Labour’s plan for the arts is right but it should include reversing cuts

Last week I found myself in a small theatre in North London watching We’re Not Going Back, a musical comedy about the 1984/85 miners’ strikes. Based in a fictional South Yorkshire village, the play brilliantly documented the effects of Thatcher’s government on mining families and explored the often ignored role women played in these communities.

The play concluded on a positive note that many in the audience will have been aware didn’t ring true with the devastation that faced most mining villages (which continues in many places to this day). However, that all changed when the all-female cast took to the stage to offer a sombre message. They told a captive audience that Red Ladder, the Leeds-based theatre company responsible for the play, have had a 100% cut to their Arts Council England (ACE) funding, due to take effect in April this year. Despite being an established political theatre company, with a 46-year history, they face closure.

I couldn’t help but think of this when I heard Ed Miliband’s speech on the arts yesterday – particularly as Red Ladder’s case is but one of many.

In a lot of ways, Miliband made a promising intervention; undeniable positives to Labour’s plans include a commitment to ensuring national museums and galleries stay free to visit and their guarantee to make sure every child has access to “creative education”. The Labour leader’s recognition that “publicly-funded art and culture is vital to our dynamism as a country” is laudable and a drive to open up “access to the arts and culture” to beyond a privileged few should, as he said, be at the heart of Labour’s approach to this key area.

I’m glad we can all agree that the arts are a fundamentally important part of life.

But, while the Miliband said all the right words, Red Ladder’s fate, along with the precarious future of many other public art institutions, proves the party’s plan lacks the detail needed to deliver on these promises. As is so often the case in these austerity days, when it came to funding Miliband offered a lame solution; Labour would encourage private and philanthropic organisations to partner up with public sector arts companies. LabourList commentator Ellie Mae O’Hagan has nicely explained why bringing in money from private institutions isn’t the right solution to underfunding.

Without state funding, the disadvantaged groups Miliband spoke about – people from low-income families, in particular those from communities of colour – will continue to be locked out of the arts world. This has certainly been the case over the past four years where the ACE has faced a real-terms cuts of £457 million and when the cuts first hit there was evidence to suggest it was black and minority ethnic arts companies that suffered the most.

If we’re talking just in terms of money, this is doesn’t make sense because in 2013 the ACE found that arts got less than 0.1% of funding, yet delivered four times that in gross domestic product. So it turns out the arts are profitable. Add to this the fact that arts funding was only ever a small proportion of the government’s budget – in 2010 arts subsidies amounted to 0.07% of public spending – and makes sense for Labour to look into reversing ACE cuts.

There was a moment of brief promise when at the start of the year when it looked like they would. But, as I wrote at the time, these rumours turned out to be part of a Tory attack plan, Labour’s press office was, unfortunately, all too happy to deny.

Miliband’s tone was right yesterday and it’s important to recognise that Labour’s policies are a far cry from the anti-art agenda the Tories seem to be pursuing. Yet, by barely touching upon severe underfunding, one of the biggest challenges facing the arts, and Labour’s seeming acceptance that state funding is no longer plausible, the party are undermining their own message that the arts are important. To make the arts available to all, promising rhetoric simply isn’t good enough.