WHAT IS WRONG WITH GOOD IDEALISM ?

Having just listened to a BBC radio feature about the proposed sell-off of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, I refuse to call it High Speed 1, a preposterous bit of re-branding, I was struck by the fact that no one from any government department would appear to justify the proposal and the only person whose comments and opinions were reported as being of importance was someone from the accountants Ernst and Young. This seemed to neatly encapsulate the complete removal of any motivating philosophy that might still exist in a nominally socialist government. Here we have a useful and fully functioning piece of up to date railway, the one example in this country, as opposed to the hundreds of miles that have been built in France, Germany and Spain in the last twenty years, that was funded by public finance and it is going to be sold off for a fraction of its cost to build and it is left to a representative of a firm of private chartered accountants, who, no doubt will be well rewarded for doing the sums in any such sale, to explain why.

What has happened to the principles that brought Socialism into being ? Would William Morris or John Ruskin recognise any aspect of their philosophy that sought to introduce values other than those of profit into the marketplace in the machinations of this Labour government ? Whenever these two are brought up the first thing said tends to be ’ they were idealists, they were an artist and a philosopher‘.’ But it was surely because they had ideals and were willing to attempt to follow them through that made them strong and, for a time, influential. What is wrong with a bit of idealism ? Especially idealism that was rooted in an attempt to find a way to improve the lot of the many not the few, to try to introduce a fairer distribution of the wealth that was being created and a more principled way of doing business than that which was becoming entrenched in this country in the mid-Nineteenth century.

Visiting the William Morris Museum in Hammersmith I was struck by the fact that it was here in this small coach house and the meetings that were held here that began the Socialist movement. And these ideas, ideals if you like, were not wholly impractical nor highly complicated but sought to restore a link between art and utility, good practice and decent reward, to re-introduce values that did not place monetary value and the maximisation of profit at the very centre of all activity and all social relationships. These, I suggest, are still ideas that, rather than be dismissed as irrelevant or historical, are well worth bringing to the table again or we may as well let accountants run the country, privatise the government and have a Chief Executive and a board like any public limited company.

It is true that Morris was from a wealthy background and could afford to take the risk of trying to put his somewhat utopian ideas into practice. Ruskin, with his unsuccessful tea shop in Marylebone, was certainly a man of ideas and ideals rather than an entrepreneur. But they did try to develop and foster an alternative form of commerce and practice which included a moral, human and even aesthetic dimension, no wonder they were ridiculed by the majority in an England that was and remains deeply utilitarian and conservative to its core.

But were these ideas so wrong ? The products of Morris and his fellow workers certainly found a place in homes of those that could afford them and continue to this day to be appreciated. His wallpaper and paint is still available but his project appears to have got nowhere.

As we emerge from this vile period of celebrity artists and the blurring of advertising and art, the whole Saatchi funded balloon of pomposity, empty gesture, moral equivalence and the dancing charlatans that were promoted by those that basked in their reflected glory, perhaps it is a good time to reflect on what these whiskered and well minded gentlemen were aiming to do. It is easy to dismiss and yet a real political party grew out of Morris’s meetings after he had been inspired by John Ruskin’s writing, as indeed was Ghandi.

Peter Fuller was one lone voice who tried to bring them to the front again in his art criticism and also clearly warned about the coming cult of celebrity and the general cheapening of cultural values. Sadly he died in a car crash in the early 1990’s and the apologists for the vacuity of Brit Art took over championing the latest Philistine nonsense as clever and avant-garde rather than the work of meretricious calculating con-artists and businessmen in an adolescent re-hash of the self-important shock tactics of  Duchamp and his circle.

When Labour came to power in 1997 what started to take place was a blurring of previously more distinct areas of high and low culture, a confusion between the ethnic background of the artist and the merit of the work, an obsession with pop musicians and the disastrous equation of the viceral and ugly with veracity and authenticity.

Notions of quality, of concern with content, with aesthetics, with beauty, with aspiring to anything at all went out of sight. The idea that art could have any redeeming social value almost ceased to have any currency.

While notions of strict boundaries between high, low and, that always derided term middle brow, culture can be overly rigid to simply ditch all distinction and declare that all forms of cultural production are equal is foolish and creates an environment where he who makes the biggest noise and the crudest gestures takes precedence. Artists have, in some cases, become inseparable from pop stars, vulgarity has become ’cool’ , intelligence, sensitivity and subtlety in cultural fields has been greatly undermined. A nadir was reached when Johnathon Ross and Russell Brand used his platform on national radio to abuse for his own amusement a 70 year old actor.

While high brow culture has continued to exist in its own shrinking world, low brow has been elevated and merged into a no-brow mess from which we have still to emerge. I mentioned how middle-brow culture is routinely ridiculed, but I see nothing wrong with something which used to be a sort of stepping stone between low and higher culture and has a certain merit in itself , yet it has been almost crushed out of existence. I suggest that the contempt that it is held in by many commentators is a form of snobbery, it is acceptable to like almost anything but not if its middle-brow. What is it then ? Could not Dickens be seen as middle-brow, for example ? Football has been embraced by the middle-class as it is still seen as low brow yet it is written about and analysed as thoroughly as Proust. Similarly pop or rock groups and a liking for same is usually seen as in some way connecting with a vital low brow force. I disagree. It is very largely the product of and the preserve of the middle class and always has been. The myth of the working class kids producing pop music and it being a rebellious activity is almost completely fictitious.

As with football it is a very good way of distracting people from any meaningful political activity and acts to divide people along partisan lines. Football clubs are businesses first and do not represent the interests of their supporters. When the Thames Ironworks works team started to employ paid professionals and charge to get into the games the employees ceased to be interested, why, after all, should they pay to see a player earning more than they were paid to work in shipbuilding allegedly representing them ? This team became West Ham United.

Both football and pop music are consummate spectacles. They appear to be enlivening and involving, but they in fact confirm individual alienation. They invite you to be part of a mass spectacular operation but to no purpose other than that of the spectacle itself. ‘ And the songs we sing, they’re not supposed to mean a thing’ Morrisey, by the way. Have you ever noticed how when the football is turned on in a pub suddenly 90% of people’s attention ceases to be their fellows but instead becomes this arbitrarily imposed spectacle of paid protagonists acting out a stylised contest on a remote patch of grass ? Its like a general anaesthesia sets in.

Back to Mr Ruskin.

‘Unto This Last‘, by John Ruskin’s was translated into Gujarati as ’Sarvodaya’ which means ’ The Well Being of All.’ That is still some way off, like Jerusalem, but this aim and this ideal, and just how it may be achieved, remains well worthy of being placed at the centre, at the heart of what the Labour Party should be.