THE NATIONAL THEATRE

HL Deb 20 April 1961 vol 230 cc688-739

3.27 p.m.

LORD SILKIN rose to call attention to the statement by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on 21st March, 1961, concerning the National Theatre; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, on March 21 last the Chancellor of the Exchequer made a statement in another place giving the Government's decision on the question of the National Theatre, which had been under consideration for some months following representations which were made to him by the National Theatre Committee stating that they were now ready to proceed with the building of the theatre. The Chancellor of the Exchequer's statement caused deep disappointment, and indeed distress, to all who love the living theatre and feel that we have a great and unrivalled dramatic history and tradition which ought to be preserved and cherished.

The project of a National Theatre began over a hundred years ago. Throughout that period it has had support from most of the celebrated authors, dramatists, poets and actors, as well as of many others engaged in public life. To mention a few is virtually to bring to mind the history of the last one hundred years, and creates a nostalgic feeling among the older Members, at any rate, of this House. Among the writers there were Lord Lytton, who was a very strong supporter of the movement, and his son; Charles Dickens; Matthew Arnold; Thomas Hardy; George Meredith; Galsworthy; Jerome K. Jerome—everybody's favourite fifty years ago or more; Zangwill; Rider Haggard; Robert Hichens; Barrie; two Poets Laureate, Robert Bridges and Alfred Austin; Pinero; and, last but not least, George Bernard Shaw. Among the actors who were supporters of this movement I would mention Sir Henry Irving; Charles Kemble; Sarah Bernhardt; Beerbohm Tree; Granville-Barker; and Sir John Hare. And among the others, whose names are legion, I would mention just a few: the right honourable Sir Alfred Lyttelton, K.C., M.P., father of the present Lord Chandos; his wife, Dame Edith Lyttelton; Lord Chandos himself, of course; Sir Kenneth Clark; the late Lord Esher, and also (and I am glad to see him here this afternoon) the present Lord Esher—not late by a long way.

One interesting supporter of the National Theatre idea made a speech some 55 years ago at the Hotel Cecil, at a banquet in honour of the late Ellen Terry, and I should like to quote an extract from his speech, which was reported in The Times on June 18, 1906, as follows: He confessed to having the idea that a great National Theatre with branches in the large provincial cities and with connections or similar sister bodies in the Colonies, throughout the Empire, would have a great effect on the solidarity of the English-speaking people all over the world. In the Shakespearean drama we had links of gold, if we would only use them, which were strong enough to resist the shocks and changes of time". That imaginative speech—which, as I have said, was made 55 years ago—could be made to-day with complete truth. It was made by that master of English prose, Mr. Winston Churchill; and I am sure that if Mr. Churchill were to make a speech on the National Theatre to-clay he would make exactly the same speech as he made then.

Now this movement that I have referred to is to-day supported by every movement that is interested in the arts: the Arts Council, the Old Vic, the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, the commercial theatre and the Council of Repertory Theatres. Indeed, the National Theatre movement has consoli- dated with the Old Vic and the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, and they have formed a joint committee which is working for the purpose of creating a National Theatre. After the Chancellor of the Exchequer's decision was made known, the secretary of the Repertory Theatres, whose movement stood to gain, I suppose, by the decision, wrote to The Times and said how much he regretted the decision of the Chancellor in not permitting the National Theatre movement to go forward. Twice in the history of the National Theatre they were on the brink of success, and each time success was shattered from their lips by the outbreak of war—in 1914 and in 1939. Before the last war, they had actually acquired at South Kensington a site of about half an acre in extent, and they proposed to build on that site. In 1942, owing to the efforts of the then Chairman of the London County Council, the late Mr. Blake, a meeting of the London County Council was convened for the purpose of discussing the possibility of providing the National Theatre movement with an alternative site on the South Bank—a site which would be larger, more convenient and, it was thought, more suitable. It is very interesting to note that at that meeting there were present my noble friend Lord Latham, myself, the late Chairman of the London County Council, of course, and the late Sir Harold Webbe.

THE EARL OF LONGFORD

He is still alive.

LORD SILKIN

Good! I should have said the former member. I am glad he is still alive; I am sorry I made a mistake. As representing the theatre movement there was Dame Edith Lyttleton, Sir Barry Jackson and (and I am afraid I am right here) the late Bernard Shaw. Among the advisers to the L.C.C. was the late Sir Patrick Abercrombie.

This was a most interesting meeting, as your Lordships will gather, especially in view of the presence of Mr. Bernard Shaw. Those who knew Mr. Bernard Shaw, as I did towards the end of his life, will know that it was very difficult ever to get him to agree to anything at all. He certainly agreed to the idea of a National Theatre. He was a fervent supporter; but I regret to say that he was not altogether convinced of the desirability of the South Bank as a site for the National Theatre, but preferred the site at South Kensington. However, we were offering at that time a site of about an acre and a third, or an acre and a quarter, in the place of the relatively small site at South Kensington; and I think everybody else was impressed with the offer and was prepared to consider it favourably. But, of course, nothing much could be done while the war was in progress.

When the war came to an end, discussions took place with the Government as to the feasibility of building a theatre on the South Bank site; and eventually, in 1948, discussions took place first with Mr. Dalton, now Lord Dalton, who was then the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and then with his successor, Sir Stafford Cripps. Sir Stafford Cripps made a statement on behalf of the Government offering to contribute a sum not exceeding £1 million towards the cost of building the theatre, which at that time it was thought would be an adequate amount for the purpose. In ending his statement announcing this, Sir Stafford Cripps used these words [OFFICIAL. REPORT, Commons, Vol. 448, col. 2776]: My purpose in making this announcement at the present time, and in taking the steps I have stated, is to give an assurance to the parties concerned so that they can proceed with their plans in the knowledge that they have the full sympathy and practical support of His Majesty's Government and of this House". I ask your Lordships: could anything be more definite than his?

But that statement was followed by the introduction of the National Theatre Bill, which authorised the Treasury to provide £1 million, in the terms of Sir Stafford Cripps' previous statement. The Bill was introduced by Mr. Glenvil Hall, and I am proud to say that it was backed by myself. Mr. Glenvil Hall, in introducing the Bill, epitomised the purpose of the National Theatre in these appropriate words [OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, Vol. 460, col. 437]: That such a theatre should be established in this country, devoted to the presentation of the best plays, past and present, produced with distinction, performed by actors of merit and where the dignity of the playwright's art would be maintained in a worthy setting has long been the dream of many people in all walks of life". I would add to this: performed at reasonable prices acceptable to the general public, and played not only in London but by touring companies visiting main centres of population throughout the country, including, of course, the repertory theatres. The Bill went through all its stages in both Houses, with great enthusiasm from both sides, without serious opposition, and it became law. And it is still on the Statute Book.

I submit that the Government are morally, if not legally, bound to honour this commitment to-day. It was not possible, in view of the economic position of the country and the problems of postwar reconstruction, to go ahead immediately after the passing of the Act; but that was well understood at the time and affords no excuse for not honouring the obligation to-day. The Committee went ahead in good faith, believing that when it became possible to build no Government would go back on the legislation which had been passed with the approval of all Parties. Among the most enthusiastic speakers in favour of the Bill were members of the Party opposite, who were then in Opposition. Architects were instructed to prepare plans, and considerable expense was incurred. Even the foundation stone was laid by Her Majesty the Queen—now the Queen Mother—in 1951, at a ceremony on the site, at which several members of the then Government, and I imagine the present Government, were present.

The Government take the view that there are better ways of using the resources which can be made available to help the living theatre, and they are ready to make additional funds available, through the Arts Council, for assisting the Old Vic and the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-on-Avon, in place of a National Theatre. But this offer, welcome as it is, is in no sense a substitute for a National Theatre. The objects of the National Theatre movement, it is agreed by all who have studied it, can be met only by providing a building worthy of being a national centre of drama, in a worthy setting, and large enough to carry out all the purposes of a National Theatre. The Old Vic has done, and is doing, a magnificent job; we should all agree with that. But neither its position, its size, nor its potentialities are capable of converting it into a theatre which could be regarded as a National Theatre. Its position in Waterloo is very cramped. It is quite incapable of enlargement, and it is in a grave state of disrepair. If it were to be used at all, it would have to be greatly improved. But it is certainly not large enough, and not capable of enlargement, to make it a suitable theatre; nor, as I have said, is it suitably situated.

If it were possible to rebuild the theatre on its existing site at the right size, it would cost no less than a fresh building on the South Bank, and undoubtedly the site of the South Bank is much preferable to the site of the Old Vic. Indeed, the Old Vic trustees fully appreciate that point of view and are supporting the National Theatre, and the members of the joint committee with the Royal Shakespeare Theatre would carry into effect the original scheme. The Old Vic would, indeed, be a valuable concomitant of a National Theatre. Its great dramatic tradition, to which the Chancellor of the Exchequer refers, would be preserved and enhanced by having the opportunity of developing in a more favourable environment. It is not proposed, in the scheme put forward by the National. Theatre movement, to interfere in any way with the Royal Shakespeare Theatre at Stratford-onAvon, but their work and their companies would be integrated and would form part of the function of the National Theatre. Not only would their identity and tradition not be interfered with, but they could only benefit, as they appreciate, by association with the National Theatre.

What, then, is the case against the National Theatre? The Chancellor does not say in his statement. If it is anything at all, it is purely a financial one. The Chancellor appears to recognise the need to help the living theatre, and theatres such as the Old Vic and the Royal Shakespeare Theatre can be maintained only by public subventions. That is accepted. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in his statement, has agreed that that is so, and has agreed to make the subventions, so that we are not arguing about the necessity to subsidise the public sections of our theatre. Presumably the subventions he proposes will be less than would be required for a National Theatre, but no figure has so far been given.

I am sure no one regards these as alternatives. We have a tradition of drama unrivalled in any civilisation; but we have no home available which is worthy as a theatre in which these plays could be preserved and produced. We have our National Gallery, where we show most of the wonderful works of art we have accumulated over the years, but these are mostly by foreign artists, very few English painters being among them. That Gallery is supported by public funds. We have our National Opera House at Covent Garden, which receives large subsidies out of public funds; but mostly foreign operas are produced, performed by foreign singers and conductors. Few English players take part. Now we have the opportunity of having our own home for our own drama, produced by our own artists, and a drama of which we feel proud.

EARL WINTERTON

My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, but I think he is being rather unfair to Covent Garden. I should have thought they produced very good operas; and the noble Lord has made no reference to the ballet, and the admirable ballets which are produced there.

