Museums: Funding

Lord Sawyer Excerpts

Monday 26th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sawyer (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Monks, for initiating this debate. I have pleasure in supporting him.

The issue around the People’s History Museum is essentially a problem of definition, affecting the level of funding. Because it is said that it is not national, its funding is reduced. That seems a bizarre decision to me, quite frankly. How can a museum that portrays the history of the people of a nation not be a national museum? I would like to hear more on that from the Government Front Bench. Some say that the funding is affected because it is in the north. Again, I would like to see the Government deal with that; I cannot believe that it can be true.

This museum is rather special—it talks about the people’s past. It is a young museum, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, said, and a vigorous museum. It is an exciting museum because it tells the story of the people’s history—the struggles in the past of the Chartists and the Suffragettes, and the forming of the trade unions—in a vibrant and accessible way, which is how the story should be told. And it is also, believe it or not, a new story. The history is from the past, but the story is new, because in the past these stories of ordinary people had been hidden from history. Even in my days at school, they were pushed to the margins by kings and queens and other choices made by the ruling class. It is the story of those who have made, built, served, tilled and went to wars, and it is a story that must be told continuously through future generations.

Most interestingly, the story that the museum tells mirrors the story of the museum itself. As my noble friend Lord Monks, said, the museum has only just been born. It was only in the 1970s that I remember personally—as I know the noble Lord, Lord Monks, also can—trade union people in the East End of London going around collecting banners, leaflets and other artefacts to try to build a museum for a history that we had almost lost, because nobody thought that it was important enough to preserve. So those people did us a great service when they put that museum together, and it has gone from strength to strength.

The noble Lord, Lord Monks touched on another important theme—namely, that the history of the parties opposite have their histories safe and secure in Oxford and London. I have no problem with that. The party directly opposite opposed most of the advances that are celebrated in the People’s History Museum. I can forgive it for that. But with its past all nicely and warmly secured in Oxford and in London, would it not be nice, as my noble friend Lord Monks said, to show some generosity to the working classes and make sure that our museum that we want to celebrate and look forward to having a great future has the same kind of support?