Contemporary Cultural Boycotts

Lord Frost Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Frost (Non-Afl)]

My Lord, in his great essay The Prevention of Literature, George Orwell wrote:

“imagination, like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity”.

I think this is a little commented-on reason why the current repression of free speech and freedom in the arts is such a problem. It affects not only those whose opinions are repressed but everybody. That repression is obviously outrageous in its own terms, with the shocking levels of antisemitism that have been documented and the bias against gender-critical views and even simple views on the right of politics. I congratulate Rosie Kay and Denise Fahmy for drawing attention to it in this excellent report, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, for getting today’s debate.

As we know and as the report documents, the repression of free speech and the spread of antisemitism have had seriously bad effects on those directly affected. We know that. It constrains what they can produce, and it may force them entirely out of the sector. There are some telling quotes to this effect in the report, such as one artist saying:

“I realised how much of myself I had edited out just to survive”,


or:

“You make terrible art when you are cowering”.


This is clear—it is sort of obvious—but my point is that the effect is on not only those affected in this way, but on everybody else. It is on those who somehow get through it.

A politicised art sector produces a lot of bad art, and we have had quite a lot of it recently. On the London stage, from 20 years ago with “My name is Rachel Corrie”, through Ivo van Hove’s adaptation of “Who Killed My Father”, there has been a stream of plays about migration and refugees from one perspective and so on and so forth. Even when art is not politicised, this sort of sector produces an art that prioritises box-ticking and conformism. It produces art that is dull, worthless and often even contemptuous of its audience. It is a very good sign that Wigmore Hall and its director, John Gilhooly, have opted out of the Arts Council system. I cannot help noting that even the noble Baroness, Lady Hodge, in her recent report on the Arts Council, said:

“People felt that ACE was pursuing access to culture in an instrumentalist way and had lowered the priority given to the pursuit of artistic excellence. Art and excellence were sidelined”.


This is the problem. I contend that any artist who is happy to submit to the ruling orthodoxy and prevailing opinions, who finds excuses for squeezing out people who do not agree with him or her or who regards policing ideology as more important than their own creative work will in the end destroy themselves as artists. We can see that at work. As we look around Britain’s artistic scene today and compare it to, say, the efflorescence in the arts of post-war Britain in both visual and written form, we can be confident that, with a few exceptions, the past couple of decades will not be seen as a golden age in British arts. I contend that public conformism, internal bigotry and the driving out of contrary opinions are a big part of the reason why.

I finish by quoting Orwell, this time in Writers and Leviathan. He said:

“To yield subjectively … even to a group ideology, is to destroy yourself as a writer”.


That is true for any artist. It needs to be stopped, and I would like to know what the Government are going to do about it.