Heritage Day
5 December 2013
The Chairman’s Address
This year’s message is familiar but one that is worth repeating frequently: that
heritage is among our greatest national assets; it should be on the right side of the
balance sheet. As we painfully repair our broken economy the heritage should be
more widely recognized as a foundation of our future prosperity and not as a luxury
that can only be paid for in the good times. This message should be embedded in the
mission of every heritage organisation in the country.
We need to reassert to the public and especially to the government the nature of the
virtuous circle in which heritage builds prosperity and that prosperity enables us to
invest in creating, studying and preserving our heritage for the future. Heritage is not
just a load of old buildings and locomotives, ships, shop fronts and landscapes but
also the theatre of emotions and activities that such things inspire: learning,
entertainment, community action, skills, creative and commercial enterprise. We
sometimes forget that many of our greatest national institutions, our leading
museums and universities and cultural organisations and even government
departments - yet the government doesn’t have to pay VAT on repairs and alterations
- derive authority and inspiration from the historic buildings in which they live.
It is also worth reiterating that heritage creates the context in which people can be
enterprising and creative. For example the Grade 1 Engine Shed in Bristol confers
value to high tech start ups.
Let us remind ourselves how heritage is different from other things in our society. The
heritage has unique characteristics, among them it gives an incredible competitive
advantage. Heritage can not be reproduced no matter how much money or however
hard you try, whether it is by an alpine village recreated in China, the Eiffel Tower in
Las Vegas or the English village in South Korea. The developers of Lake Havasu
City Arizona knew that. We like to imagine that they bought London Bridge because
they were stupid. On the contrary they bought it because they were smart and now it
brings a distinctiveness to Lake Havasu City.
Nor can heritage be reproduced. When heritage is gone it is gone forever. That is the
single most defining issue that gives us a unique responsibility. If we make bad
mistakes now, future generations will pay for them.
The other characteristic is that there is more and more heritage every year. The
elegant bus station at Preston is now quite rightly a listed building and before long
this Flying Scot bicycle will become part of our heritage just as the Flying Scotsman
already is. Heritage grows, expands and changes and that is a constant challenge.
Our rich and diverse heritage and our heritage movement is the envy of many other
countries across the world not just for what we have, but for the exemplary way in
which we manage it. Unsurprisingly, The Heritage Alliance has had a rash of
delegations from the Far East this year.
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Last year, we asked Alliance members to explain their distinctive contribution to
national wellbeing, a question which produced an amazing array of answers.
We stimulate discussion and debate – part of our core function from the smallest to
the largest organisation is to demonstrate why heritage is valuable and why we
should continue to value it. Awareness is power.
What came across was that the heritage movement is also about celebrating national
ingenuity and through our work in conservation and restoration we sustain skills and
training for skills. That must be a central part of our agenda for heritage won’t exist
without the skills to maintain it.
We are always driven by public interest, an extraordinary feature of the heritage
movement. No-one has ever got rich by starting a Building Preservation Trust. It is
rare to find any other social movement in which public interest is so dominant, with so
many volunteers and such great concern for the community.
2013 has been a heck of a year so far. What has it taught us? Constant competition
for political focus is making public attention more difficult. Whatever happens, the
NHS, welfare, defence and security will dominate the news agenda. For the next 10
years we will be severely affected by pressure on central and local government
funding and we will have to learn to live with that.
Of greatest significance in 2013 was the journey from the Ancient Monuments Act of
1913 to the proposals for the new English Heritage model. This means that a century
of big state intervention in heritage is over. We have to construct a model which will
work for the next century.
There is plenty of raw material There are many challenges. One of the greatest is
that society blindly worships what is new and often disregards the importance of
finding new uses for what is old.
So what do we want from Government. It is not that we want to make life difficult for
Government but that we want to make lives better for future generations. We want a
stop to the cuts, but that is not going to happen.
Today’s Autumn Statement affirmed cuts to all non-protected Departments - and of
course heritage is not considered important enough to be protected, which means a
more than 1% cut to DCMS in 2014/5 and another 1% in 2015/6, further reducing
the Government’s already inadequate support. What is extraordinary is that
Government is cutting these budgets in order to invest in infrastructure. In a country
like ours, if heritage is not social capital, I don’t know what is and that is something
we have to work on.
While DCMS is our leading advocate around the Cabinet table, we have to figure out
how heritage supports the work of bigger departments like DEFRA, DCLG and BIS
and how we and DCMS can help them understand better the values of heritage.
What is the Alliance up to? Apart from our general advocacy, we are looking at the
place of heritage in a complex 21st century. We are strengthening our
new relationship with the tourism industry, now the 3rd or 5th, depending who's
counting, most important industry in the country. But we have to remember that our
heritage assets are primarily for us, to create a good society and that tourism comes
next. Let's make Britain a good place for us to live and do business in - then the
tourists will come.
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Sometimes we fall into the trap of thinking that everyone knows the value of the
heritage and it is worth repeating the mantras that:
Heritage is educational.
Heritage stimulates economic growth and urban renewal.
Heritage contributes to the citizenship agenda.
Simply, heritage is good for us and is one of the things that makes us a decent and
worthwhile society.
We have to make sure that government will provide us with a the framework that
allows us to do our work properly. We must remind Government that the golden
goose of heritage can not continue to lay golden eggs if it is not fed. In terms of
tourism, regeneration and in VAT alone, Government cannot continue to reap the
benefits without more sympathetic and supportive policies.
We should remind ourselves that in terms of our heritage the state is not, and has
never been, the hero of the heritage movement.
This year we heard a lot of publicity about the Ancient Monument Act and about the
men from the ministry but they picked up the baton that individuals and organisations
had started carrying.
They built on the work of William Morris and Octavia Hill and they built on it well, but
they were not the heroes. It is we, the people, who have saved our heritage and quite
clearly, it is we, the people, and our organisations who will save the heritage in
future.
Our heritage is a seamless web of variety, beauty and meaning. Its richness and
pervasiveness are so important.
With that in mind we have to look at intangible heritage too. The way in which we do
things - heritage crafts and skills such as hurdle weaving. Those of us in the tangible
heritage sector should build bridges with the intangible heritage.
We must make sure that Ministers, MPs, and members of the public know than
heritage is indispensible to our prosperity, to our identity and to our wellbeing.
I would also like an escape from the short termism of electoral cycles towards a 10 or
20 year generational vision of what our heritage should be like. If government can
think in terms or 20 or 30 years for HS2 or for airport development, then it should
also consider putting in place heritage policies looking further ahead than the next
government.
Now I would like to turn to the Heritage Lottery Fund.
The HLF has been transformational in terms of encouraging heritage organisations
and in terms of its investment. I’ll hand over now to Jenny Abramsky, Chair of the
Heritage Lottery Fund who last spoke at our 2008 AGM at the beginning of her
chairmanship.
Loyd Grossman
5 December 2013
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