PROFILE: MISS JENNIE LEE STATE PATRON OF THE ARTS HAS A CRUSADING ARDOUR

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32295, 13 May 1970, Page 16

PROFILE: MISS JENNIE LEE STATE PATRON OF THE ARTS HAS A CRUSADING ARDOUR

(By

SIMON KAVANAUGH)

“It would be a national economy if Harold Wilson moved her to a less expensive activity” was the acid reaction of a London newspaper to the news that Jennie Lee, Britain’s Minister for the Arts, had wheedled from a tight-fisted Chancellor of the Exchequer an astounding £22 million to be spent bn culture in 1970.

All the same, it is unlikely that Mr Wilson will take it too seriously or that Jennie herself will be daunted by her critics.

At 66, Aneurin Bevan’s widow is still very much an (idealist, convinced that given (the choice at reasonable prices, the working classes will forsake Bingo for Brecht and swop the telly for Tintoretto. “We must never dictate what people should do,” she declared on her appointment as “overlord of the Arts” six years ago, “but we must bring every leisure time activity within the reach of everyone." Cynics Smirk Cynics smirk at this Utopian vision of cut-rate culture for all, but Jennie tackles her role as State patron of artists with undiminished crusading ardour. When she took office she said: “Too many working people have been conditioned by their education and environment to consider the best in music, painting, sculpture and literature as outside their reach.” She finds the idea of a cultural elite repugnant. Nor is she any more taken with ;the fact that while London may be the cultural capital of Europe, the English provinces are often culturally starved.

What the Ministry ot Redevelopment is doing for industry in depressed areas, Jennie Lee hopes to do for Art But art costs money and the price is increasing with alarming speed. In 1963, the Arts Council grant was a mere £2,730,000. Now it stands at eight times that figure and if Miss Lee has anything to do with it the upwards curve will be as steep in the next seven years as it has been in the last.

By now her ability to prise money out of the Chancellor’s clenched fist is legendary, as is her knack for getting the right ear at the right time “She's very effective at getting things done." says a| colleague. “She seems to have ( a hot line to the Prime Minister, and takes absolutely no notice of( protocol when it doesn’t suit her." Practical Psychology She has the veteran politician’s regard for practical psychology. When James Callaghan was Chancellor of the Exchequer she asked him for an exceptionally big arts grant. Callaghan surprised her by agreeing without argument. Barely breaking her stride she told him the

offer was not good enough. I When the Arts Council chair-1 man, Lord Goodman, who i was there remonstrated with} her she told him blandly: ; “Arnold, you may be a superb lawyer but you’re no I politician. You can’t walk [ away from people like this without making it clear that they haven’t given you everything you asked for.” Jennie Lee is a cloth-cap Socialist, hypersensitive to any threat to her principles —either from inside the Labour Party or outside. When Harold Wilson threatened to ditch traditional principles in order to

gain the confidence of international bankers, Jennie declared that if Labour ceased being the party of the under-dog, it might as well go out of business.

When Mr Wilson proposed the reintroduction of medical prescription charges, Jennie handed in her resignation. It was a gesture that for a while looked like succeeding. For once, the signs were wrong, and Jennie lost the fight. It took a lot of high-powered persuasion to get her to remain as “Queen of the Arts”—which she did, to the intense relief of artists, (authors, museum and theatre (directors all over Britain. ! Art Blossoms They had good reason. Jennie Lee is the nearest thing to a sugar-daddy they have ever had. Under her generous patronage art is blossoming on a grand scale—new theatres, extensions to art galleries and museums, and grants for struggling painters and writers are all helping to buttress Britain’s reputation as cultural pacesetter of the seventies. It is a policy which makes sound economic sense as well. In 1969 nearly six million visitors came to Britain—twice as many as in 1964

| and most of them spent a sizeable chunk of foreign i currency on visiting art ■galleries, theatres, and ! concerts.

A London journalist recently put the annual contribution of artists to Britain’s balance of payments at an incredible £250,000,000. So why, asks Jennie Lee, should the taxpayer baulk at subsidies totalling a mere £22,000,000? But there is more to it even than that. As far as Labour is concerned the Arts Council grant is a shrewd political investment. In the past the Socialist movement has been associated—justly or unjustly—with a grey, Joyless philistinism. Any project which helps to destroy this unflattering image could not fail to win Jennie Lee’s single-minded support. “There are Socialists by birth and Socialists by conviction,” says the dramatist Ben Levy. “I think Jennie belongs to these last though she was swept into Socialism long before the age of consent.” A Miner’s Daughter The Right Hon. Jennie Lee, M.P.. was born on November 3, 1904, daughter of a Scottish miner, and exposed immediately to Socialism at its most fundamental. The family was poor but hungrily literate, and by dint of guts and brains Jennie took her•iself through elementary i school to Edinburgh Uni- ’ versity where she became the : first working-class girl to I graduate as a lawyer. Her political baptism came I two years later when she I swept into the House of i Commons as member for : North Lanark. In those dead, : listless days with unemploy- ’ ment gripping the country , like a merciless frost, Jennie i Lee’s brand of Socialism was I as fierily defiant as Bernai dette Devlin’s is today. In the i words of a contemporary i observer, she belonged “to , that rare class of dreamers I which works incredibly hard to make its dreams come true.”

In 1934 she met, argued (with, and finally married Aneurin Bevan, a volatile Welshman every bit as fiery as herself. It was an unconventional partnership: “We live in a kind of embattled toleration,” wrote “Nye” Bevan, “but our domestic felicity survives our political antagonism.” Today, 10 years after “Nye’s” death, it is unlikely that Jennie Lee is wholly at ease with Harold Wilson's pragmatism. But as Minister of the Arts she has learned the value of compromise ... £22,000,000 worth of art subsidy.