Museums

Lord Monks Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Monks (Lab)]

My Lords, as has been said, I am the former chairman of the People’s History Museum, having given way very willingly to my noble friend Lady Royall, who has led this debate with great distinction, great charm and considerable passion. I have not known Richard Balfe for 37 years, but it sometimes feels like it.

Tonight, I want to set out the case for re-recognition of the People’s History Museum as a national museum. It is not the only museum with problems—I know that there are many knocking on the DCMS’s door—but we are in a unique and rather uncomfortable position. However, first, I pay tribute and echo the thanks of my noble friend Lady Royall to the Minister, who has already demonstrated his personal interest in the museum. I hope that his interest can be shared more widely among his colleagues and in the Government more generally.

The museum was originally the National Museum of Labour History and was recognised nationally by John Major’s Government; I continue the bipartisan tone struck so far in the debate. Notice was given in 2011 by the coalition Government as part of a rationalisation of the number of national museums that the funding would end and the national tag would not be recognised by central government. In effect, we were asked to huddle together with other, similar museums, preferably under the banner of one of the great London museums—and most museums have managed to do that. For example, the technology museums around the country have come together under the Science Museum in South Kensington. But for us there was no obvious partner. I explored with the British Museum whether it might want some sort of partnership, but it decided that it had enough problems of its own. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has suggested, it very much responded to work with us on particular exhibitions and exchange of materials and so on. So we did not find a partner—and we have ended up as the orphan in the storm. Our grant ran out in 2015; there was this useful one-off supplement which followed the debate two years ago and which has been referred to. But unless the Minister has something in his back pocket tonight, there is nothing on the horizon.

As has been said, the tale we tell is the story and evolution of British democracy, the story of pressure from below, in which this House found itself on the wrong side of history on many occasions—from John Wilkes to Tom Paine to the rise of unions, co-ops, mutuals, the non-conformist chapels, the Great Reform Act and the subsequent widenings of the franchise down to the suffragettes and the establishment of the welfare state. Within that rich landscape pictured in the museum roam the great figures of the Whig, Tory, Conservative, Liberal and Labour parties. It is a story that covers our nation in peace and war—a story of why the UK has a strong claim to be the leading democracy in the world and a good exemplar for others to follow.

Perhaps the Crown jewel in our collection is the Labour Party archive, which many have said is the richest of all the party archives because the Labour Party was intrinsically much more bureaucratic and kept minutes and wrote documents and so on. I commend that archive to anyone who goes to visit there—it is brilliant. We are extremely proud of that, but we know that the other party archives—the Conservative Party archives at the Bodleian and the Liberal Party archives at the LSE—both enjoy public support, while the Labour Party archive does not. A couple of years ago, we did some imaginative fund-raising, and we continue to do that; that very welcome one-off grant has allowed us to keep going, with economies but without any diminution of the service that we are able to provide in terms of opening hours or skilled staff. But if we do not receive help from national level we will have to review our operations at some stage in future, which could be rather difficult and drastic.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, said, we receive a lot of support from local authorities in the region and money comes in from unions, the Co-operative movement and individuals. I pay tribute to the number of noble Lords who have supported the “radical heroes” exercise in our museum, which includes Margaret Thatcher and six other prominent Conservative politicians. We seek to operate across the political spectrum, as has been said. There are many chicks in the DCMS nest craning for feeding and we know that resources are tight, but Manchester does not have a nationally recognised museum, as far as I know. However, I know that down the road in Liverpool they have three excellent ones, fully deserving of support. I believe that our story is unique; it is certainly not provincial—it is a national story, at a time when democracy itself is in a rather fragile state and there is no shortage of people seeking to use all sorts of devices from social media to how some of the media operate in this country, which does not bring out the best in our country’s practices and democracy. As the noble Baroness said, we will be celebrating the 200th anniversary of Peterloo. The museum will be at the centre of that in a couple of years’ time. Matthew Parris, William Hague—the noble Lord, Lord Hague—and Charles Kennedy have all opened exhibitions there. For the recent referendum in the EU, we had a big tunnel where the main arguments for and against were displayed and people were asked to cast their opinion at the end of it. Tonight, I hope that the House as a whole sends a strong message to the Government of help, to help us get across the story of British democracy to this generation and many future generations.