Down from London
“All things of beauty in this island are confined to London.” So wrote an anonymous Italian in 1500. The perception at least is still there. For those this concatenation of culture advantages, it is beyond criticism. For those it disadvantages, who pay for it nonetheless, it is a source of anger and frustration beyond description or toleration. Re-location of any part of it to ‘the provinces’, even on the rare occasions when it is achieved, is a strictly marginal effort, resisted, then resented, and as soon as possible reversed.
Art treasures and cultural venues are more uniformly distributed in Germany and Italy than in other western European countries because of their long history of decentralised rule. Within the UK, especially England, culture and heritage – whether judged by the material, the policies, or the funding – are massively centralised. So-called ‘national’ institutions clustered in London are guaranteed to get far more than their fair share of resources. Even the crumbs distributed in ‘the provinces’ are doled out by national agencies – Arts Council England, Historic England, and Sport England – in contrast to other European countries where local government has a far greater role. In a 2022 radio documentary, ‘London on the Line’, Dr Jack Brown of King’s College, London quoted Boris Johnson in condemning ‘Londonphobia’ and ‘London-bashing’. The online description for the programme mentioned “a cultural backlash, an anti-Londonism”, and “many negative associations”, asking, “Can capital and country be at ease again?” Such is the lack of self-awareness that the response to extraordinary material differences is to frame the demand for geographically, structurally redistributive policies as some sort of shallow culture war.
Devolution would mean an end to Wessex subsidies for the London glitterati. It should not mean reproducing the phenomenon on a smaller scale. Cultural policy and funding should largely be in the hands of local government, with over-centralised bodies like Arts Council England being wound up. National Lottery funding should be distributed to councils in proportion to ticket sales in their areas. As the long history of city-states has shown, civic pride is a better mechanism for producing artistic excellence than begging letters to a remote bureaucracy. Communities should get the art they want, not that imposed from London because there was a grant to be spent by a deadline.
A devolved Wessex government would focus on the framework, not the detail. Its role would be to watch over the regional dimension and fill any gaps that could not be filled by individual councils or by councils working together. As funder of last resort, for example, it could assist a museum needing help to buy an object of regional significance that might otherwise go to London or abroad. Minimum standards could be laid down for services where these are both desirable and achievable, such as archives and libraries.
A DCMS definition of culture includes: arts; creative industries; heritage; museums, libraries, and archives; tourism; sport; media; and film. Only about two-thirds of this scope is devolved in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, digital and media-related policy being the largest reserved area. WR seeks at least the same degree of devolution in this field as Northern Ireland. We believe that in some respects – such as broadcasting – devolution could be extended further still, even if some aspects had to be shared between various devolved nations and regions.
Arts and creative industries
Bristol’s Royal West of England Academy is the only regional Royal Academy of Art, the other four being nationally based (Conwy, Dublin, Edinburgh, London). Bristol is also a noted centre for creative industries, home to Aardman Animations and a number of innovative musicians, from Massive Attack to Idles; as well as being a popular location for film and TV productions.
The Netherlands, Scotland, Ireland and other jurisdictions operate a “percentage for the arts”scheme whereby a percentage of the cost of any large-scale capital or infrastructure project (usually 1%) is donated to the arts. We would operate a similar scheme in Wessex. The 1% could be spent on many things ‘arts-related’, from incorporating artworks into the design – murals, sculpture, ironwork, stained glass – to time-lapse photography of the build. We would especially wish to see it used to enable younger, preferably local artists to develop their talents. This is likely to be better value all-round than patronising already established figures.
Heritage
Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland all have separate national heritage management services; Scotland also has a separate National Trust. Under devolution, a Wessex government would control heritage policy in Wessex, and we would expect over time that heritage management arrangements would fall into line, perhaps with each national body developing a Wessex regional unit as the first step. There could be significant benefits from a merger between English Heritage and National Trust operations in Wessex. For example, management of the Stonehenge landscape would be united under one body. English Heritage, Historic England, and the National Trust are all headquartered in Swindon. There are many more English Heritage and National Trust properties south of the A5 line than north of it. A regional body – Wessex Heritage – would be more manageable than the current national bodies with their complex bureaucracies. Membership cards could be mutually recognised, as they are today between the English, Scottish, and Welsh bodies.
A Wessex heritage body would have a different focus to those in other regions. For example, Wessex has a disproportionate share of England’s scheduled monuments, the landscape itself is often recognised as a heritage asset, and industrial remains are more limited but sometimes of international significance. Devon has 20-25% of all Britain’s thatch.
The historic environment of Wessex deserves world-leading legislation. A new heritage protection act – merging listed buildings and scheduled monuments into one category – has been proposed for many years. Parliamentary time has not been found. In Wessex, devolution would enable this proposal finally to be debated and enacted, saving professionals the complexity of dealing with different systems for often similar structures. All demolition would be brought within planning control. While statutory designations would be retained to inform local decision-making, communities would then have the power to prevent the loss of any building capable of renovation, whether for heritage reasons or because of the embedded energy it represents, an increasingly important environmental consideration.