LORD SILKIN

My Lords, I was not attempting to criticise Covent Garden. I was referring to the fact that, of the operas produced, practically all are foreign operas, some performed by foreign players. I admit that there is a certain amount of ballet, but the primary purpose of Covent Garden is that of an opera house. I would not quarrel with the noble Earl, Lord Winterton, on that, or on anything else. The point I want to make is that here we are dealing with something which is peculiarly British. British plays will be performed by British actors and it will be something in which we can feel real pride. I need not mention the outstanding dramatist of all, Shakespeare, but if we leave him out, we have a literature of plays which is unrivalled by any civilised country in the world. Yet we have no home where these dramas can be played.

There is one ray of hope. Since the refusal by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to support the policy of providing a National Theatre, the London County Council have offered financial help, not only with the site but by contributing towards the cost of building. I am glad to say that this offer is not made only by the majority Party on the London County Council but by both sides. It is regarded as a non-Party matter, and I am grateful to the Conservatives on the London County Council for giving their complete support.

Obviously, a National Theatre must be in London. There has been some question about whether we could not distribute the theatre throughout the country, but the centre must obviously be London. It will be the centre of the productions not only of our own country but also of the Commonwealth, and gradually will become a tourist centre for the whole world. We must give those who visit these Islands an opportunity of seeing our achievements, in which we can take the greatest possible pride. This will indirectly benefit London and Greater London. Therefore, it is right that the municipalities—not only the London County Council but the Greater London authorities, too—should make some contribution towards the building and maintenance of the National Theatre. They have had power to do so ever since the Local Government Act, 1948.

But it must remain a national and not a municipal theatre, and so the Government must play their part. The site is there, waiting vacant. How long it will remain vacant cannot be known, but the South Bank developments are proceeding rapidly and it would be unreasonable to expect the London County Council to keep this site vacant indefinitely. Plans are virtually ready for the building. The foundation stone is there; it was laid in 1957, in good faith, by the Queen, the present Queen Mother. All Parties were present, I may say, at the laying of the foundation stone, including members of the Government. So everyone concerned with the National Theatre is ready to go ahead.

We remain one of the few great nations who do not possess a National Theatre. It awaits, we hope, new thoughts by the Government. If there were a plebiscite on whether the National Theatre should be built or not, no doubt there would be a great deal of indifference. Lt might well be that more than half the people would not vote at all, and as to the other half it might well be fifty-fifty, for and against; but I suggest that if we had a plebiscite about the National Gallery or any other of our great institutions, the result would be very much the same. I think it is for the Government to give a lead in these matters and to take their courage in their hands.

At the present time, I think that the matter could be settled by the Government being prepared to make the contribution which they were willing to make in 1948 and which is the present law of the land—that is, £1 million. They would not be required to produce the £1 million in one sum. It would take possibly four or five years before the building was completed, and if the Government were prepared to undertake to provide £1 million spread over the period of the building of the theatre I have every reason to hope and believe that the London County Council and the other local authorities in the Greater London area would be prepared to share the burden of the cost. At any rate, I would ask the Government to discuss with the London County Council and other authorities this very question and see how far they can combine to provide the necessary money.

It is agreed, of course, that there will have to be some subsidy towards the running costs. I do not wish to blink that fact at all. It may well be that the amount may be as much as £450,000 a year—that is the largest sum that has been mentioned. But the Government are prepared to provide something of that order towards a subvention to the costs of running the Old Vic and the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon. I would suggest that if the Government were still prepared to provide that sum, in view of the amalgamation of interests of the three theatres to-day, probably they could manage on a subvention of that sort. In other words, it needs only a variation in the use to which the Government are prepared to put the amount of subvention to enable the National Theatre to proceed. In the long run, I imagine, the work of the Old Vic would be carried out at the new theatre, but till the new theatre was built the Old Vic would continue. This seems to me a reasonable compromise, well within what the Government have already undertaken to do financially to provide for what is being suggested. I hope that the noble Earl who is going to reply will be able to give us some hope that the discussions with the London County Council will continue, that better thoughts will now prevail and that the Government will redeem and enhance the reputation of our country by enabling, at long last, this great national project to proceed. I beg to move for Papers.

3.59 p.m.

LORD COTTESLOE

My Lords, one of the most encouraging features of the post-war world is the remarkable growth of the interest taken by the general public in the arts, more especially by the younger generation, and we must all be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, for raising to-day the subject of the National Theatre and for the eloquent way in which he has developed the matter. When my noble friend (for in this matter of the arts there is no question of Party politics) Lord Esher first began to interest himself in the National Theatre, I suppose nearly half a century ago, the National Theatre was the concern, in spite of the impressive list we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, of a few enthusiasts. I think that at that time a good many people would have called them "a handful of cranks". But it is certainly now a matter of great interest to a large, widespread and growing public.

This project for a National Theatre is certainly a matter of great interest to me; but I feel 'myself to be in some little difficulty to-day. I have the honour to be the Chairman of the Arts Council of Great Britain, a body to which the Government are apt to look for advice on such matters, and it would, I think, be quite improper for me 'to indicate what advice, if any, we may have given to the Government on this occasion. But it may perhaps be helpful if I make a few more general observations.

In 1949, as Lord Silkin, has said, the Government at that time accepted in principle (I quote from the answer given by Sir Stafford Cripps then Chancellor of the Exchequer in reply to a question in another place) [OFFICIAL REPORT, Commons, Vol. 448, col. 2775]: that the establishment of a theatre to be operated under public auspices, which will set a standard for production of drama in a national setting worthy of Shakespeare and the British tradition, is a scheme to which the State should contribute. The National Theatre Act, 1949, enabled the Treasury to contribute up to £1 million to the cost of setting up and equipping a National Theatre on the site of the South Bank which was then made available by the London County Council. The Arts Council, in their Report on Housing the Arts, published two years ago, in 1959, expressed their regret that nearly ten years had gone by since the passing of the National Theatre Act in 1949 without any discernible progress being made in the realisation of that important scheme. They recognised that the National Theatre would not be just another theatre added to London's existing quota, but a national institution where the best plays of all periods, performed in true repertory by a first-rate company in especially favourable conditions, would provide a living library of our dramatic heritage, permanently and continuously available not only to Londoners but also to visitors from the rest of Great Britain and from abroad. They said that they had carefully considered the position created by the Act of 1949, and had come to the conclusion that further delay in launching this project was highly undesirable.

In their summary of recommendations in that published document they said that they had been greatly exercised over the question of priorities, and had come to the conclusion that the three main priorities for London were: first, a National Theatre; secondly, a medium-sized concert hall; and thirdly, an exhibition gallery. Of these three main priorities the second and the third are about to be provided by the London County Council. It is one of the most splendid acts of public patronage that that great local authority—the greatest local authority in the world—having built the Royal Festival Hall at a cost of some £2½ million at the time of the Festival of Britain, should now have embarked, as they have, on a comprehensive programme for the South Bank that will cost a further £3¾ million and will include the completion of the Royal Festival Hall, the building of a small concert hall (one of the crying needs of London) with a rehearsal hall; and the building of a set of exhibition galleries. That is one of the great gaps in the artistic provision of buildings in London at the present time, and the building of those exhibition galleries will incidentally relieve our public galleries of the constant and sometimes overwhelming demands that are made on them for space for loan exhibitions, and will enable them more adequately to exhibit their permanent collections.

The London County Council are doing a great deal more than that for the arts. They are providing, for example, £20,000 a year to commission works of art from living sculptors and painters to embellish the new schools and the new housing estates, and they give valuable help to Sadler's Wells and to other metropolitan enterprises. All that is some-thing for which that Council, and especially their leader, Sir Isaac Hayward, who has taken the closest personal interest and initiative in all these developments, deserve the warmest gratitude of the community.

The small concert hall and the exhibition galleries will in due time appear, to form with the Royal Festival Hall the nucleus of a great metropolitan and Commonwealth centre of the arts on the South Bank. It is a centre that without a theatre will be ill-balanced and incomplete. It is, in the long-term, unthinkable that this great centre of the arts, in a nation that has perhaps a greater dramatic heritage than any other in the world, Should provide in the handsomest way for music and for the visual arts, but should leave the art of drama out of the picture. Sooner or later the theatre on the South Bank will appear, and I hope that, whether, as has recently been suggested, by an unexampled act of further generosity on the part of the London County Council or by some other means, it may appear in the near and not in the distant future.

Meanwhile, I welcome the Government's decision to give substantial further aid to drama. That is something that is greatly needed, for our present public patronage of the arts is sadly out of balance. Of the funds that are made available to the Arts Council, opera and music must at the present time take the lion's share, and drama is, if I may mix my metaphors, the poor relation. That is inevitably so when the funds available are not enough for both. A National Opera, such as Covent Garden provides, cannot be run on the cheap", as every other nation in the world that has a National Opera has long since discovered.

The Government's decision to make more money available for the Old Vic and for the Royal Shakespeare Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon (and I will quote the words used by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his statement in another place): to improve the existing buildings and to help improve standards and meet towering costs; and also to increase the support for provincial repertory theatres both by way of grant and by contributing towards the cost of renovating existing theatres and building new ones", is something that we should all welcome. It will be of especial value, as I suppose, in enabling the Old Vic and Stratford to engage their companies on longer-term contracts and to pay more realistic salary scales, and also, I hope, to do more for provincial touring; and it will do much to raise the standards of provincial repertory by substituting fortnightly or three-weekly rehearsals for the inadequate weekly rehearsals that are at present almost universal. For provincial repertory is in many places at the present time dying on its feet, under the pressure of post-war economic facts and the competition of the television, which draws away both the actors and the audiences. In passing, I may say that I believe that television will, in the long run, if only we can enable the provincial theatre to survive these difficult early years, greatly widen the demand for the living theatre, as the gramophone and wireless have done for music.

The help that the Government are going to give to the theatre in these ways is all very much to the good. Nobody in his senses looks a £300,000 or £400,000 a year gift-horse in the mouth, but let no one think that it is a substitute for the National Theatre—it is something in itself very valuable, but something quite different. The concept of the National Theatre involves both a playhouse and a company: a metropolitan playhouse, built to the most modern standards and requirements, and a company containing the best players of the English stage—and they are unsurpassed at the present time, even though postwar economics in the main confine them to playing in modern plays with a cast of half a dozen, or to prostituting their talents in the films, or to acting abroad. For a full year recently, I am told, no single one of our leading actors was acting in this country. This company, in which the whole resources of the Old Vic and of Stratford should be combined, should play continuously repertory of the highest standards in London and at the same time at Stratford, and tour the Provinces. Such a company, based on a metropolitan playhouse built to serve its particular requirements, and showing our people and the world the splendours of our dramatic heritage, might be one of the great glories of the nation. It is a concept to fire the imagination, and I hope profoundly that, in one way or another, it will before long materialise.

