HL Deb 15 May 1972 vol 330 cc1255-71

5.10 p.m.

THE EARL OF KINNOULL rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have considered the possibility of extending the various safeguards which may apply to buildings of special historical or architectural interest to other things—for example ships, vehicles and installations or machinery of various kinds—which may be thought to form part of our national heritage; and what action they intend to take following the Report and Recommendations of the Standing Commission on Museums and Galleries on the preservation of technological material. The noble Earl said: My Lords, I should like at the outset to apologise for the lack of strength in my voice. My Question this evening has a rather narrow theme, but covers a somewhat wide subject. It is basically whether our historic relics, whatever they may be, however ancient or modern, that form part of our national heritage for both present and future generations, are being sufficiently safeguarded.

More precisely, the purpose of the Question is to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they consider that the machinery that has grown up over the years to act as a safeguard and watchdog of our national relics now needs an overhaul, in the first place to give greater co-ordination between Government museums, corporate bodies and individuals; secondly, to make available a more comprehensive centre of information and advice for all interested parties, particularly to give guidance as to what is and what is not an item of historical interest; thirdly, to be able to monitor with reasonable accuracy what, and how much, is being lost to the nation every year; and finally, to improve public relations, so that everyone, from the large company to the private individual, who may own a valuable relic knows exactly whom to approach and what steps to take.

Much of my rather limited knowledge of this vast and intriguing subject comes from the excellent Report, published last year by the Standing Commission on Museums and Galleries and entitled The Preservation of Technological Material. The members of the Commission responsible for this Report included no fewer than five distinguished Members of your Lordships' House, and I feel that both they and their colleagues should be thanked for producing a most valuable and authoritative document, pinpointing certain weaknesses in the present system I of preservation. While expressing thanks to those responsible for the Report, perhaps I may be allowed also to recall that the Report was requested by a previous Minister with special responsibility for the Arts; namely, the noble Baroness, Lady Lee of Asheridge, and a great deal of credit is, I am sure, due to her personally for her unfailing efforts and interest.

Perhaps naturally enough, the first recommendation of the Report is for more Government funds. It is in fact for the Government to set up an annual grant of some £200,000 towards the purchase of industrial material (and also, I think, for the transport of that material) the scope of which is to include industrial monuments in situ; relics of industrial social life; ships and relics of the ship building industry; art connected with industry and archives, including photographs, sound and film records. It is recommended in the Report that this grant should be administered by the Science Museum, with the aid of an advisory committee, and that the grunt would not exceed 50 per cent. of the net purchase price.

The purpose of this new grant, one understands, is to separate the at present general responsibility laid on the Victoria and Albert Museum of administering a general grant given by the Government, running, I understand, at about £150,000 a year, for the purchase of all kinds of objects, not excluding industrial material. The Report emphasises that available funds are extremely limited and tend, rather naturally, to be earmarked for purchasing works of art rather than industrial material. The £200,000 annual Government grant suggested in the Report could not, I believe, be termed excessive, but could clearly act as a valuable spur to the purchase and preservation of objects which face either being exported and lost to the nation or perhaps being demolished and destroyed and so lost to the world.

My Lords, my noble friend may be moved to reply to the suggestion of a new grant for industrial relics that the Government already donate generously to the cause, both through the work carried out under the Ancient Monument Acts for preserving industrial monuments, and in the extensive building programme for museums to which they are committed by the recent White Paper. Valuable as both of these are, the grant being called for is to assist the purchase of relics, without which the new extensions to museums may seem like a jilted bride. I hope that my noble friend, when he comes to reply, will have something encouraging to say on this proposed grant.

Another important recommendation in the Report which strikes one of the need for overhauling the central machinery is the aspect of co-ordinating effort between Government, national museums, local museums and individuals to avoid wasteful duplication, but without destroying the important local enthusiasm. A need for a central advisory service for collected information and supply of information is, I suppose, the dream of preservationists; and certainly such a service would seem vital if an accurate record was being kept of what was being saved or lost to posterity. Having just been to the B.O.A.C.'s highly successful computer service, known as Boadicea House, one would envisage that collected information could be handled very adequately by such a system. Perhaps, again, my noble friend will let us know later of the Government's thinking on this matter.

