Britishness is an artificial creation (and I mean that as a compliment). It was the careful work of leaders, thinkers, writers and artists for about 200 years. The concept helped forge a nation out of several once-warring components. It was so successful that it was taken for granted and then, partly out of left-wing ideology and partly by mistake, began to decline. Now that indigenous pupils know almost nothing about our history and our hundreds of thousands of immigrants have a very weak idea of the country of which they are becoming a part, it is complacent to say that special ceremonies are vulgar and unnecessary. We do desperately need to invent rites which help us understand who we are. It is a secular form of confirmation.

The trouble with the government’s obsession with ‘access’ to all public collections and cultural events is that it seems to trump concern for the collections/events themselves. Surely there are many works of art, objects of scholarly interest and even forms of public performance which will not attract widespread public interest but are still of great importance. Their curators and directors owe a duty to them and to posterity as well as to today’s crowds. But if access is the only criterion, let the government apply it to itself. One of the best collections of English portraits, for example, is to be found at Chevening, an official residence, usually of the Foreign Secretary. It includes Gainsborough’s portrait of Lord Chesterfield, Batoni’s portrait of Louisa Grenville (currently in the show at the National Gallery), and a group of Ramsays. At present, the Chevening collection is not open to the public, and I gather that the government pleads the impossibility of opening, because of security. But Buckingham Palace manages: it is hard to see why the Foreign Secretary needs more protection than the Queen.

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