Over breakfast on a Saturday morning we usually seem to end up listening to Saturday Live on BBC Radio 4. It is one of those conversation programmes in which a panel of invited guests chat for an hour with the regular studio presenters. It is interesting for at least two reasons. In the first place the talk is fairly civilised, and some radically diverse people actually listen to each other as well as having their own say. Additionally, the presenters themselves are a unique double act. The Rev. Richard Coles is (as you might guess) an anglican vicar, who in the past was one half of the rock duo The Communards. His co-presenter is Asna Mir, who from her name is probably from a Muslim background. Actually, religion rarely figures in the conversation, but between them they manage to bring out the best in their guests.
This morning’s conversation not only saw the studio guests getting quite heated, but made me quite angry also. One of the guests was Kay Mellor, a well-established playwright and actor. (Her play entitled Band of Gold is currently on tour.) She was talking about her career, and expressed herself very strongly about the importance in her professional development of Bretton Hall. Unless you are involved in the theatre, and/or live in Yorkshire, you probably don’t know about Bretton Hall.
It was an extremely good college, founded in 1945, and dedicated principally to training teachers in the arts. Its was first absorbed into the University of Leeds and then, in 2001, closed. Anybody who knows anything about the place, or the history or arts education in the UK will be aware of the extent of the loss that entailed.
Listening to the conversation I began to realise that the closure of Bretton Hall was profoundly symptomatic of a lot that is wrong with British society and politics. Of course it represents the long-term and systematic undervaluation of education in the arts in this country. More than that, however, I realised that is just one instance of a problem that has come to be debated fiercely in the past year, namely, the long-term neglect by central government of the north of England.
When the referendum on British membership of there EU took place it was widely noted that the surprisingly wide opposition of large areas of the north to the government-sponsored referendum had little to do with the EU. Rather, it was treated by voters as an opportunity to express their resentment about the neglect and indifference of Westminster to regional concerns. The anger raised in the panel discussion on Saturday Live this morning was mirrored in my own response. Central government has not only neglected but has undermined our region over many years, not only allowing regional infrastructure to atrophy, but actually destroying cultural assets such as Bretton Hall.