The part that nationalised industries and public corporations do and could play in the preservation of historic material is a matter that obviously concerned the authors of the Report. It seems a curious situation that records of certain nationalised industries are public property, while the majority are not. For those whose records are not public there is no obligation either to keep historical archives or to offer to the Secretary of State any historical relic which is about to be destroyed. It seems a little strange for successive Governments that are clearly anxious to preserve for posterity all that can reasonably be done, not to correct this by simply issuing a directive to all nationalised concerns requesting them to preserve historic relics, to liaise with the Public Records Office as to what is and what is not an historic relic, and to open their archives—this I think is most important—for research and educational purposes. Perhaps, again, my noble friend will comment on this subject later on.

In suggesting the, a general Government directive should be issued, I would say that the obligation would of course be for the purpose of ensuring continuity and to avoid any future slip, however unintentional. It would not be to suggest that many nationalised industries or public corporations are not meticulous with their archives and do not spend a great deal of money on them. The B.B.C. would be a case in point. A considerable amount is spent every year on their written, technical, engineering and programme archives, all of which I understand is available for researchers.

From time to time certain historic relics attract the public gaze, either because they are about to be exported or because they are to be destroyed. There are such cases as London Bridge being sold to a Californian entrepreneur, with the rather distasteful spectacle of a Lord Mayor of London, with all the dignity of his office, his robes and finery, attending the charade of opening the bridge in the middle of the Californian desert. From my own experience, I can say that one has seen the late Donald Campbell's "Blue Bird" car, that once proudly held the world land speed record for Britain, lying forgotten in Suffolk and about to be sold abroad. I have not yet been able to check on what has happened. More recently, one has read of the retirement of the "Brighton Belle" and the Railway Board's declaration that it would be split up and sold to the highest bidder.

There were certain examples in the Report of other monuments and relics which have been lost for ever, including the Doric portico at Euston Station, the London Coal Exchange and the Sudbrook engines. But on the brighter side the items which have been saved include the s.s. "Great Britain", the Tasker Collection and, more recently, H.M.S. "Belfast". This, because of the tenacity of a few, has brought considerable joy to many people. It is cases of this type that make one wonder how good is the protection of what could be deemed material of historical value, forming part of our heritage. There are of course countless items—and probably the majority are of a specialist character—which are not considered newsworthy but are very worthy of preservation and are now in need of protection.

Cartoonists sometimes portray this House, and perhaps its Members, as having something of an affinity for museums. Certainly I believe that we devote a great deal more time and attention to museums in this House than is done in another place. We are lucky to have in this House a Minister responsible for the Arts who is not only a very experienced and helpful Minister but a powerful advocate for the Arts. I hope that he will be able to shed a little more light and charity on both the recommendations of the Report I have referred to and also on the steps that the Government will continue to take to preserve as many of our historic relics as possible for future generations.

5.22 p.m.

LORD RITCHIE-CALDER

My Lords, I follow the noble Earl opposite in his intense desire to safeguard records in this country. As one who was invited by the Smithsonian Institute to write the story of the evolution of the machine as the American heritage, I am not unconscious of the fact that we in this country have not only a very substantial, but almost a unique British heritage of technology. I think it has been a matter of reproach to all of us that we have sometimes neglected this, partly because the obvious is always there and we look at it without seeing it. There is also the fact that we have been building up over the centuries records of a material and technical civilisation which ought to be safeguarded.

With the indulgence of the noble Earl opposite, I should like, if I may, to extend his references a little further. As President of the British Sub-Aqua Club which now has something like 500 branches in Britain, I am also very anxious to safeguard and protect the other records which we have as a trust—because I regard it as a trust—in the stewardship of this nation. It is a fact that we have around the coasts of Britain more wrecks or more evidence, as it were, of the evolution of history than any other country in the world. Therefore we have a very great responsibility not only in respect of what we have contributed, if one might put it so, in the nature of these wrecks, but in respect of their whole historic significance. Many of us—certainly those of us who are concerned with the British Sub-Aqua movement—regard it as very regrettable that adequate safeguards are not available to prevent these records from being exploited, expropriated, abused, dispersed and in fact lost to the story of history. I believe this to be tremendously important, and I would ask the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, to allow me to follow him in going beyond the land-based technologies into the vastly important region of marine technology, which in fact is the capsulised history of Man the maker—and even more so because I am going to speak of what are in fact time capsules.