4.12 p.m.

VISCOUNT ESHER

My Lords, it is lamentable for me to feel that in a short while that sturdy Scotsman. Lord Dundee, will get up and plead the poverty of Greet Britain. He does not look the part, and Great Britain does not look the part either. The small tinkle of the noble Lord's mendicant bell is drowned by the trumpets of the £5,000 million that is so largely spent on vainly trying to keep with the atomic Jones's. But even in its dire poverty, Great Britain has been rather humiliatingly helped out by the London County Council, to the tune of £1½ million, and I should have thought that if with that money we were to start to build the theatre, eleven months of resolute Conservative Government, with all the Chancellor of the Exdhequer's new ideas behind them put into operation, we might find our impoverished Treasury in a position to provide the £1 million that we require.

For 40 years I have optimistically believed that anything so intelligent and practical as a National Theatre must win in the end. But I must admit that I was a little anxious last week, because I thought the Labour Party were going to he beaten in the elections. Although I am glad to say that Sir Percy Rugg and his Conservatives are also upon our side, it is the fact that the full enthusiasm for intellectual and artistic things has come generously over the years from Sir Isaac Hayward and his Labour supporters in the London County Council. It is they who have conceived the great idea of a centre on the South Bank which is comparable to the Lincoln Centre in New York, and it is very natural that they should wish to crown that centre with a National Theatre before the world-wide Shakespeare celebrations in 1964 come upon us.

I do not see how a Commonwealth Festival of the Arts, to celebrate the 400th Anniversary of Shakespeare's birth, could be staged without a National Theatre. It is no doubt a desire to avoid the absurdity of such a discreditable exposure that has prompted the London County Council to make their magnificent offer to spend £1½ million on the National Theatre. I find it difficult to believe that, in face of such an offer, and in view of such an unexpected solution of the problem, the Government will refuse to provide the £1 million which they promised to give us when the time was ripe, so implementing the Act of 1949, which went through both Houses of Parliament without a Division. The time, in fact, could not be riper.

I have been a Trustee of the National Theatre and a chairman of many of its committees ever since I can remember —which is not very long—and we have always had all the arguments on our side. I do not want to bother your Lordships this afternoon with what other great Powers like Iceland and Uganda are doing in this matter. It is just possible that some sense of shame might tinge the Government's habitual self-appreciation at the news that a National Theatre for Wales is to be built at Cardiff, or at the recollection that, for the first time in history, they allowed a foundation stone laid by a reigning Sovereign, with great pomp and circumstance, to become the tombstone of a great idea and a lost cause.

I suppose we must assume that purely monetary motives prompted the Government to keep that tight hold on the pictures of Sir Hugh Lane which he intended to give to Ireland, while they leave uncared in their cellars the collection of over 40 theatrical paintings, second only to those at the Garrick Club, which Mr. Somerset Maugham gave to the National Theatre. It is true, and we are glad to recognise it, in that partial gratitude for "half a loaf" which is usually inspired by Treasury action, that they have increased their annual support for the drama by £400,000. But it is always forgotten that the theatrical profession playing at such theatres as Stratford and the Old Vic, by accepting far lower salaries than they would command from a commercial management in the West End, are, in fact, subsidising the drama. No £24,000 a year for them!

As I have said, all the arguments are on our side, and the support of those who know most about the dramatic art is also on our side. In fact, the only person the Government have been able to find to oppose this idea is their own opponent, Mr. Strauss. I do not know Mr. Strauss's qualifications, but we can put up against this solitary and sad individual the Theatrical Managers' Association, British Actors' Equity, The Council of Repertory Theatres, The British Drama League, Stratford-on-Avon, the Old Vic and the Amenity Groups of both Parties in another place. Against this array, Mr. Strauss does not seem to me to be a formidable figure, although he has been of great value to the Government.

Of course, with the London County Council's imaginative offer, circumstances have changed; and when circumstances change the Government should change their mind. I gather that the Financial Secretary to the Treasury does not think that they will change their mind. He probably shares the illusion that to stick to one's guns, to be inflexible to events, is a sign of a strong character. It is, of course, exactly the opposite. The big man is not afraid to change his mind when circumstances have changed. The easy thing is obstinately to adhere to your conceived opinions. We see evidence of this all along in political life: Conservatives sticking to obsolete armaments; Labour sticking to obsolete nationalisation. I fail to see anything but weakness in such attitudes.

It is really astonishing to me that the able men in the Cabinet fail to understand, or appear to fail to understand, our case. Perhaps they are a little too old to see how a world without great Powers is going to be run; to see how this ancient island is going to make a place for itself in the new world. I am only 80: I see clearly enough, and I am not blind to the fact that my children and grandchildren have to work extremely hard to make a place for themselves in their new world. I never did a stroke of work myself when I was young, and I never passed an examination of any sort. But to-day values are different. It is an attitude of mind almost subconscious, and traces of it still hang about our public life; people who think that art, and even education, cannot compare with cricket as an objective in life; people who think that Mr. Macmillan cannot be a good Prime Minister because he was in College at Eton; people who think that the noble Earl, Lord Home, cannot be a good Foreign Secretary because he missed that tiger. I think that that is clinging to the old atmosphere—all easy-going, polo-playing fellows, good fellows all together, whose supremacy was automatic and did not have to be earned. It is very different now when everybody has to make his place in the world by intelligence or by talent.

Surely it must be clear, even to the most traditional Conservative opposite, and even more clear to the most traditional Conservative in the Cabinet, that these strenuous tests for the individual apply just as strongly to the nation. Certainly to my youthful eyes it is obvious that in a world without armies, without navies, without air forces or empires our supremacy can come only from the outstanding characters that we produce. Great judges, imaginative and powerful politicians, writers, actors, dancers, painters, musicians of genius—they alone can make us count in the strange world that is coming. In all these fields if we take the trouble we can defeat the world: I still believe that. And I would ask those clever men in the Cabinet who alone oppose us—as your Lordships will see by the debate this afternoon; it is only in, the Cabinet we are being opposed—not to discard this important piece of prestige machinery, necessary to enable us to excel in an art for which we have such a long and splendid tradition.

4.25 p.m.

LORD LATHAM

My Lords, we have just listened to an engaging and, indeed, one might also say an intriguing speech from the noble Viscount, Lord Esher, a speech of the character and of the timbre to which we are accustomed from him. As the predecessor of Sir Isaac Hayward, I should like to express to the noble Viscount, Lord Esher, and to the noble Lord, Lord Cottesloe, my appreciation of the well-deserved tribute they paid to Sir Isaac Hayward in his leadership of the London County Council as regards the provision for the fostering and nurturing of the arts in London.

We are very much indebted to my noble friend, Lord Silkin, for initiating this debate this afternoon. As he has said, we were together in June, 1942, when the question of the erection of a National Theatre on the South Bank was first initiated. It arose from the consideration at that time of the Plan for London, and it had always been the intention of the London County Council, which acquired the South Bank in 1937, to erect there a cultural centre. When the London Plan was in the process of formulation by Professor Abercrombie and Mr. Forshaw, the question of the development of the South Bank as a cultural centre involved consideration of including a National Theatre; negotiations were opened with the Committee of the National Theatre, and in the end, after many discussions and many changes of location as regards the siting of the intended theatre, in December, 1945, the Council formally decided they would exchange a valuable site of something larger than an acre on the South Bank for a much less valuable site of a third of an acre at Cromwell Road, Kensington. From that time onwards, London and the country have been expecting to see work commence upon the building of this theatre.

Personally, I feel it difficult to be very proud that it should be necessary in 1961 in this country to argue the case for a National Theatre. As has been said by previous speakers, many other nations much poorer than we are have National Theatres or subsidise the theatre and drama and the dramatic arts much more than we do. If a rising standard of living means anything, it also means widened facilities for the enjoyment of culture—when I say "culture" it is not spelt with a "K"—and the enjoyment of the arts and graces of life, one of which, of course, is the great field of drama and dramatic literature. Gracious living is an attribute of civilisation. That is, I think, incontestably proved by the amazingly larger, more vivid and more informed interest that there is now among the youth of this country in the arts, in music, in concerts, in drama, and in the theatre, than was the case before the war. That is a tribute to the educational facilities which are available in this country, to the other facilities and to the general attitude of mind of the people.

But in a Budget of some £6,000 million, ought a Government really to boggle over an expenditure of £1 million or so upon a project to which they are committed, or at least upon a project to which the country is committed as the result of legislation and of assurances, given, it is true, by former Governments? Ought we to boggle over £1 million or so when we can spend £100 million, not very profitably it seems, on Blue Streak? The Chancellor of the Exchequer is content with providing an additional £450,000. What a chance there was for him to mark his accession to office by carrying out the obligation of his predecessors embodied in the Act of 1949 and reaffirmed in 1951 by the laying of the foundation stone by the Queen, now the Queen Mother!

In my view, this is not an issue between, on the one hand, the National Theatre and, on the other, the support and help of repertory, and the like, theatres in the provinces or in London. It is not a clash of what is more desirable, because both are desirable. A National Theatre is not an alternative, but is complementary. As my noble friend Lord Silkin said, the National Theatre is really the basis of the development and of the fostering and flourishing of the repertory theatre and dramatic art in the Provinces as well as in London. Indeed, in my submission, it is impossible satisfactorily to promote repertory in London or the provinces without the central National Theatre, integrated to form, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself said, a nucleus of company actors and actresses. Money used by way of increased subsidy cannot fully fructify without, in my submission, the National Theatre; and, as I think the noble Viscount. Lord Esher, said, this much is agreed by all informed and experienced opinion, including, as we have been told and as is the case (it can be read in the Report), the Arts Council and the commercial theatres.

Why, as I have said, boggle at doing both? If one has to have priority, then it is clear that it should be the National Theatre, because it can show a better return in the results that we all desire. It is most important that this question should not be distorted into a conflict of priorities. It is not. Both should be done, and, if both cannot be done at the same time, the National Theatre should be built first as turning expenditure to the earliest and best advantage and enabling the repertory companies to derive the benefits which renovating existing theatres or building new ones in the provinces cannot do in full measure, as the Arts Council stated clearly in their Report.