The opportunity should be taken to remove the ecclesiastical exemption enjoyed by certain Churches. The faculty process that is used instead effectively makes the Church judge and jury in its own cause. Potentially devastating results for some of our most historic buildings can flow from a system that allows the community less say than over a domestic garage extension.
Museums, libraries, and archives
We see no point in any ‘Regional Museum of Wessex’. Wessex missed the 20th century trend of open-air folk museums, and it is now probably too late to start. For us, the point is that all our museums contribute towards a ‘virtual collection’, with digital opportunities for linking and sharing now expanding rapidly. The National Trust and the Royal Collection have worked together on producing a collections database; Art UK have done similar work on a digital catalogue of publicly owned art. Such ‘indexing’ is key to making collections more accessible, with physical venues becoming a less pressured blend of rotating exhibitions and reference storage. There should always be some museums though whose charm lies in continuing to offer the museum experience of the past.
The Wessex Museums Partnership currently groups four museums in central Wessex: at Devizes, Dorchester, Poole, and Salisbury. We would encourage co-operation across the region, where other significant local museums – such as at Bristol, Cirencester, Exeter, Reading, Taunton, and Winchester – could each benefit from a regional approach that in turn builds the sense of regional identity. Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, opened in 1683, is the oldest public museum in Britain, with a collection of international importance, while also housing Wessex treasures such as the Alfred Jewel.
Wessex is home to the National Museum of the Royal Navy, at Portsmouth. Despite its name, and despite central government funding, it is not, like the London national museums, free to enter. That should change. Our proposal is that Wessex residents should be able to apply for a pass giving free or discounted entry to all publicly funded museums in Wessex. Passes would also be available, at a higher rate, to visitors to the region. The latter charge would act in effect as a tourism tax, with proceeds reinvested in the facilities.
Wessex is home to Oxford’s Bodleian Library, the second largest in Britain. Until the British Museum’s establishment in 1753, it was effectively the national library of England. As with a museum, we see no need for a Regional Library so long as university and city reference libraries meet current needs. We will defend the county basis for managing most local archives. There is no Wessex Film, Sound, and Television Archive, material being split between the South West Film and Television Archive in Plymouth and the Wessex Film and Sound Archive in Winchester. The split corresponds to historic broadcasting areas and there is currently no good reason to disturb it. We expect though that a third site – perhaps in the Bristol area – could eventually be needed, once a devolved region begins to accumulate more all-Wessex material.
Colonialism plays a large part in Wessex history. It would be unrealistic to return all the artefacts brought to Wessex as a result. Representative collections are educational, and other countries may not have the facilities to store and display large numbers of objects. However, requests for the return of items of great significance to other peoples should be considered sympathetically. The question is not ‘who owns this’ but ‘where is this best displayed, safely, in the way that makes most sense’. Wessex can also be the beneficiary of this approach: too many of the things created or found here now hoarded in London do not need to be there. Under devolution, with money devolved on a per head basis, Wessex would be in a strong position to argue its case against London museums funded less well than they are today.
Sport
As discussed in the paper on WR in England, there are some issues that could have a focus at multiple levels of geography: “Sport might be one: although English sports organisations are voluntary bodies they could benefit from national sponsorship, especially on the world stage; however, that should not inhibit the growth of regional sports bodies alongside an English national organisation. As an example, there is a model for rugby and football from Ireland; there is one national rugby team but separate Ireland and Northern Ireland football teams. Given the relative difference in regional sporting culture, it is not too hard to imagine a Wessex rugby team alongside a national English team; but not perhaps in football!! Separate regional teams competing in the Commonwealth Games might act as a catalyst for future development in many sporting arenas.”
Trophies are not confined to the pitch. Clubs themselves are today trophies, to be traded among the hyper-rich. This is not our preferred model. We would look closely at what has been achieved in other countries to retain ownership and control in the hands of fans and players.
Media
Concentration of media ownership has led to a lack of diversity, particularly in regional TV, local radio, and in the newspaper industry. Large publishers such as the US-owned Newsquest and the London-based Reach reproduce large chunks of content across multiple “local” papers. This goes far beyond the traditional practice of ‘editions’ of the same title: those buying multiple titles in the hope of something different will be disappointed. Predictions that all content will migrate online though appear premature; much of what is regurgitated on blogs and other websites is still ultimately the work of traditional news-gathering organisations, but these are now much less well-resourced. The result is a dumbed-down reliance on user-generated content such as comment feeds. Without a local focus for communication, civic engagement suffers, poor value for money goes unreported, and political attitudes polarise around national issues. Meanwhile, publicly funded media – which, apart from government websites, means largely the BBC – face continuous financial and political threats to their independence.