Any ship which went down at any given moment of time carried with it an exact record of its period and experience, and once such wrecks become dispersed or are unscrupulously disturbed or blown up, as has been done in the past by these—call them for this purpose "treasure hunters". but that is almost giving them too much credit. We have I think lost (and we shall lose even more with the greater extension of facilities for discovering and disturbing wrecks) a very substantial part of the history of mankind. These are time capsules, and although I do not ask him to reply in concrete terms. I would ask the Minister to recommend to his colleagues the tremendous importance of these things. Of course this is not just a question for the Minister; it also concerns the Department of Trade and Industry, which since 1970 has had sitting a Committee on Wreck. I like that, because it has a single noun "wreck". This Committee has been set up to discover what should be done in the light of modern conditions to protect wrecks of historical and archaeological importance.

We now have in this country a significant movement in which the younger generation participate together with the active generation which is represented by members of the British Sub-Aqua Club—we have a very active natural archaeology. I cannot imagine any way in which we could better encourage the understanding of this kind of history than to invite the people who are in fact concerned to safeguard that archaeology. May I on behalf of my colleagues in the British Sub-Aqua Club say that we are concerned not with the disturbance or destruction of these things, but with encouraging a generation of seekers to go out and discover and, above all, to protect and safeguard them. I agree that the Committee on Wreck should be called upon to report with rather more urgency than seems to be occurring, because I believe—and I think that most of us realise this—that a great deal of quite serious activity is going on which is basically unscrupulous and certainly irresponsible, to put it no higher. Records are being lost—they are being discarded, sold or dispersed—and the continuity of the record is being lost.

If I may, I should like to stress the importance of these wrecks: we must never forget that they are time capsules in situ and they have been preserved as they were when they went down. These wrecks include perhaps the most famous one of all, the "Mary Rose". which went down in the Solent in full view of Henry VIII. Could we ask the B.B.C. to tell the story not of the king's wives but of this great event, which in fact marked a great moment in time? We do not know what happened: we do not know the significance of the "Mary Rose", except that she was a great historic ship which we might try to recover.

5.29 p.m.

LORD BURNTWOOD

My Lords, the House is indebted to the noble Earl for raising the subject of this Report and also to my noble friend who spoke so eloquently about the work of the British Sub Aqua Clubs. He mentioned the "Mary Rose" and I think it is the hope of all of us that if and when the venture succeeds we shall have an exhibit which is historically every bit as important as the "Vasa" which has been raised in Stockholm. This Report does not deal exclusively with hardware; on the contrary, a substantial part of it deals with the compilation and protection of historical records, manuscripts and other material which will amplify the physical material to which most of the Report refers.

In the Report the Committee accepted that they would have to look into matters dealing with the social life of those who worked in the industry. I should like to address a few remarks to that particular matter. If I have some criticisms of the Report it is because it seems to me strange that the great industries were never mentioned—though perhaps I should call them collections of people working in a particular area of industry, rather than refer to industries. But nowhere in the Report, so far as I can see, is there reference to the role of the trade unionists in the build-up of our great labour force during the Industrial Revolution. Although the function of finding material and the collection and preservation of material upon which to work will come within the ambit of the Advisory Committee's secretariat, I should have thought that even at this stage in the compilation of the Report it would have been helpful to find out what contribution could have been made by the trade union movement of this country, which has immense resources of historical value to contribute.

To mention one small point, my Lords, take great trade unions like the National Union of Mineworkers. Every lodge right from the early days had its banners. Even now, when there is any activity involving a public demonstration, these banners are brought out. Some are very old, many are beautiful. I was consulting one of my colleagues in this House earlier and he told me that he thought that probably stored away in the offices of many of the old lodges which have now become defunct, having been absorbed by new and more vital lodges, there could be items of documentation, and banners which are worthy of a place in any museum the function of which will be to demonstrate what happened at the time and during the course of the Industrial Revolution. If in due course the Advisory Committee, if it is established as is now recommended, were to approach either individual unions, like the miners or the engineers, or the Trades Union Congress, to carry out a survey of the material that I am talking about, it would be of great benefit to those who are interested, not only with regard to the hardware of the Industrial Revolution period but with regard to the social life of the people who had to work sometimes in terrible conditions.