It is interesting, in connection with this apparent conflict between the two priorities, that the Arts Council were asked by the present Prime Minister, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, to proceed to a survey of the cultural building needs of London and the whole of the country. There was there no division between London and the country; both were included. The Arts Council reported in April, 1959, to the effect that the National Theatre should take priority; that, having regard to the fall in the value of money, the building should be divided into two stages, and that the first stage should be commenced without further delay. If we look, as my noble friend Lord Silkin did, at the history of this project, we find that it is one of sustained and unworthy failure to provide the National Theatre. I have re-read, as no doubt others have including my noble friend Lord Silkin, the powerful and rather shaming leader in The Times of October 26, 1960. It is a narrative of resolute "do-nothing", stretching over more than a century.

Then we come down from those broken promises and unfulfilled assurances to a statement made by the present Chancellor of the Exchequer last autumn at Scarborough, that the question of the National Theatre is one on which a decision should be come to. The Government have apparently come to a decision, not to go on with the project at present. They say, through the mouth of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that there are better ways of using resources which can be made available to help the living theatre. But that view is not shared by those who know; and, in any case, it is a bit late in the day—or, should I say, a bit late in the century—to argue now that there is a better way of using this paltry amount of money, which my noble friend Lord Silkin estimated would be in the region of £450,000. To make additional funds, even to that extent, and desirable as it is in other connections and for other purposes, available to the Arts Council for the assistance of the Old Vic, the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, et cetera, is really not doing the right thing in the right way. It is cheeseparing, when what is needed is a broadminded generosity of view as to what ought to be done in the interests of the promotion of the arts. Why is it that Her Majesty's Government, with all their resources, cannot be as generous in the matter of fostering and nurturing the arts and graces of life as the London County Council? Why cannot they be generous and broadminded and take a reasonable view, a view that will be shared warmly by all informed and thinking people in the country?

The London County Council have been justly praised this afternoon. In the field of music and art of that kind they have spent very considerable sums. They have built the Festival Hall; they have for some years made a gift of up to £20,000 a year to certain orchestras. I see from a recent report that they are giving £45,000 this year to Sadler's Wells; and they are quite prepared now to go further, as the offer of Sir Isaac Hayward shows. In addition—and this must be appreciated—the London County Council's willingness to exchange the site at the South Bank for the site at Kensington, amounts to a very large and handsome subsidy. It was so in 1942. The South Bank site was then estimated to be worth something in the region of four times the site at Cromwell Road, and if that was the case in 1942, whilst the value of the site at Cromwell Road no doubt has gone up in sympathy with the movement upwards in land prices, the value of the site at the South Bank has gone up much beyond that; and this willingness to exchange is really a very handsome gift which may run into several millions of pounds.

Now, if the Government will place £1 million at disposal for purposes of building the National Theatre—and that can be done by the Treasury or the Chancellor of the Exchequer saying, "Let it be done", because there is power to do it—Sir Isaac Hayward is prepared to consider advising the London County Council to undertake to contribute the product of a penny rate for from three to four years. I understand that at the moment a penny rate produces £445,000; so if their contribution is for three years that will mean £1¾ million, or if it is for four years over £1½ million, plus, of course, the difference in value between the two sites.

Why cannot Her Majesty's Government accept that offer? It is true that provision will have to be made for the running costs. I do not think anyone is deluded into assuming that there will not be a short-fall on the running costs of the theatre. Well, there are ways of meeting that, either wholly or in part. One of the ways was indicated in very general terms by my noble friend Lord Silkin when he quite properly postulated that local authorities in the Greater London area, other than the London County Council, might feel that they had an obligation to make some contribution towards the running or other costs of the project, since they all now have the power so to do. I hope that this new and generous offer of Sir Isaac Hayward will be carefully considered by Her Majesty's Government and that they will not reject it. Here is an opportunity for the Government to redeem the national conscience by going forward, on the offer by the London County Council, with the building of this National Theatre. It will stand as a lasting memorial to the greatness of this country. It seems to me that unless this theatre be built the foundation stone will remain not as a foundation stone but as a monument to a breach of faith. Let us, the people of this country, not be charged with breaking faith over the matter of providing a National Theatre.

4.46 p.m.

LORD BIRDWOOD

My Lords, I appear to be the first speaker in this debate who has had no direct connection with, or stood for the chairmanship of, the Arts Council. London County Council, the Joint Council of the National Theatre, the British Drama League, the Society for Theatre Research, and all those formidable organisations which the noble Viscount opposite enumerated; and it is therefore as a representative theatre-foer from the public that I make a very brief contribution.

My understanding of the debate so far is that this is entirely a non-political matter, and I personally would add my gratitude to the noble Lard, Lord Silkin, for having put into our minds again this question of a National Theatre which has been in our thoughts for such a very long time; and the fact that we debate this matter on top of the presentation of the Budget should in no way deter us.

We have had the position fairly clearly painted to us. Since the Government's firm refusal to build a National Theatre, we have had an offer from the London County Council to provide £1½ million, provided that the Treasury are prepared to release that £1 million which they were prepared to release so many years ago, in 1949. As I understand it, the position is that the Government are not at the moment going to say whether or not they accept the L.C.C. offer. Their main objection, I gather, is not so much in relation to the initial £1 million to be spent on the building as in relation to the subsequent annual subsidy which it appears will be necessary, perhaps amounting to some £450,000 a year. Incidentally, I work it out as about 0.025 per cent. of the present Defence Budget.

That doubt on the part of the Government seems to me very reasonable, and I should have thought that where the L.C.C. are prepared to match £1 million with £1½ million to build the Theatre they might also be prepared to take on some responsibility for a portion of the subsequent annual subsidy. The noble Lord, Lord Latham, has referred to Sir Isaac Hayward's proposal that a penny rate over four or five years would meet the L.C.C.'s initial contribution to build. Why should they not perhaps put on just another halfpenny, over a period of about ten years, as a contribution towards the actual maintenance?

I have not intervened in any way to give my ideas about the income and expenditure account, however. I have intervened merely because I want to add my very firm support of this prospect of a National Theatre, in the belief that this is the one symbol of this country's achievement in the sphere of art and culture that would stir the imagination., and perhaps even the conscience of us all, and which is certainly expected of us abroad. When the Viennese were recovering from the Second World War (a war which they hardly deserved), and saw around them much of their city in ruins, their first determination was not to fill their empty stomachs, which might have been reasonable; it was not to argue and wrangle over the prospect of a Welfare State: it was to rebuild their Opera House. And they proceeded to do it. They built because they saw here a symbol of their past achievement and a great pride in that achievement. Quite incidentally (because this was not the motive), it paid them to do so, in that they recaptured, and more than recaptured, their previous tourist strength.

My Lords, are considerations of this sort quite meaningless to us? Is our own reaction in much the same kind of position only to ask where the money is to come from? I would submit that in the land of Shakespeare we shall have to acknowledge, if we cannot find the money, that we are no longer supreme, no longer the supreme masters we thought we were in the sphere of drama and the theatre, which we have claimed for generations as our heritage. It is not the Old Vic so much as the Victoria Palace which becomes the standard by which we should perhaps deservedly be judged. Not, of course, that the Crazy Gang do not, represent genius of a very individual type; but I do not think that the Crazy Gang themselves would claim to represent the whole range of our achievement in the theatre. Those who claim that to put the Royal Shakespeare Company on at the Aldwych is sufficient seem to me just to miss the point. Surely, we do not expect to find the national presentation of our genius housed in just one more of thirty or forty theatres in the Capital City.

Surely, a question of pride and national dignity is involved here. If the Treasury and the City of London are unable to find the money, why not open a subscription list and give the whole nation a chance to make their contribution? Why not, for example, open up an office in Trafalgar Square with a model of the proposal, along with an appeal to the British public? Goodness knows! Trafalgar Square is put to queer use sometimes these days. For a change, the authorities could surely do worse than exploit the facilities of the Square for a national cause which is beyond dispute. I should have thought that, along with the odd three-or four-figure cheque, you would get the sixpences and the coppers from the thousands—because everyone has a stake in this; and all should share in creating what would be their own possession.

I have only one qualification to make, and that is that in building a theatre we should not have inflicted on us just another aircraft hangar silhouette, or something of the glass matchbox influence. In a theatre that would belong to the people, surely some mild concession might be made to public opinion and taste. Perhaps some lingering touches of the classical could be regarded as due to the memory of those great names which the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, enumerated—names for whom the economic factor in building was a minor consideration. Because, after all, it is an economic factor which dictates architecture these days. I make that one qualification.

LORD LATHAM

The noble Lord would, I am sure, agree that Bernard Shaw would turn in his grave at the prospect of classical design.

LORD BIRDWOOD

Bernard Shaw is not the only one on the list of some twenty names, I think, enumerated to us. And I think he might also turn the other way in his grave if he saw some of the other buildings that are going up to-day. With that one qualification, I strongly hope that we shall show an imagination that will measure up to the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth which is, of course, coincidental with the Commonwealth Arts Festival, in 1964. It is in these ways, rather than in seeking prestige success in the space stakes, that others will recognise our contribution to true progress, and, I think, will applaud us over the years for a gift of permanence in which we can all share.

4.55 p.m.

THE EARL OF HUNTINGDON

My Lords, it was an appointment which prevented me from being here at the start of this debate, which I very much regret, and if I make some remarks which have already been made I hope that noble Lords will excuse me. I must say that it always seems to me strange that in a country which produced Shakespeare and so many other great dramatists we should have to be asking ourselves, "Is a National Theatre really necessary?", but I suppose we have to. I have been wondering what is the strength of the opposition to building this theatre, and whether it does not lie a little in Puritanism which this country seems to have more pre-eminently than almost any other, except perhaps the Northern States of America.

The Puritanical approach, which is very strong in places, looks on pleasure and on enjoying oneself as intrinsically wrong. Anything that is not duty and hard work is looked on as disgraceful. Of course, one must admit that the theatre is primarily, or very largely, a matter of pleasure and entertainment, so it must obviously produce from the Puritan point of view, which we have on both sides of the House—I am not accusing any particular Party of this; we have our own as other people have theirs—something of Puritan influence in this matter. That is so, because not only does the theatre provide pleasure and create pleasure, which is very important, but it does other things. I always think that the theatre unmasks hypocrisy. There is the well-known saying that it holds a mirror up to us in which we see our faults; we enjoy a laugh at them. But it also provides a forum for new ideas, new discussion. So that I should have thought that both from the point of view of entertainment and from the point of view of its providing a great forum of new ideas and great inspiration, the theatre was indispensable.

