Museums: Funding

Lord Monks Excerpts

Monday 26th January 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Monks]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the future position of museums in regional areas, in the light of the withdrawal of national funding from 2015-16 onwards.

[Lord Monks (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful for this opportunity to bring to the attention of the House the plight of museums in general and the People’s History Museum in Manchester in particular. I need to declare an interest. I am chairman of trustees at the People’s History Museum.

These are difficult days for museums and for other arts and cultural organisations. One in 10 museums is considering selling parts of its collection and more than half have cut staff. Funding bodies, be they local authorities, national government or universities, are feeling the cold blasts of austerity. In 2010 the Department of Culture, Media and Sport announced that it would identify options for relinquishing control and sponsorship of certain museums which could in future be regarded as the responsibility of local communities. It was the wish of DCMS not to leave any museum on this list high and dry. The People’s History Museum in Manchester was on that list, and we have been feeling high and dry.

Today—quite by coincidence—the DCMS has notified the director of the museum that it will provide the museum with £100,000 for 2015-16. This is a welcome move by DCMS and the Government, and with our fundraising it secures our future for 2015-16—but it still leaves unresolved the following question which is high in our minds. Why is the People’s History Museum the only national museum without secure future income streams? What happens in 2016? Even this year, by the way, we have lost £50,000; currently we receive £150,000 from DCMS. The campaign to establish a proper recognition of the People’s History Museum as a national, not a regional, museum goes on. We have a breathing space but we do not have the answer.

Why is the People’s History Museum important and why should it be of central interest to this House and to Parliament in general? The museum tells the inspiring story of the struggle of working men and women to win the right to vote. Not, I think all noble Lords will agree, a local or a regional issue. Not a Manchester or north-west issue, but one which embraces the whole of the UK. Indeed the need, the duty, the privilege to vote is a vital contemporary message in this era of low turnouts and apathy about politics.

Judging by the number of hits he received on social media, Russell Brand’s statement on “Newsnight” that he does not intend to vote attracted an astonishing amount of support, especially among the young. To combat that cynicism, we should tell the story at every opportunity of how the universal franchise was won. The story—familiar to many in this Chamber—ranges from John Wilkes and Tom Paine, through the abolition of slavery and the Peterloo massacre, the Great Reform Act, the Chartists, the Corn Laws, the emergence of trade unions, Gladstone/Disraeli debates, Labour’s origins, the suffragettes, and the founding of the welfare state. The story is told with wit and flair and attracts increasing numbers of visitors—more than 100,000 last year.

Importantly, the museum also houses the rich archive of the Labour Party; the Conservative Party archive is at the Bodleian, by the way, and the Liberal Democrat one is at the LSE. The Labour archive rather reflects the fact that Labour did things in a more bureaucratic way than either the Conservatives or the Liberal Democrats by writing documents, taking minutes and having collective files rather than individual, personal ones. It was described by Matthew Parris in the Times as a “treasure trove”—and it is. It is all there and there is some terrific material.

The museum also incorporates the National Museum of Labour History, which started in London, and has a glorious collection of old union banners and memorabilia of all the great struggles of the Labour movement over 150 years. But now the PHM looks set to lose at least some of its national funding this year and all of it after 2016. It is not the only museum being threatened in some way or other because many, as I have mentioned, are having a hard time—but some have found ways to maintain DCMS funding. Some have allied with one of the great London museums; for example, the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester has linked up with the Science Museum Group in Kensington. The Horniman Museum in south-east London—near where I live—has managed to keep a direct line to DCMS funding.

The PHM does not have obvious national partners. We have tried the British Museum and the British Library, but both have problems of their own. We would feel like orphans in the storm were it not for the solid support of the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities, which provides marvellous support—as do the TUC, trade unions and the Heritage Lottery Fund, which has given substantial help with our new and impressive buildings.

To be fair, Ministers have been reflecting on how to help and have now done so to a degree, but the hesitation and the absence of a longer-term settlement are feeding the view that there is an anti-northern bias within the Government when it comes to the arts—and an anti-Labour one, too. Why are we to be left in the cold when others, including the prestigious Bodleian and the LSE, receive regular national help with their funding?

The PHM focuses primarily on the right to vote and trade union history, but it is neither sectarian nor tribal. William Hague, Charles Kennedy and Matthew Parris have opened exhibitions. In the current, successful “Sponsor a Radical Hero” campaign, Margaret Thatcher, controversially, and Winston Churchill and Lloyd George, rather less so, have been sponsored—and they, and others, will be honoured with a plaque on the wall in the museum alongside the name of the sponsor. Other Conservative and Liberal Democrat leaders remain open for sponsorship, so roll up and see me afterwards, and I will fix a good price. I am very grateful to a number of my noble friends for sponsoring their own radical hero. If any other noble friends are interested, perhaps they could see me afterwards.

The right to vote is a precious privilege. As Jack Jones, my predecessor as chairman of the trustees, often said, the right did not fall off the Christmas tree. It had to be fought for, and people died for it. Indeed, when we consider the queues in polling stations in new democracies, such as in post-apartheid South Africa or more recently in Afghanistan and Iraq, there can be no place for cynicism about democracy. I hope that Ministers fully share this view and understand the role of the PHM as part of our country’s role in bringing democracy to the world.

I hope that Members of this House will reflect on the fact that in the march towards universal suffrage our predecessors were usually the bad guys huddled on the wrong side of the battle, defending privilege and unsatisfactory status quos. They fought long and hard against the abolition of slavery, for rotten boroughs and to exclude the rising middle classes of the new industrial cities. Then they were against democratic rights for working men and then women. Tonight there is a chance for some collective redemption, a chance to join the right side of history for a change, by sending a strong message that the story of the British road to democracy as told by the People’s History Museum—a national museum in Manchester, not a Manchester museum—its collections and its messages should be honoured and supported. I urge the House to send that message.