There is one other omission from this Report. There is no particular reference to the rural industry—the agricultural industry. It may well be that dotted about all over the country there are pieces of machinery which were developed at the time of the great agricultural innovations—one has in mind the work of Coke in Norfolk and similar people. They are lying derelict, not regarded as important, yet they are of immense interest to those who realise that the Industrial Revolution was not confined to the great urban areas but affected the rural areas as well. Indirectly, the whole pattern of employment in this country was affected by these innovations. In about 1820, according to G. D. H. Cole, some 8,000 to 10,000 women were rendered unemployed in Suffolk alone by the mechanisation of weaving and the virtual disappearance of cottage weaving. These are all elements in the Industrial Revolution. I believe that relevant hardware could be found and put on exhibition.

On page 16 of the Report there is one conclusion (I hope I read it correctly) dealing with a regional structure. I am personally doubtful, if I read the recommendation correctly, whether it is entirely necessary to locate the museum in the area where a given industry was chiefly located—for instance, in paragraph 36 the Report talks about a National Coal Industry Museum in Durham or Wales. I can see the logic from one point of view, yet how much better informed the public would be if a great industry like coal or steel was demonstrable in some museum form, not in that particular area but in an area where the rest of the great public in this country is rather ignorant of the social and economic effects of an industry. I agree that what I am saying is not necessarily wholly logical; but in view of the great ignorance of the people in the South of England about what has gone on in the past in the coal mining and other industries I should have thought that there was a case to demonstrate more clearly what the conditions of work were like in the period that we are talking about, and not only in coal but in engineering as well.

The trade union movement played its part in finding the people to work the new machines—and they lived too often in deplorable housing conditions. It would be a great thing for a museum dealing with the Industrial Revolution, the development of which I take to be the primary function of the recommendations of this Report, to deal with the documentary evidence that exists scattered all over the place, in Home Office papers, in the Public Record Office and elsewhere, with regard to people who fought for the trade union movement and who in their own way contributed to the Industrial Revolution—people like Francis Place the tailor who succeeded from his little tailor's shop in London in securing political action in Parliament to repeal the Combination Laws of 1799 and 1800.

I make these suggestions with great humility because this is a vast subject. The public are only just beginning to understand the importance, the beauty and the evolutionary interest that should be created by a comprehensive demonstration of all that went on. Too often school books in our own lifetime have been too gloomy to read and did not paint the true picture at all. Reverting for a moment to the rural side, I do not wish to cloud the issue by suggesting the setting up of a number of small rural museums—a great number exist already. But I am sure that there exist items which ought to be collated, brought together in some form, and which at present are lying rotting away unappreciated because they are not known. Only last Saturday I saw a double furnace in East Anglia built in about 1800, which is the subject of a demolition order. Some of the equipment is still there, and these are the things which I suggest should be brought together to demonstrate that the people in rural areas had their part to play in the Industrial Revolution in this country.

5.40 p.m.

THE PAYMASTER GENERAL (VISCOUNT ECCLES)

My Lords, my noble friend has raised a Question which is undoubtedly of increasing importance. We are all very glad that this technological aspect of museums is coming to the fore. The two noble Lords who followed him showed that the subject is very wide and one man has one particular kind of material he wants to collect while another has another. I will try to give them the best Answer I can, but I hope they will understand when they have heard what I have to say that this has to be an interim Answer because we are at this moment considering a number of important decisions and have not yet quite reached our conclusions. Your Lordships will certainly agree that objects such as the noble Earl and the other noble Lords wish to see identified, listed and preserved are part of our history, just as much a part as books and manuscripts and works of art are for those who for so long have cared much more for the traditional type of museum.