Unfortunately, the theatre, as has probably been said this afternoon, is not doing too well. Local theatres are going out of business; new theatres are not being built. I ask myself what is the reason for this. I suggest that the reason is largely the fact that this particular forum of art, the play, is one which must be performed in a small house; I mean a small building. The very fact that one must see the individual expressions of the actors and the gestures, which are important to the interpretation of any drama, makes it impossible to produce it in a large space. A Shakespeare play produced in the Albert Hall could be an example; we can see how ridiculous the whole conception would be. Unfortunately, at the same time, costs have gone up enormously: salaries and the cost of costumes and scenery and everything needed for the stage. Also, at the same time, we are suffering most devastating taxation. Therefore, it is impossible to ask the audience to pay more if we are going to get them in. As a result, it is impossible economically to produce good drama with a big cast, involving usual salaries, and make a profit.

The Times, of March 25, 1961, which I think is reliable on these subjects, said: …no management can now put on a classic drama with a large cast and star actors, paid at normal salaries, with any hope of commercial success". That is really the position. This particular art must be produced in a reasonably small space. Costs have gone up so high that it is impossible to produce the great classical drama or any play which entails a large amount of scenery, many actors, and so forth, at a reasonable price and expect to fill the theatre with people.

My Lords, people do like the theatre. Where there is anything that is good at reasonable prices you find the theatre absolutely full. You try to book to see any popular play at Stratford-on-Avon. You try to get in the Glyndebourne Opera. To get into anything successful, you will find that you have to wait weeks or months before you can get a seat—but, of course, only if they are at reasonable prices. Another thing which militates against the success of the theatre (which obviously must gravitate from London, the centre of our life) is the fantastic rents which are charged in the West End. They are gigantically high, and that leads to the managements not daring to put on new plays unless they are pretty certain they have a very popular appeal; and, very often, that popular appeal is not necessarily the best drama, or what we should really like to see. It has often a rather cruder appeal; but, of course, the managements must fill the houses to succeed.

I think it would be sad if the great drama of England, for which we are so famous, should, little by little, cease to be produced. It would be even sadder if new dramatists were not given a chance to develop new forms, new writings and new plays of all kinds. Some people have argued that the attraction of the theatre has gone down because of the counter-attraction of television; but TV can be produced only by actors who have had a training, and that is going to be one of the great difficulties: that television performances do not give the practice or the training that a good repertory company can give. That is the way our best actors and actresses have learned. It is the hard way, of going through the repertory companies, doing play after play, night after night, and getting a personal reaction from the audience, knowing what succeeds, where they played wrongly or badly, and when they have played successfully. If ever our live theatre dies down, it will mean a complete failure of the drama and acting which we see on television—and, possibly, in the cinema, too, although that is a different technique.

My Lords, what is the solution? I am one of those who are strongly in favour of a National Theatre as helping in these very difficult times of theatrical production. I think a National Theatre in London would do four things: it would enable us to produce the best of our classical drama and of foreign classical drama; it would provide an opportunity to discover new talent, particularly in playwriters; it would give a training to actors in repertory; and it would provide—and this, I think, is one of the most important things—touring companies to go round the Provinces to show them what good drama can be like. I think that is one of the reasons why the theatres in the provinces in England are finding this a very difficult time: that they do not get this really good drama coming to them. They often get extremely second-rate companies, if at all, and therefore the whole inspiration of the theatre dies down. There is no enthusiasm; little by little it becomes less patronised, and, finally, the theatre fails. I think that if you had good touring teams going out, this would be a tremendous attraction. It would inspire the local companies to be more ambitious and better, and would very likely be an extremely good influence throughout the whole country. We are, I think, the only country in Europe which does not have either a National Theatre or a National Opera House; even most of the quite small or reasonably small towns in Germany give far more to the theatre than our Government give for the whole of England.

Naturally, the answer that the Government will make, the answer that the Chancellor has given, is that it is a question of finance: Can we afford this big figure? I submit, with great respect, that that is pure nonsense. The scale of the finance needed when you think of what is being spent elsewhere is really almost nothing. If one thinks of what we are spending on our roads, on defence and on a million other things—all of them important, perhaps—one realises that this tiny amount that we are asking for the theatre is ridiculously small, and I cannot believe that that really is the obstacle which is holding up this scheme. I gather that it is estimated that it will cost £2½ million to build a theatre, and that somewhere between £300,000 and £500,000 will be needed as an annual subsidy to carry the whole business through. When one thinks of the attraction it would be to our tourist industry, say, which is one of our biggest industries, one would have thought that that alone would make it worth while.

Let us examine the financial position for a moment. I may not be exact in my figures, and can give only approximate ones, but I have been told that the National Theatre fund has something like £70,000 in it. They also own a very valuable site at Cromwell Road, which may be worth up to £500,000—quite a lot, at any rate. The London County Council have been most forthcoming, and I gather hope to be able to contribute a large amount towards any National Theatre built—possibly £1½ million. So that all that the Government have to do really is to release the £1 million which was approved by Parliament in 1949. Surely it is not much to ask the Chancellor to do for this big national project, on which the great prestige and the whole of the life of our theatre may depend—to release this £1 million which has already been approved by Parliament.

The one bright side, I think, is that on this matter all Parties are agreed. The Arts and Amenities Group of the Commons and Lords mixed—members of all Parties—are begging for it; and both sides on the London County Council, Labour and Conservative, are vying to help build up this theatre. You have this most ambitious and imaginative plan for developing our South Bank, to make it an arts centre which would incorporate a National Theatre; and, by not giving this £1 million, we are spoiling and sabotaging the whole plan. What are the London County Council going to do with the site if the theatre is not built? Are they going to hold on to it indefinitely, or until perhaps the Labour Party comes into power? Or are they going to lose the site for ever, so that some day, when we want the theatre, we cannot have it? I think this is a most tragic outcome for really very little advantage financially, and I would beg the noble Earl who is to reply, and, through him, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to think again and help on this project which everybody so much approves and desires.

5.8 p.m.

THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH

My Lords, I am so grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, for having put forward his Motion to-day that I decided this morning to rise from a bed of sickness—indeed, a severe bout of 'flu—to express views to your Lordships which I am afraid may be at considerable variance to those which we have heard so far in the debate. I have never been fundamentally opposed to the idea of a National Theatre in this country, although I must admit that I have always thought of such a theatre as being the kind of institution which is perhaps attached to a bureaucracy and sub-sidised by the Government of a country where there is so little drama that it needs that sort of active, substantial, official encouragement. I remember before the war going to the National Theatre in Prague, and there is no doubt whatever that there was a necessity for it there if the plays of the great classic writers, or by the new Czech writers, were to be seen. I think the same would apply, and does apply, in the case of Iceland and Uganda, examples which the noble Viscount, Lord Esher, mentioned just now. Countries such as these undoubtedly require National Theatres. I have often been to the "Comédie Francaise" and to its sister theatre, the "Odéon", in Paris; but in France there is no Stratford or Old Vic, and there are hardly any provincial repertory companies, at any rate of the substance of those in this country.

We are still very rich in theatres, not only in London, where I think it is true to say there are more than in any other big capital in the world, but also in the Provinces. Our provincial companies are certainly unmatched in any other country. In addition to Stratford, which has now branched out into the West End of London, and, of course, the Old Vic, we have theatres like the Arts Theatre, which has specialised in the work of modern dramatists; and there is now the English Stage Company, of which I am a director, and the English Stage Society, of which I am President, which specialise particularly in the work of new young English writers, and in fact receive financial assistance from the Arts Council. I should like to say here how much their assistance is appreciated, and how admirably I consider the drama department of the Arts Council is managed. We are very glad indeed to hear that it will have increased funds.

It seems to me, therefore, that the work of new dramatists in this country has a greater chance of being seen and heard than anywhere else in the world. Moreover, the television organisations, the two of them, jointly produce some half-dozen new plays a week, quite apart from the regular weekly series and serials, and certainly many of these plays put on by the B.B.C. and the independent companies are of considerable interest. They are certainly an interesting outlet for new dramatists, actors and designers.

With all these facilities in this country, I feel, therefore, that it is not the buildings—the bricks and mortar—which we should put first in this matter. Some of the earliest and most interesting dramas in the Middle Ages were acted on wagons, or carts—"pageants" as they were called. Plays can also be done in the open air, even in this country, or in tents. That was how Stratford, Ontario, was started by Sir Tyrone Guthrie. No, my Lords, "the play's the thing", not the bricks and mortar. Some people say that this is rather the time to pull down or adapt theatres for other purposes than to build new ones.

However, in order to be just a little paradoxical in this matter. I should add that I am Chairman of the Chichester Festival Theatre Trust, which is building a new theatre for the South of England. We have been most fortunate, not only in having Sir Tyrone Guthrie as our adviser on this project, but in now persuading Sir Laurence Olivier himself, the greatest actor of our time and a very great director as well, to be the first artistic director of this theatre. It is to be an open-stage arena theatre, with a roof rather like the theatre at Stratford, Ontario (which now has its roof). It will be suitable for performing not only Elizabethan and Restoration plays, but also modern plays written specially for the open stage; and I know that some of our best-known writers at the moment are anxiously awaiting the opportunity to write plays especially for such stages.

It may perhaps be relevant to point out that this theatre is costing only £90,000 to build, with its roof, dressing rooms and ancillary buildings. It will have a seating capacity of 1,500, and no one will be sitting in this arena-type theatre more than 20 rows back from the stage. At any rate, we are not going to have to spend £2,300,000, which I think is the figure mentioned by the Joint Council for the theatre centre in London. Thus, as I say, I am not strongly in favour of building such a new theatre centre in London, unless, of course, the £2,500,000 becomes fully available through the generosity of Sir Isaac Hayward and the L.C.C., and those which have supported it hitherto.

I think there is a need for our Chichester Theatre, not only in the South of England where there are no well-established repertories like the Birmingham Rep. or the Bristol Old Vic., but also in the country as a whole. Therefore, we are glad to be going ahead with this project which, as I say, has the active support of Sir Laurence Olivier, who is not only taking a close interest in the design of the theatre but who will himself be producing some of the first plays. We hope to do for the drama in this country what Glyndebourne has done for opera; and, like Glyndebourne, we are not seeking the support of local authorities through the rates. However, we hope that the Arts Council will assist us in our venture, perhaps in pre-production costs at the outset. We are not seeking assistance so far as the building itself is concerned; but, as I say, as far as pre-production costs and, if necessary, running costs are concerned, we should be glad of some assistance from them.

LORD BIRDWOOD

My Lords, would the noble Earl permit me to interrupt him a moment? I think that all this reflects great merit on Chichester, but is he suggesting that Chichester should play the rôle of a National Theatre, and that the whole world should trek down to Chichester?

THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH

No, my Lords, I am not actually suggesting that, although I must admit that it would not do my noble friend, Lord Birdwood, any harm at all to run down to Sussex in his car.

LORD BIRDWOOD

I have no car.

THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH

Then I will make adequate railway arrangements for him.

VISCOUNT ESHER

My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Earl, but is it not contrary to his principles to take money from the Arts Council?

THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH

My Lords, in principle, it is. We are going to make every possible effort, and there is the chance that we may not have to take money from the Arts Council. In the case of Glyndebourne, it took money from the Arts Council only in the Festival of Britain Year; it has not had to take money from the Arts Council since. Therefore, we will make every effort not to do so. But since they have been most friendly disposed towards us, we naturally hope that they will save us if we get into difficulties. But let me say this—and perhaps most of your Lordships will agree with this point. Generally speaking, while I may not be in favour of building a new theatre centre in London, I should be in favour of the formation of a National Theatre company, a company which would perform at Stratford and at Stratford's own theatre here in London, which would perhaps tour the provincial repertory theatres, such as those I mentioned, and also go abroad. Moreover, if, indeed, Stratford itself also builds an open-stage theatre, and if an existing theatre in London could also be adapted to incorporate such an open-stage, that would not cost £2 million, and it might be possible to transfer the same productions from one theatre to another without the necessity of reproducing them again for the open-stage. In that connection, we cannot forget the Assembly Hall in Edinburgh, but although it has an open stage, this was not originally designed as a theatre.

In brief, I am in favour of the formation of a National Theatre company, if not of a new and costly building in the heart of London. I should like to see people coming down to theatres in the country, as they do already to Stratford and Glyndebourne. I think that that principle should be extended throughout the British Isles and I hope that in the proposals which the Arts Council have been asked to submit to the Chancellor of the Exchequer they will include the possibility of assisting theatres other than those already receiving their support, and also of encouraging these new ventures. The Arts Council have already promised assistance in many cases in building and maintenance and in pre-production costs, provided adequate claims are submitted to them.

That is all I have to say. Do not let me give your Lordships the impression that I am diametrically opposed to this great new project for London. If money is available, I will be wholeheartedly behind it. But there is one point which the noble Lord, Lord Birdwood, raised, about which I hope the noble Earl in his reply will say something—that is, the suggestion of raising a public subscription. I think it would be interesting to do that. I have a curious feeling—and again I hope the noble Earl will be able to answer me on this point—that the Government do not oppose the National Theatre on financial grounds but perhaps on others. At any rate, I hope that they will be prepared Ito say something on that point.

THE EARL OF LONGFORD

My Lords, before the noble Earl sits down, may I put a question to him, because just at the end he said something which seems to go against his argument and I do not want Ito misunderstand or misinterpret him? He said that if money were available, he would not be against this great new project for London; but I thought that for most of his speech he was against a National Theatre building in London.

THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH

My Lords, perhaps I have a somewhat split mind on this matter. I said that, in principle, I was not in favour of National Theatres unless there was an absolute necessity. In a country which hardly has any theatre, obviously it would be necessary. I am not opposed to it, if the money becomes available, but I think that we are so rich in drama that there is a great deal to be said for the Government's argument for supporting what exists already and not creating a National Theatre, an institute supported probably by bureaucracy and controlled to some extent by the Government.

VISCOUNT ESHER

My Lords, is the noble Earl's point that he likes National Theatres or supported theatres only when they are cheap, and when they are expensive he does not like them?

THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH

No, my Lords. I am sorry to have caused dissension in your Lordships' House. My point is that I believe in National Theatres in countries where they are required and where otherwise there would be very little drama, either international classical drama or indigenous drama.

5.25 p.m.

THE EARL OF LONGFORD

My Lords, I was waiting for my noble friend Lord Faringdon to speak, but I gather that he has dropped out. I am sorry that he has done so, because I wanted to have an opportunity of congratulating him on becoming an alderman at a moment when his corporation, the London County Council, have been receiving undiluted praise. It is certainly a great honour to speak from Benches which include such champions of the London County Council as my noble friends Lord Silkin, chairman of the Town Planning Committee for most of the relevant period; Lord Latham, Leader of the Council for a long time, and Alderman Lord Faringdon. I am sure that the London County Council have well deserved what has been said.

I do not possess the qualifications for addressing the House that are possessed, for example, by the noble Lord, Lord Cottesloe, who speaks, even in this House of experts, with unique authority as Chairman of the Arts Council; or the noble Viscount, Lord Esher, who told us that he had never worked as a boy or passed an examination. I am not sure whether he tried to pass and failed, or just ignored the whole examination gamut; but I tremble to think what he would have been like if he had worked. His wisdom would have been positively monumental. I am glad that he was idle for a time.

My own interest, if that is the word, is not so close as that of the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, who, I know, devotes so much of his energies to the theatre. An interest in the theatre, I seem to be the first to tell the House, is not a source of money-making and does not have to be disclosed in that sense. My late brother (there seem to have been many references to "late" Peers still alive, but my brother died not long ago) helped to maintain the Gate Theatre in Ireland for over 30 years. It was not only concentrated in the capital but was also taken all over the country. So I think that the noble Earl will allow that I have some family concern for small theatres and repertory and provincial theatres. I hope that this will not develop into a sort of conflict between the interests of a National Theatre and those of the smaller theatres. I thought that the noble Earl revealed some anxiety lest, if the Government should relent and proceed with a National Theatre, some of his own children might be starved. I may be mistaken, for I know that the noble Earl is completely disinterested in these matters. At any rate, it was good to hear his point of view.

I should be horrified if anything that I or my colleagues was suggesting were to interfere with the smaller theatres or, indeed, were to prevent a steady increase in the amount of assistance being given to them. Take the Theatre Royal, Stratford, which receives (I think that the noble Lord, Lord Cottesloe, will not mind my saying this) the rather beggarly amount of £2,000 a year from the Arts Council. I think that is a wretched little sum for a theatre which is probably doing the most vital work of any theatre in the world, and which certainly has done as much for our cultural credit abroad as any theatre has done or could do. I think that, instead of £2,000, they should have £20,000; and I should hope that that could be made possible.

Then there is the Royal Court Theatre. The noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, said himself that he was a bit of a schizophrenic on some of these problems, and I do not know whether he wants help or not.

THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH

My Lords, may I repeat that we are most grateful for the help which the Arts Council have already given?

THE EARL OF LONGFORD

My Lords, I gather that the noble Earl is satisfied. Therefore, I will not embarrass him by suggesting that the excellent work done in the Royal Court might receive more assistance. But take the Mermaid Theatre, which, I think, receives £2,500 in grant a year. I am sure that they could do with £10,000. These sums are comparatively small, and undoubtedly these theatres do extraordinarily fine work.

I do not think that this kind of discussion should interfere with the main question—whether this great country of ours can or cannot afford a National Theatre in 1961. I appreciate that the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, does not altogether wish to discourage the idea of a National Theatre company. I am not quite sure what his plan would amount to, but if he will forgive me, I will recite to the House, if it is not too familiar already, what was the actual plan put up to the Chancellor of the Exchequer last year by the Joint Council of the National Theatre.

They placed first in their statement of aims the formation of a company. So that there is certainly no conflict there between the idea of a building and the idea of a company. It should, in their view, be large enough to tour the major provincial centres, to provide repertory in the National Theatre building in London, and to provide a season of at least six months in Stratford. It should also be available for occasional tours overseas; and that would require a company of about 150 actors. A company of that kind would mean the pooling of the resources of Stratford and the Old Vic. I am not sure whether on this point the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, would be with them; but that was necessary in their view, at any rate, if we were to organise a proper national company. There would be an opportunity to keep whatever was valuable in these two tried institutions; but there must be, in the view of the Joint Council (and I will shortly quote once more the names of some of the individuals and bodies who were putting forward this scheme)—a view which seems to hold the field in the theatrical world—a complete amalgamation from the beginning. Only in that way, it was felt, could we get together a company distinguished enough to perform in a national theatre. If the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, is with them there, well and good; but if he is not, I must explain that they have strong backing for that idea.

But the Joint Council's Committee go on to insist that there must be a proper building. They said (I am not quoting the actual words, but this is their view, and that of those who support the idea) that it was a sheer waste of money for any of the £450,000 promised to be spent on shoring up the Old Vic building, which is not only in a grave state of disrepair but is, in their view, an unsuitable theatre for repertory. So it is not only a question of personnel—although that comes first—but also a question of building. With respect to the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough, who, as I have said, devotes himself to these questions, I would remind your Lordships of the extraordinary collection of authorities behind this Memorandum, which was presented by the Committee to the Chancellor of the Exchequer last year.

The Committee consisted of two members of the National Theatre Committee, Viscount Chandos and Sir Laurence Olivier—and I break off here to say that while the noble Earl paid every sort of deserved tribute to Sir Laurence Olivier as being the leading man in the theatre, he is also, as the noble Earl is aware, one of the leading champions of the National Theatre idea. The noble Earl also paid a well-deserved tribute to Tyrone Guthrie. He, too, is a leading champion of the idea, and recently wrote an article in the Observer in its favour. So that those great authorities quoted by the noble Earl are very much in favour of the project. There were also two representatives of the Old Vic and two representatives of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. The Chairman was Sir Kenneth Clark. Later, the Committee were joined by two representatives of the Commercial Theatre.

The idea of a National Theatre has been supported, and, so far as I know is still supported, by the British Actors' Equity, by the National Association of Theatre and Cinematograph Electricians, by the Council of Repertory Theatres—and it seems to me to be of significance that the repertory theatre's own body supports the National Theatre idea—and the British Drama League. If the noble Earl will forgive me for saying so, an extraordinary weight of opinion has been collected to support the idea of a National Theatre, now and on some such lines as these.

I do not know, in the last resort, what the arguments against it are. One is that the money, assuming that it was a fixed amount, could be better spent otherwise. I think we must take it that the vast majority of those who know most about the theatre consider that this would be the best use of the money. But I say—I think it is probably true, and one must in candour say it—that to-day what is necessary for the theatre is rather more money than the Government have yet promised. The Government have said (and it was not said very clearly by the Chancellor of the Exchequer) that they will give something up to £450,000 a year for grants to the Arts Council. I am not sure if that is an increase or a total, but it seems to be regarded as a new sum. And although the Chancellor of the Exchequer spoke about it in a rather eliptic way, it seems to have passed into general understanding that £450,000 will be available for the theatre through the Arts Council, and it will be in the discretion of the Arts Council how it will be used.

