Arts

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, this the view from street level of someone who has never chaired very much or run huge organisations.

The late, revered Michael Parkinson once declared that of all the interviews he had done, his favourite was the one he did with Jacob Bronowski. Most of us will remember Jacob Bronowski’s ground-breaking television series “The Ascent of Man”, which was broadcast almost exactly 50 years ago. Here was a scientist of the first order who was marinated in the arts. Human values, a fascination with the work of William Blake, a writer of poetry himself and such an engaging personality—what a cocktail of qualities he possessed. He championed the idea that the best science was simply the material and physical outworking of deeply implanted human instincts. The arts were as important to him as his science.

Moving from then to now, Jamie Brownhill is the headmaster of the Central Foundation Boys’ School, a magnificent inner-city comprehensive in Islington. I was involved in its governance for 20 years, 10 of them as chairman of its trustees, but that is as grand as it gets. Ask Jamie about the history of his school and he will be bound to tell you how Jacob Bronowski is its most admired former pupil. This recognises the important place that Bronowski plays in the school’s past, but it is equally an indication of the spirit of the man still hovering over a community of learning which, for all the problems in our national education referred to by previous speakers, continues to live out the ideals of its former pupil.

I visited an exhibition of paintings done by the school’s pupils and put on by the Wellcome Foundation. I sat proud as punch at a concert in the Guildhall, where a range of musical skills were on display. Our trustees kept agreeing to buy pianos for rehearsal rooms and music lessons, and the drama put on by the pupils was wonderful. How can I ever forget the way that a 17 year-old Macbeth, just after stabbing the king, with the same facility of utterance that he might have shown in wiping his hands after consuming a burger at McDonald’s, lamented:

“No, this my hand will rather

The multitudinous seas incarnadine”?

The arts must surely be at the very core of our curriculum so that one generation after another can bring their creative, cultural, emotional and imaginative selves into the mix of their developing minds. It is vital for the well-being of society, as others have said, and for building the kind of world that we all want to live in. Again and again, Jacob Bronowski made reference in his great work to poets, musicians, philosophers, artists and dramatists. He ended one of his chapters with a favourite quatrain of mine from William Blake. He wanted people to be able:

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour”—

or as I, in a pathetic contemporary version, might have it:

“To build a culture that is steeped in the arts

Where STEM plus A equals STEAM

Where the whole is more than the sum of its parts

And life rich beyond our wildest dreams”.

I salute my noble friend, a true Companion of Honour, and thank him for giving us the opportunity to discuss this important subject today.