Don’t forget the quality, mum!

CAPX has reproduced an entertaining paper on arts policy by Kingsley Amis.


The idea of a novelist of the stature of Kingsley Amis speaking at a Conservative Party Conference today is, frankly, laughable. But in 1979, when Margaret Thatcher gave her first conference speech as Prime Minister, Amis addressed a fringe meeting hosted by the Centre for Policy Studies. Reading his remarks, it becomes less surprising that the author of Lucky Jim – the ‘Angry Young Man’ who satirised the stultifying conventions of post-war society – would associate himself with the early radicalism of the CPS.


An arts policy?

As you’ll see soon enough, what I have to say carries no special authority. I’ve been selling my work for nearly thirty years and living off it for over fifteen. I have some experience of other arts as what’s now called a consumer. I’m a member of the Writers’ Guild, but not a very active one, I’m afraid, and I’ve never sat on any panel or board or committee concerned with administering the arts. So at any rate I have no vested interest in the matter. I’ve a vested interest in surviving, like everybody else, and also like everybody else another one in not being told what to do. More of that in a minute.

You may not think so, but I chose my title with some care. An arts policy? Only one single policy for all those different arts? An arts policy? What a horrible bureaucrat’s phrase, with ‘arts’ used as an adjective. An arts policy? As Mr St John-Stevas asked, ‘Why should a political party have an arts policy at all?’ and I think any Conservative approaches the subject not with the eagerness of the planner but with the feelings of someone reluctantly settling down to a not-very-exciting duty. I hope so, anyway. The question-mark in my title is meant to show that reluctance. It also shows indecision: I’m not sure what policy is best. And that’s rare; my friends will tell you that for Amis not to be absolutely certain what he thinks on any topic from Aberystwyth to Zoroastrianism is almost unknown. The question-mark stands for another kind of uncertainty too: I had to give the organisers the title before I wrote the talk, and as usual didn’t know a lot about what I was going to say until I was down to the job.


The whole piece is well worth reading. In essence it is at least as relevant today as it was when Amis penned it.


I may have come a bit too far too fast. Anyway, clause (B) of the socialist arts policy goes: ‘To increase the quality and diversity of the arts with greater emphasis on those based in communities’. So my duty is clear. I must write better, which had never occurred to me before, and I must write more sorts of things, epic poems and introductions to catalogues of exhibitions of experimental paintings and gags for TV shows – remember they’re art too, even though they are often termed as entertainment. Actually, more than this is required. ‘A socialist policy’, they say further on, requires more books, and a wider range and higher quality of books to be published, written by authors of every sort of social background’.

Naturally. But why aren’t people writing these high-quality books already? Our friends seem to think quality is a sort of optional ingredient or extra like HP sauce on sausages: ‘Don’t forget the quality, mum!’ Years ago, when the universities were beginning to expand their intake, I wrote of university students, ‘You cannot decide to have more good ones. All you can decide to have is more. And more will mean worse.’ So with books, so with painting, so with everything. An artist is a special kind of man, or woman, there are never many around at one time and there’s no way of making new ones, even by spending money. Authors are certainly going to have some money spent on them, though, because literature is, ‘an underfinanced artistic area’. Would you let someone who talked about ‘underfinanced literature areas’ recommend you a book?