The money is apparently to be given to help the Old Vic and the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, but also to help the provincial theatre. Here I would emphasise the point that I was attempting to make earlier: that I hope that, when this matter is being looked at by the Arts Council (leaving out for the moment the total sum available), they will not ignore the London theatre. To take the Theatre Workshop at Stratford, I hope that it will count as a provincial theatre for an increased grant. Otherwise, it is saying, in effect, that a theatre like that can get no extra help. I hope that the Government or the Arts Council will take that view of this language.

Coming back to the main point, the question arises: what are we asking for? Is the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, going to say that no more money is available than the £450,000? If he does say that, I think he will bang the door on the greatest theatrical idea that we have ever seen in this country. I hope that he will not say that. Of course, we must not expect him this afternoon to talk in terms of pounds, shillings and pence; but, after all, the situation has been considerably changed since the statement of Mr. Selwyn Lloyd in the other place.

We are not asking the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, who I know is most sympathetic to intellectual things, to say that the Chancellor of the Exchequer made a mistake; that he has thought better of it, and that he will say something different. That is always an awkward thing to ask a self-respecting Minister to say. But the situation, as I say, has been considerably changed since that time. Sir Isaac Hayward has come forward with an offer on behalf of the London County Council of £1½ million, and the Government are not now facing the situation with which they were faced, of having to find over £2 million, or nothing. While I have no right by any manner of means to speak for every noble Lord, I think the general view would be that the Government should find the residue, which may amount to something less than £1 million, towards the capital cost of the National Theatre; but that they should not in any way cut down the £450,000 (if that is the figure) which they have already offered through the Arts Council. That seems to be a way of looking at this which I think will probably commend itself to most of those who have spoken in the debate to-day.

I hope that the noble Earl will tell us quite clearly this afternoon, if he is not ready to accept this idea, why he is not ready to accept it. Is it because he has better information: theatrical advisers who seem to him more prudent than those I have quoted? There are rumours that there are cliques inside some of these bodies who are getting at the Government, and that, though the majority of them speak in favour of amalgamation, behind the scenes there is skulduggery afoot. I know nothing of those things.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

Neither do I.

THE EARL OF LONGFORD

We do not know what is happening. But, at any rate, the representatives of these great theatres, those entitled to speak for them, are pleading for amalgamation. Are the Government listening to other voices less representative of those organisations? If not, to whom are they listening? What theatrical advice have they which is better than this? In my opinion they have none and it is obvious that they have none. It comes down simply to money. Are they going to offer the little extra money necessary to bring about the success of this great project, or are they going to say that this country and the Government rate culture so low that they are prepared to sabotage what, if it is destroyed now, may never come alive at all?

5.40 p.m.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, I think the last time I remember your Lordships discussing this subject was nearly two-and-a-half years ago in November, 1958, when the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, introduced a general Motion on the Report of the Arts Council, in the course of which he made a short reference to the future possibility of a National Theatre, to which I made an equally short reply. Several of your Lordships who spoke in that debate, including the noble Viscount, Lord Esher, and the noble Earl, Lord Huntingdon, have also spoken to-day. On this former occasion I think every single one of your Lordships who spoke severely criticised the Government for not spending a great deal more money on the arts. I think I spoke in a minority of one, although I may possibly have had some silent support from somewhere—I do not know.

What I pointed out then was that expenditure on the arts as a whole had gone up from £1 million in 1945 to £7 million in 1958. It has now gone up further, to a total of £8,600,000; and as for that part of the expenditure which is given to the Arts Council, that had increased from £250,000 in 1945 to £1,100,000 in 1958. It has now increased in the last year to £1,675,000. Although the total may not be anything like as much as your Lordships think right, at least the rate of increase has been substantial, and I think your Lordships would all like to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Cottesloe, and the Arts Council on the excellent use which they have made of the money, whether you regard it as a parsimonious pittance or as a more adequate subvention.

All your Lordships to-day have put forward the very familiar argument that, because we are spending enormous sums of money on things like roads, the Coal Board, the Welfare State and so on, therefore, surely we can afford to spend a little more on a National Theatre. It is an argument which is used in defence of every kind of expenditure which anybody, including myself, wants to justify, both nationally and sometimes domestically. We often hear the argument: "If you are spending so much money, surely we can afford to spend a little more on getting some new drawing-room curtains." I always feel that the right answer is that if we were spending less, then we should be able to afford new drawing-room curtains. If only your Lordships would tell me that we are spending so very little on the Welfare State, such an insignificant, trivial sum on roads, and practically nothing at all on the Coal Board and, therefore, we could afford to spend a great deal on the arts, I should find that argument a good deal more convincing.

There is the legitimate argument, I think, that Great Britain ought to adapt herself to her new fiscal circumstances. Until recent times the arts in this country were subsidised by private munificence, which very wealthy people could afford to do, and did. In Continental countries, which used to have despotisms, in the eighteenth century the despots levied enormous sums in taxation for the arts, and that was automatically continued in the democratic and revolutionary Governments of the nineteenth century. But it did not happen here; we have not been in the habit of doing it. Although, as I have just pointed out, our expenditure on the arts has risen very largely indeed since the end of the Second World War, it is still not really comparable to the amounts which are spent in countries like Germany and Austria.

I do not think it would be helpful to your Lordships if I were to pursue that wider argument this afternoon. I think it would be more useful if I were to con- fine myself to the more practical question: what is the best way of spending those not very large amounts which Parliament and public opinion are willing to spend? The noble Lord, Lord Silk in, has given us a fairly comprehensive sketch of the history of this National Theatre movement, with which the noble Viscount, Lord Esher, has been personally associated, I suppose, for longer than anybody else. It was started in 1906, for the purpose of founding a Shakespeare National Memorial Theatre. By the 1930's, it had collected about £150,000 in private subscriptions.

My noble friend Lord Birdwood asked whether more could not be raised in private subscriptions. Perhaps it can. But if £150,000 was all that could be raised between the wars, I doubt whether, in the more stringent circumstances in regard to taxation in postwar Britain, you would be able to raise a great deal more. As the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, reminded us, in 1937 the National Theatre Trust acquired the site in South Kensington, which is not considered to be very satisfactory and which has since been exchanged for the one on South Bank. Then in 1949 we had a permissive Bill which authorised the Chancellor of the Exchequer to provide not more than £1 million towards the cost of building a National Theatre. That is still the law. We could not go beyond that without more legislation, and it was recognised at that time that nothing could be done about building it until economic conditions became a good deal easier.

Then, in 1958, the pressure to get on with building a National Theatre began to increase. In our debate in your Lordships' House it was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, and, in reply, I quoted to him a letter which the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, the noble Viscount, Lord Amory, had written to Lord Chandos and Lord Esher on the subject. This was at the end of 1958. Lord Amory said: I am afraid that I cannot hold out any hope that we shall in the near future be able to make a beginning with expenditure of nearly £2 million on a building for the National Theatre. That is a big sum and a substantial subsidy would be required in addition.… The Arts Council are making an inquiry into the housing of the arts which they undertook following the Report of the Queen's Hall Committee…I hope that the Report which the Arts Council are preparing will indicate priorities among the various projects for cultural buildings. That will give us an opportunity for considering the long-term prospects of the National Theatre against the background of a number of competitive claims. I would call your Lordships' particular attention to the fact that Lord Amory mentioned that, in addition to the capital cost of building, a large annual subsidy would then be required.

At the end of last year the National Theatre Trustees, the Governors of the Old Vic and the governing body of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, agreed to form a new Joint Council of the National Theatre, with the noble Viscount, Lord Chandos, as Chairman, and to appoint a small Executive Committee under the Chairmanship of Sir Kenneth Clark. Last December, this body sent a deputation to see the Chancellor in order to put the case for a National Theatre. I think the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, has already explained what their proposals were: namely, a new theatre building on the South Bank with two separate auditoria, one larger and the other smaller; and that the Old Vic and Stratford should be integrated to form the nucleus of a single company of 150 actors which should operate in three sections to obtain a repertory of plays on the South Bank, at Stratford and on tour. The subsidy which might be required, apart from the capital cost of building, is estimated at about £470,000 a year.

Now, my Lords, as my right honourable friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced last month, the Government, after giving a good deal of consideration to the subject, reached the conclusion that the Joint Council's proposals would not be the most effective way of meeting what the Government felt to be the most important needs of the living theatre in this country at the present time: that is to say, improvement of standards and better provision of drama for the provinces.

The Chancellor's view, which he stated, was that rather than embark on a costly new national enterprise involving an ambitious theatre building in London, the additional resources which can be made available to help the living theatre would be better devoted to developing the existing "national" companies within institutions with their own great dramatic traditions—the Old Vic and Stratford—and to increasing the support given through the Arts Council to provincial repertory theatres. As my right honourable friend said, assistance for the Old Vic and Stratford could take the form both of capital provision for improving existing buildings and of an increased annual subvention to help improve standards and meet touring costs. As for the provincial theatres, increased support for provincial repertory would include both grants to repertory companies and contributions towards the cost of renovating existing theatres and building new theatres.

My noble friend, Lord Cottesloe, has already expressed his appreciation of that proposal. The Arts Council have been invited to submit proposals on those lines, and until the Arts Council's recommendations have been considered it will not be possible to make a firm estimate of the cost of the Government scheme, but so far as can be seen at present the Treasury think it will probably be something between £300,000 and £450,000 a year in the next few years. I think most of your Lordships who have spoken hold the view that my right honourable friend should have chosen the alternative of having a National Theatre immediately. The noble Viscount, Lord Esher, has said that exerybody who knows anything about art is in favour of doing that, except Mr. George Strauss. My difficulty always is that I am never really sure who does know most about art and culture. The only thing I am sure of is that everybody seems to know a great deal more than I do.

LORD BOOTHBY

My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Earl? He is putting a great responsibility on the Arts Council, and one member of the Arts Council told me the other day that although they gave a great deal of money to music in one form or another he was the only member of the Arts Council who could detect the difference between one note and another.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

What a pity it is that my noble friend Lord Boothby is not on the Arts Council!

LORD BOOTHBY

I have always thought so.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

I am sure it would make a great difference to their operations.