I am not quite sure why this has suddenly come about. I believe that a study of the past shows that in periods when their power has suffered some diminution nations usually look backwards over their shoulder at their own history. That may be one reason why we are doing it now. But I think another reason is that we always have been, at any rate for the last 150 years, predominantly an industrial society. We like engines and ships and machines and things that work, and we are interested in what we like and in the preservation of what has been characteristic of the rise of this country.

It is no accident that the Science Museum in South Kensington is much the most popular of all our museums; that is to say, with our own public. The tourists, of course, do not come in quite such numbers to the Science Museum. And in the Science Museum the exhibits which are the most popular are those which work. It is the same in the British Museum where we have the horological collection unrivalled in the world, and one sees dozens and dozens of visitors, young and old, coming there, not primarily I think to look at the beauty of the cases of the clocks or their faces but to see them work; to tell the time and hear them strike. In recent years two ships (the noble Earl mentioned ships in his Question), the "Cutty Sark" and H.M.S. "Belfast", have been converted into museums and opened to the public. H.M.S. "Belfast", for example, which charges 30p for adults, 20p for children and 15p for pre-arranged school parties, in the first seven months had 300,000 visitors. That is far more than the Wallace Collection and the Wellington Museum in Apsley House put together and doubled. It is very interesting that these are the kind of museums which are attracting most people. When we take so much trouble, as we do and I hope always will, about our great national galleries and museums of art, we ought also to spare a thought for these other museums which in terms of attraction to the public in general are at least as interesting.

It must be right to preserve and display objects which give so much pleasure and instruction. The trouble with these objects is that, although they may be inexpensive to acquire—indeed the owners are very often glad to give them away—the cost of their transport, erection and preservation can be very considerable. The noble Lord, Lord Burntwood, spoke about rural exhibits. But surely all over the country now—I can think of Lincoln as a fine example—farmers are delighted to give museums their old wagons which have been getting in the way and their old ploughs, et cetera, and they are making extremely attractive exhibits. Of course they need a lot of space, but everywhere rural technology is something which is becoming collected. The trouble is that when a building or an object of this kind becomes available, often no one is there who will shoulder the burden of the expense of giving it house room or even of putting it in the open and looking after it.

In London, we have the Science Museum and the Imperial War Museum, both with fine collections of technological objects. Neither of them can expand without more space either on their existing site or in some subsidiary museum. As an example of the latter, your Lordships know that the Clapham collection of railway material is being rehoused in York and will there be cared for by the Science Museum. I have no doubt that there are other such moves that would be of advantage. Most of the objects which my noble friend had in mind were made and used outside London. Here I think I differ from the noble Lord, Lord Burntwood. There is a considerable case for saying that these objects should be preserved outside London and, if possible, as part of the local history where the industry concerned grew up. I would rather think that these museums serve to strengthen the character of the local people and their pride in the past than just try to educate some city dweller who did not know anything about coalmining.

LORD BURNTWOOD

My Lords, I particularly did not mention London. I take the view that London is, as it was in the 18th century, the Great Wen. I think London ought to be forgotten to a certain extent. I am not opposed to the Transport Museum going to York. I would merely argue that there is a case for taking it away from the immediate area where the industry was.

VISCOUNT ECCLES

My Lords, I understand the noble Lord's case but I am not quite sure that I share it, especially as lie said, I think quite rightly, that trade unions might be able to contribute very much, if not in objects at any rate to the archives and so on, and they would need to be near where there was a tradition of families working in the industry. But this is an open matter. I am going this very Friday to open a new museum at Beamish in County Durham. There one will see among other things 50 pit wagons which were just saved from destruction and no doubt are of peculiar interest to the people of County Durham.

What is happening now is encouraging, but I agree that we need a comprehensive policy. In working towards this policy we have the help of two Reports. one of which has been mentioned already: the Report from the Standing Commission; and the other, which came out only a few months before, entitled Victorian Technology and its Preservation in Modern Britain, is also extremely interesting and useful. The authors are Mr. Norman Smith and Professor Rupert Hall, who did an excellent job, and I have noted two of their points. They stress that we must have better communications between museums and private persons who are interested in technological material. This is undoubtedly right. But there is a good deal of sorting out that should be done between who should preserve what and who can, by exchange possibly, help someone else. Then they emphasise the depth and sincerity of interest in technological preservation outside London. I am glad they did that because I think there are people in London who concentrate on our national museums and who are not perhaps aware of the strength of the growing interest outside London in this kind of museum.

