Focus Resumed

There is a sense in which this short chapter simultaneously forms a postscript to the last and a prologue to the next: it describes the end of the hiatus of the previous few years and, incircumstances—perhaps coincidental—which reflect to a remarkable degree Margaret Thatcher’s claimed distrust of centralised power structures, it marks a point at which Acme and SPACE became “the establishment”, and smaller, “independent” studios became the norm for new studios. The growth of those small independent studios in the late 1980s and early 1990s is the subject of the next chapter. In this chapter, we see the centre of gravity of London’s contem- porary art scene shifting decisively to the East End, at a time when Britain’s cultural institutions were getting a major overhaul from the new Conservative administration.

The turmoil at a social and political level which had wracked most of the 1970s gave way in the 1980s under Thatcher to a renewed sense of direction, albeit one that many people did not agree with. The gap left by the decline of the post-war consensus during the 1970s became, by the end of that decade, a “pathological” national condition according to the ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson (Hewison, 1995:209). Thatcher’s approach, in essence, was not to try to reinvigorate that consensus, but to accept the economic trends—in particular the decline of industry—and to set about the business of rebuilding a post-industrial society on the basis of a new “enterprise culture” (Hall, 1998:888 et seq; Hewison, 1995:209–210).

Simultaneously, a new (specifically Anglocentric) consensus would be built around “themes of law and order, the traditional family and patriotism” as opposed to the previous “permissive society” (Hewison, 1995:211). However the economy became “the focus of na- tional anxiety”, signalling a shift in the status of the individual from citizen to consumer (ibid:212), a shift which would greatly affect the East End artists’ agglomeration in the 1990s as

the “lifestyle” became a buyable commodity through the goods associated with it.

For Hewison, the new order of this “Thatcherite revolution” was only possible because the old order had collapsed irrevocably in the 1970s (ibid:219). As David Harvey (1989) has pointed out, communications technology and ever-decreasing transport costs made the world smaller and smaller, and enabled a true global economy which transcended national boundaries. Such large markets need large advertising campaigns, and the advertising agency Saatchi and Saatchi, founded by two brothers (one of whom, Charles Saatchi, would become Britain’s lead- ing art collector of the 1990s) in 1970, had by the mid-80s became the world’s largest. A dec- ade later, however, after a steady decline in the agency’s fortunes, Maurice Saatchi was dis- missed as Chairman, and the two brothers sold their shares in the company (ibid:220).

Saatchi and Saatchi had been responsible for the Conservative Party’s advertising cam- paigns, and this elision of the commercial and the political was reflected in the way in which the new administration dealt with the arts. A constant critic of the Reithian ethic, Thatcher felt that choice, not quality was the paramount consideration in broadcasting, and she set about ending the BBC-ITV duopoly, and releasing the BBC of its—in her view—paternalistic high-minded- ness through the appointment of more commercially orientated chairmen (ibid:232–236).

The Arts Council fared little better: unfocused at the turn of the decade, it was criticised both for being too progressive, and for ignoring the avant garde. Expectations of the Arts Coun- cil had been raised while the Conservatives were in Opposition—they had called for the arts budget to be doubled—but the realities of government hit hard, and within a year of the Conser- vatives taking office, they had cut the Arts Council’s budget by one million pounds (ibid:246). Taken by surprise at the severity and suddenness of the cuts, the Arts Council panicked and withdrew funding without warning from forty-one companies, prompting accusations of arro- gance (ibid).

Nor was the Arts Council immune to political pressures, and the appointment in 1982 of William Rees-Mogg as Chairman confirmed the Government’s interventionist approach (ibid:248). The Arts Council’s approach during the Thatcher years would strictly be one of “value for money”.

Unlike the BBC and the Arts Council, the Greater London Council was able to both voice and articulate its opposition to the government’s approach to culture. Although its 1981 election manifesto barely mentioned the arts, the decline in industry and the associated working-class vote meant that a new “post-industrial” constituency had to be wooed. Thus it was that “black British, Asians, middle-class people working in the public sector, and the small but articulate pressure groups of gays and lesbians” were targeted, through an “alternative form of mobilisa- tion and communication” which centred around culture (ibid:236).

The GLC thus broadened the definition of the arts “to include photography, video, elec- tronic music and community radio”, handed out grants and organised festivals. They had dis- covered something which had perhaps passed Margaret Thatcher by: to quote Tony Banks, the chairman of the Arts and Recreation Committee, “We could …use the arts as a medium for a political message” (ibid).