VISCOUNT ESHER

My Lords, surely it is possible that a great portion of the £450,000 a year which the Government has so generously given would be automatically transferred to the National Theatre when it is built, because the Old Vic and Stratford are working in with them.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

May I come to that in a moment? I was talking about opinion. The noble Viscount said that informed and cultured opinion was unanimously in favour of the National Theatre. I do not know how right he is. Of course, there are very different views about it throughout the country among people of all kinds. Some of those views are based on purely dramatic or artistic reasons, others, no doubt, on very natural feelings of prestige—national prestige or metropolitan prestige. But they do not all agree; some of them are decidedly against it. I noticed the other day an article in the Economist on this subject, which ended up: Is there really a desire to create a pompous national mausoleum for the bright young critics to peck at every week-end? With the Old Vic there is an invaluable, and honourable, compromise. Its successes are always claimed as a national triumph: its flops and vagaries can be written off without asking Parliamentary questions and without being regarded as laying down one official Establishment now of what is good taste for the stage. I suppose everybody has some prejudices on these subjects one way or the other. I must confess my own prejudices are all in favour of having far more numerous and magnificent buildings of every kind in which to house the arts. My prejudice is in favour of having buildings of a kind which we could not possibly afford. But, having regard to what is financially practicable, which is what I must have regard to, I feel that it is right at least to give the priority which my right honourable friend is proposing to give to the provincial theatre.

I quoted to your Lordships, the letter from the noble Viscount, Lord Amory, two and half years ago, in which he said he was asking for a report from the Arts Council on the housing of the arts. That is being published in two sections. The first one, on Housing the Arts in Great Britain, Part 1, was published in 1959, nearly two years ago, but that deals only with London, Scotland and Wales. I should just like to quote to your Lordships the preamble on the section refer- ring to Scotland, where the Committee says: We must state at the outset our belief that in the housing of all her arts Scotland lags behind the rest of the civilised world and in particular those smaller European countries with which she can be most aptly and usefully compared—

LORD DALTON

Bulgaria, for instance.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

— The economic consequences of two World Wars and the dire shortage of houses together produced in our native land a negative attitude of mind towards such building in the interest of the higher expressions of the human spirit…We wish to support the view that any willingness to make do with inadequate buildings cannot fail at the outset to place the arts at a disadvantage, and in the end to cause irreparable harm. The loss to the citizen today may be imponderable but is certainly great; the loss to the next generation will be apparent in intellectual and imaginative poverty. Perhaps I may add to that a more recent publication of the Arts Council, their report called Priorities of Patronage which was published at the end of last year. In the section on Scotland they begin by pointing out that the most disturbing feature has been the falling off during 1959 of the audiences for repertory theatres. They conclude by talking about the remedy for this, and they say: The real need is for better amenities, which means, in most cases, new theatre buildings in central positions with restaurants and spacious foyers, on the lines of the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry. Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee all need new civic theatres and every effort should be made to persuade both the Government and Local Authorities to accept that view. My Lords, there has not yet been published Part II of the Report on Housing the Arts but I have made some inquiries about it, and I am told that the same considerations would also apply to a great many of the English provinces.

THE EARL OF LONGFORD

My Lords, may I interrupt the noble Earl, before he passes from the question of opinion altogether, if he is passing from it? I have been trying to interrupt him for five minutes. May I say to the noble Earl, with great respect, that he is treating the question of informed opinion here surely with a frivolity most unlike him. He has talked about prejudices; his own and mine and Lord Esher's, and other people's, as though we are all pretty well on the same footing. But has there ever been such an overwhelming balance of opinion on one side as there has been on this occasion?

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

I do not know whether there has ever been such an occasion, and I am not sure that I am so confident as the noble Earl about the overwhelming nature of any opinions that have been expressed on one side or the other. However, I appreciate what both he and the noble Viscount, Lord Esher have said.

VISCOUNT ESHER

My Lords, I think the noble Earl ought to make Mr. George Strauss a Peer, because he has had no support from your Lordships, except moderate support from the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough this afternoon. The only way he can get any support at all is by introducing Mr. George Strauss into this House.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

I do not know that that is the logical conclusion. The noble Viscount, Lord Esher, has been in public life much longer than I have, and I am sure he knows that when there is a demand for something all the speeches which you hear in Parliament, as well as outside, are from the people who are in favour of it. The people who are against it do not bother to say much about it—they are silent. I have quoted one or two passages to your Lordships from people who hold different opinions; but I am not saying which opinion I have, or which opinion the Government holds.

THE EARL OF LONGFORD

May I interrupt once more?

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

I am only trying to show that it is not unanimously in support of the noble Earl, Lord Longford—

THE EARL OF LONGFORD

May I interrupt the noble Earl or not? I was not referring to my own qualification, as the noble Earl knows perfectly well. I was referring to this great body of theatrical opinion; and to put an unknown author who wrote an apparently whimsical article on the same footing as Lord Chandos and his colleagues is, to my mind, fantastic.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

Did I put them on the same footing?

SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS

Yes.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

I certainly did not mean to. I was only trying humbly to say to your Lordships that everybody else knows a great deal more about the arts than myself, and that I did not myself propose to pontificate upon an artificial question of this kind. Nor do the Government. We have to try to act on advice in accordance with what my right honourable friend believes to be the financial necessities of the situation.

My Lords, I was talking about something quite different, which I had not finished with, when my noble friend Lord Longford interrupted me. It was about this question of priority. I was pointing out the very urgent needs of repertory theatres in Scotland; and I think that, although the Report has not yet come out, the need is just as great in many parts of England. I most earnestly put it to your Lordships that, although facilities for theatre-goers in London may not be so good as we should like them to be, there is a far more urgent need to give better facilities in the provinces and Scotland, and I have not the slightest doubt that it is urgently necessary and entirely justified that we should give every priority in present circumstances to those provincial projects.

Many of your Lordships have referred to the recent offer—I do not know whether it is an official offer or merely an informal statement—by some leading members of the London County Council. The noble Lord, Lord Silkin, pointed out that this offer to put up the balance of the cost of building a National Theatre over and above the £1 million authorised in the 1949 Act had been made after my right honourable friend's statement in another place. That was mentioned again in further Questions which were asked last Thursday. This offer was referred to, and a large number of supplementary questions were asked and were replied to by my right honourable friend the Financial Secretary. He could not go beyond anything that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had said: and he pointed out of course, as was necessary, that so far as he knew nothing had been said about running costs. And, as I have tried to emphasise already to your Lordships, the financial difficulty of agreeing to what your Lordships want to do is not so much the capital cost authorised by the 1949 Act, as the possibility of an indeterminate annual liability which might run into a very large sum. So far as I know, nothing has been positively proposed about that.

The noble Lord, Lord Latham, who has sent his apologies for not being here, suggested that local authorities other than the London County Council might all contribute towards this annual loss. I do not think that anything sufficiently definite has been said to justify my making any comment on that point now. All I would say is that everybody who knows the present Chancellor of the Exchequer will agree, I think, that he is a man of unlimited goodwill, patience and courtesy, and is always anxious to do what he can to meet everybody's representations. I am quite certain that if either the noble Viscount, Lord Chandos, or the London County Council, or anybody else concerned in the matter, has any fresh suggestions to put to him, he will be delighted both to listen and to give them his most close and serious attention.

6.8 p.m.

LORD SILKIN

My Lords, I cannot pretend that the statement which the noble Earl has just made is completely satisfactory to those who are advocating a National Theatre. I do not want to prolong the debate, because I believe that most things that can be said in favour of the National Theatre have been said in the course of the debate; and although one could controvert a good deal of what the noble Earl has just said, I do not know whether it would carry the matter any further. But I want just to make one comment. There is little that makes me lose my temper, but to argue on the basis of using language, on the assumption that it is valid language, is always utterly false and wrong. To call the National Theatre a "pompous national mausoleum", and to argue on the basis that it is nothing more, is unfair. To put it mildly, they ought to know better.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

I hope that the noble Lord is not suggesting that I was agreeing with what the Economist had said.

LORD SILKIN

The inference is that, the noble Earl having quoted it; but my strong language is directed to the Economist and not to the noble Earl—

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

But surely if you are trying to hold a balance between two different views it is reasonable to quote the opposing views without identifying yourself with either of them.

LORD SILKIN

Yes, that is all right. But I am entitled to comment on the evidence which the noble Earl put forward; and what the noble Earl put forward was this completely unfair statement.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

It may be unfair, but it is representative.

THE EARL OF LONGFORD

Not of informed opinion.

LORD SILKIN

My Lords, if I may just make the case, the noble Earl evidently meant us to take some note of the fact that the Economist had made that statement, and I am trying to prove that that is an unfair way of stating the case.

THE EARL OF DUNDEE

My Lords, it may be that the Economist was unfair, but I hope the noble Lord is not suggesting that I was unfair. He himself pointed out in his speech that he thought that if there was a referendum on this subject, after leaving out the 50 per cent. who would not vote, the remaining 50 per cent. would be about equally divided. I was simply trying to confirm that, and giving the noble Lord an example of what was being said by one part of that 50 per cent.

LORD SILKIN

My Lords, I have said what I believe is right: that the only example which the noble Earl gave us was in the journal he has mentioned. As I say, I think it utterly wicked to pat forward an argument in that way; it is not a fair thing to put forward. However, although the noble Earl has given us the picture I imagined he would do, having regard to the statement made by the right honourable and learned gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I take it, if the view put forward by Sir Isaac Hayward represents the view of the Council as a whole, that that is a change in the situation and that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would be prepared to listen to representations based upon it. And I take it that if, in fact, the local authorities were prepared to limit the liability of the Government to £1 million (which is the amount laid down in the 1949 Act) what would be left for discussion would be the amount of money that would be necessary to keep the three theatres going.

Now as far as I understand it, the Shakespeare Theatre is able to carry on, at any rate for the time being, without any subsidy at all. I believe I am right in saying that. The other theatre requires some subsidy, but eventually that would join up with the new theatre which it is proposed to build, and in that case the amount which the Government are prepared to give by way of subsidy—and they are prepared to give a definite amount—would probably be adequate to enable the new theatre to be carried on. At any rate, there is sufficient there to justify a discussion which might result in a settlement being arrived at; and I take it from what the noble Earl has said that a discussion can take place, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer will be prepared to discuss this subject afresh in view of the fresh statement of the London County Council, and that there is no necessary decision that the matter is at an end. In one way it is essential that a decision should be arrived at because the proposed site of the new theatre cannot be kept vacant indefinitely. We cannot expect the L.C.C. to keep this site open indefinitely, and a decision should be reached in the very near future.

I leave this debate with some comfort that the noble Earl is assuring us that discussions can take place and that there is, to put it no higher, a possibility that Her Majesty's Government will consider afresh the new facts: namely, that if that be the case, the London County Council are prepared to put forward a substantial contribution towards the erection and perhaps the maintenance of this National Theatre. In those circumstances I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.