A new model is needed for publicly funded media. Commercial media have, for centuries, relied on advertising revenue. The government’s 1996 mapping document on creative industriesstated that 80% of the people in the advertising industry were based in London. That is likely to still be true of the leading agencies. The UK advertising industry today has an annual income of around £21 billion and Gross Value Added (GVA) of around £17.1 billion. Our key proposal is to skim off some of this through an Advertising Levy, collected as a premium rate of VAT on all forms of advertising. We have no qualms about targeting the advertising industry. To the extent that it incites consumption, and therefore environmental damage, it is part of the problem and should be made to contribute heavily towards paying for a more sustainable society. It is also largely London-based and so a drain on the real economy outside the capital. In 2020, the largest purchaser of advertising in the UK was the UK government, mainly due to COVID-19 campaigns; next place went to Unilever. The first should have better ways of communicating its message; the second ideally should not exist.
Most of the Levy would be used to fund the BBC. The licence fee would be abolished: it is regressive; costly and intrusive to collect; and requires TV viewers to subsidise radio listeners and overseas activities. The BBC’s 2021/22 licence fee income was £3.8 billion. Advertising is already subject to the standard rate of VAT (20%), except for charities. A rough calculation shows that a VAT rate of 40% on the GVA of £17.1 billion would raise £6.84 billion. Half of this is already paid as VAT for general purposes; the Advertising Levy would be the uplift, amounting, in this case, to £3.42 billion. If all used to fund the BBC, this would be a cut of 10% on 2021/2022’s licence fee income, which we would expect to be found from efficiency savings and additional income from commercial activities.
A small part of the Levy, say 1% or, in the example above, £34.2 million, would be reserved to pay for devolved administrations’ cultural rebalancing policies. For comparison, in a typical year – 2019/20 – Arts Council England alone had an income of £742 million. Based on its share of UK population, Wessex would receive 12%, or £4.1 million per year. Managed by a regional government agency, the Wessex Media Council (WMC), working in conjunction with the national body, OFCOM, this income would fund grants and loans to enable media diversity to be increased through supporting not-for-profit publications and broadcasters. This would involve incentivising new media through awards for the best newcomers and start-up capital for projected ones, as well as assisting community buy-outs of existing media. The WMC would operate to strict guidelines. These would include political neutrality and a requirement for due diligence in picking potential successes. In the interests of a better-informed population, its priorities would be to improve news-gathering capacity and to develop regional equivalents of what are currently national-only genres. Concern about concentrated media ownership is focused on the national daily newspapers – 90% owned by just three companies – but our goal is to make national newspapers irrelevant in the daily life of Wessex.
We would reintroduce restrictions on cross-media ownership, which the WMC would have powers to enforce. We would also introduce quotas to support radio and TV programme production within Wessex. The WMC would act as a point of contact for film and TV companies seeking locations within Wessex.
The UK had a regional television system – the ITV network – that has now largely disappeared. Re-establishing one is crucial to the success of devolution. For WR, regional government does not just make regional broadcasting more viable in terms of structures; it does the same with content. Reporting on regional issues becomes weightier if regional politicians are now the ones making key decisions affecting people’s lives. Studio capacity in the regions therefore needs to keep pace with devolution.
ITV was intended to be the regional channel, but poor regulation has led to consolidation of all network licences outside Scotland in the hands of one group, ITV plc. We would not renew ITV plc’s licences covering Wessex but insist on a separate operator, independently owned and managed. This new licence would combine the Wessex portions of what are today the West Country and Meridian licences.
Although ITV has always been the most regionalised channel, the BBC also has a long history of regional programming, dating back to the 1920s. In Wessex, the former Western Region is now managed through three regions, BBC South, BBC South West, and BBC West. These continue to operate as a group: for example, they share an edition of the Radio Times. We would retain the three separate broadcasting centres – Southampton, Plymouth, and Bristol – but would also expect to see all three covering the stories of wider regional interest. BBC Radio Wessex would be established, along similar lines to BBC Radio Scotland and BBC Radio Wales.
The regions used for radio and TV broadcasts have changed over the decades as transmitter arrangements have changed. Our aim is that eventually transmitter locations and signal strengths will match the areas served to the areas governed, so that everyone in Wessex receives Wessex programmes and no-one outside Wessex need receive them if there is a more appropriate alternative. In the longer term, broadcasting is likely to be replaced entirely by online content, one prediction being that ‘terrestrial switch-off’ could happen as early as 2030. Much work is needed to improve infrastructure if that target is to be met while not leaving areas unserved.
The Bristol area is home to a quarter of the world’s natural history film production, focused on the BBC Natural History Unit. Having lost drama to Cardiff, it is vital that this activity is retained.