The Report from the Standing Commission on Museums and Galleries for which the noble Baroness, Lady Lee of Asheridge, asked, came out at the end of last year and by that time, as I think your Lordships know, a Committee were at work on the whole field of policy for the provincial museums. I do not think we could frame a satisfactory policy for technological material alone, and therefore we are very fortunate to have these two reports to help us to fit this kind of material into the general picture. It will be a little time before the Committee report but I can assure my noble friend that they are asking exactly the same questions that he asked me this evening, and that these two Reports are part of the working papers of the Committee.

I cannot anticipate the Committee's Report but there are two general observations that may help. The first is that it is becoming very clear that the role of the private museum is very important in this technological field. We have the splendid example of my noble friend Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, who has accumulated a finer collection of antique motor cars than is to be found anywhere else in the world and who, with that judicious blend of showmanship and a real interest in his material, is making an enormous success of his museum; and I do not doubt that other kinds of technological museums could be equally successful. I know that my own grandchildren are not only willing to pay to see giraffes, they also want to see generators; and some children, of course, prefer machines to monkeys: they would rather see a technological exhibit than a zoo, although other children will take other views. At the moment we are not catering for the technologically minded child, as I think we should.

My second observation is that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment is waxing enthusiastic about the preservation of technological material. For example, he is treating outstanding industrial structures on all fours with traditional monuments and buildings. That never happened in my time when I was at the Ministry of Works, and it is a great improvement that it should be done now. My right honourable friend is prepared to give these industrial structures their share of available resources, and their resources are increasing. Recently he has taken into his care, or is negotiating for, half a dozen important industrial monuments, including the iron bridge at Coalbrookdale. He is very ready to co-operate with an advisory committee on industrial buildings and objects, if one were set up as envisaged in the Report of the Standing Commission.

My noble friend raised the question of export control of industrial objects of exceptional national importance. These objects are usually in private hands, and by far the most common danger is not that they will be exported but that they will disappear altogether. I think it would be difficult to frame rules to guide a reviewing committee as to what technological material was of real national importance. It is not quite the same thing as rules for works of art over one hundred years old, which come within the scope of the present Committee. It is fairly well known after one hundred years, which artists are important, hut to say whether fossils or foghorns or locomotive plates or wrecks around the coast of Britain—the British Sub-Aqua Society which is so dear to the heart of the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder—really are of supreme national importance would, I think, be difficult. It is better that we should move towards some kind of advisory committee backed, I hope—though I have no reason to make any commitment—with some resources and a campaign to persuade local authorities and private persons to do more in this field.

There was a question about archives. I must apologise to your Lordships; I had not realised that the subject of archives was going to be raised in the Question, but in the course of the weekend my noble friend added the Report of the Standing Commission which mentions archives. It is very difficult to instruct bodies to protect archives. It is necessary to know what proportion of the total paper that passes through their offices really is worth preserving. A moderately sized firm of stockbrokers told me last week that they used one ton of paper a week. What about the National Coal Board, or the British Railways Board? We should need some very careful thinking and advice from those who are concerned with archives before we laid down a rule. I myself am always worried that so much television material is lost and is not preserved. In a way I feel that the right of deposit which the British Museum enjoys for all printed material ought really to be extended to some other forms of historical material, but it seems that we have not yet reached that stage.

LORD RITCHIE-CALDER

Hear, hear!

VISCOUNT ECCLES

My Lords, I will certainly talk to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Department of Industry about wrecks, and I will tell him with what eloquence the noble Lord pleaded the case. The noble Lord mentioned "encapsulated time"; that is all right, so long as there are a few doubloons and other attractive articles in the wrecks. Then I can understand that it must be a very exciting sport indeed.

Finally, I would say to my noble friend Lord Kinnoull that we understand the importance of this Question; we are giving it full consideration in the committee reviewing provincial museums, and if he will be patient I hope that some time before the end of the year we shall come out at any rate with an interim report.