Moral Purity

BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, Moral Purity

"[On declining corporate money because the company has done something wrong] One of the advantages, though, of taking money from corporations is that you don't have to be reliant upon state funding, you don't have to be reliant upon public funding. So it gives you actually much more independence and freedom to introduce things that are perhaps unpopular, experimental. That maybe the state wouldn't like.

And actually, you know, with state money, you can also challenge your sponsors. So, flexibility, freedom, experimentation, that's what this money brings. And I would also say that, I just don't think this is something that the public support. You know, museums and galleries, figures are just out. You've got millions and millions of people going every single year, they can go for free because of this money. And I think this is really something that is down to a few individuals, and really the crisis of confidence of arts organizations.

[On the National Portrait Gallery dropping a £1 million grant from the Sackler family] I think Michael was right that these people are spineless now, and the National Portrait Gallery has created a real problem for itself in the future...

I think what we're seeing with the Man Booker, and with the National Portrait Gallery at the dropping the cycle, I think we are in serious danger of losing support for the Arts in this country and internationally. I think the arts are being relentlessly politicized, it's not just over sponsorship, it’s associated with things like Cecil Rhodes, it’s cultural appropriation.

It’s a very dangerous time for the arts and given that they are the bedrock of civilized society, they create empathy and curiosity. They allow that to happen, we should be very, very worried... they are self censoring, not to say anything that might offend these, this minority group of people that are standing outside with the placards, they are self censoring. And in fact, the art should be the absolute opposite, which is open, experimental and prepared to say the unthinkable, say the unthinkable and be controversial...

‘I know people who are opposed to big sugar, they say it's the new tobacco. I know people who are against salt, they say it's going to threaten people's lives. I mean, is there any corporate sponsorship that you think should be allowed?’

‘Yes... Artists, scientists, key stakeholders are raising specific ethical questions about specific industries to look beyond a red line. So there is a consensus… the artists themselves. Last year 48 scientists begged to complain to the Science Museum saying you shouldn't be partnering with the fossil fuel industry’...

‘One of the biggest stakeholders is the public, who will be denied access to a huge number of museums. So I wanted to ask you about state funding... do you think that's clean money?’

‘I think state funding is much better and much more effective. And there are two key reasons’

‘But you know, the state puts lots of onus, lots of strings on that money. And also it's, you know, the state that went to war in Iraq, that's done all sorts of things, got blood on its hands, blah dee blah’

‘The company that has, the companies that have benefited from the invasion of Iraq has, again been the fossil fuel industry, but on the state funding point, just to be clear, is that’

‘You don't mind the army, it’s just the fuel company you don’t like, that’s hilarious’

‘So just to return to the state funding point, the large corporate sponsors are the ones currently determining where the distribution of funding goes. Now, if we actually took a stronger stance on tax, and taxed them effectively, made sure that they don't sort of shift money offshore. If we stop subsidizing and giving tax breaks.’

‘So state money, which is made up of the taxes of the corporates that you don't like, is all right, that's classic. So if they pay their taxes, and they come from fossil fuel companies, they're going to be the state funding though. Surely there's no such thing as clean money’

‘Those companies focus on the top institutions in order to launder their reputations. And we've got small museums and galleries across the country but facing the threat of closure, and they are not looking to support those smaller museums and galleries’...

‘What is it about the left that makes them more puritanical than the right then?’

‘Well, I don't know. I suppose that they think that they’re the goodies, don't they? If I was always to think of the Star Wars metaphor, you know, Jedi vs Sith and if you ask them who they are, they would definitely think that they are the Jedi, you know, it's a sense of being on the side of right and certainly at this point in my life. It wasn't always like this. Like when I was at university the left weren’t as censorious as they are now but now they've got this kind of elevated sense of moral purpose’...

‘There’s nothing wrong with having a sense of moral purpose though is there?’

‘Well, not if it gets in the way of my sense of moral purpose and my desire to have a cooked breakfast… I just don't like people telling me what to do Giles. That's what I've realized, a lot of material at the moment is coming from the fact of whether it's the EU, whether it's government, whether it's people on Twitter, I just don't like people telling me what to do. I mean, you look at today, there was the news about these cars where you literally can't drive faster than 70 miles an hour, we've been infantilized’...

‘Purity and disgust that, is that associated with the right, very strongly associated with the right’

‘Well it was when I was younger, right, it was all Mary Whitehouse trying to you know, get things banned on TV and swearing and stuff but now the thing that probably offend people more on television is the food rather than the nudity. And that is a massive shift, isn't it in the space of about 20 years’...

‘Is there a danger that moral grandstanding for political reasons then deprives, you know, in this instance, millions of people, free access to museums and galleries are kind of unexpected, unintended consequences?’

‘I think that actually, you know, looking at the morality of it, and for instance, refusing money for certain things, actually forces us to change the way that we operate. So if, for instance, you know, museums are currently reliant on, you know, oil companies, on people who, perhaps, earn money in kind of, you know, like non moral ways, then we can look at different ways to fund them. And you know, you can have a different economics that puts more money from government into museums.’

‘Well, I think that was what we were saying before that state funding of arts has been complained about by lots of artists, because they interfere in terms of artistic freedom. So I suppose that thing is that one gesture, and then suddenly, there's no Sackler money, and then that's actually going to have a very big impact’...

It's really really interesting, the grammar of this conversation, because when we like something, we call it moral, and we don't like something, we call it moralizing. Now, actually, the difference between moral and moralizing is not entirely clear to me. Is that actually moralizing contains an element of the moral and the other way around. And the idea that you can pull these things apart, that there is a really nasty thing called moralizing and there's a terribly good thing called moral, actually they bleed into each other...

The characteristics of a witch hunt are the hue and cry, and that is achieved through social media. But the first thing is that somebody points the finger without proof, without evidence, and that sets the hue and cry going, and that's precisely what we’re seeing"


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