“In Africa and on the West Bank, the locals were pleased to see someone from Britain who’s not white, who’s performing musical poetry from Jamaica. It sponsors education programmes for marine aquarium fish collectors in Sri Lanka. It has helped to reduce female drop-out rates at Addis Ababa University. It numbers among its concerns the problems facing dental health services in rural Peru.
And, perhaps most typically of all, it dispatches writers of the eminence of Margaret Drabble and Christopher Hampton on missions to fly the flag in all corners of the globe. The British Empire may be dead, but the British Council lives on. By definition, its myriad range of activities are little known to the British people it represents, and whose taxes keep the show on the road. Since being founded in 1935 – in the face of the rise of fascism in Germany and Italy – it has enjoyed a fairly cosy existence, free to promote British culture and technology abroad as it sees fit – through exhibitions, theatre tours, literary events, educational programmes or support for local projects.
“The council wants to show the variety of cultures and voices in Britain,” he says. Benjamin Zephaniah, the performance poet, has now been on so many council tours, he says, that he’s lost count. He lists Australia, Argentina, Colombia, South Africa, Zimbabwe and the West Bank among the places he has gone to fly Britain’s cultural flag. That fits in with branding Britain as a modern, dynamic, innovative, young country, and we’re conscious of that.”The writers and artists whom the British Council selects to represent the country certainly have no complaints. When countries use British expertise, they are more likely to use British products and skills in the future We attempt to present the best of Britain. The council is more important now, relatively, than it has been.”The council’s outgoing Director-General, Sir John Hanson, has said, “For the UK to make its way in the world, traditional government-to-government links must be complemented by networks which operate society-to-society and people-to-people.” Many argue that concentrating on poverty alleviation, at the expense of other projects, may be a mistake because education, democracy, accountability and good government are vital to the plight of the poor.But what relevance does any of this have to the citizens of Britain? “In everything we do, we promote British expertise,” says a council spokesperson “We match up local demand with skills in this country. And Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, has pledged himself to an ethical foreign policy.
In the words of one defender of the council, it represents “one of the principal contributions that Britain can make around the world as distinct from the past when we had a powerful economy with armed forces to back it up. “You can only keep open our network of offices abroad if you have security about funding,” a senior council source said last week.The irony is that the dispute should have arisen at a time when the council ought to be enjoying a new lease of life under Labour. Tony Blair has given new emphasis to cultural exports and the promotion of the English language in its attempt to “re-brand” Britain. What the British Council fears is that if Ms Short is going to require it to direct more cash into aid-type projects, it might be deprived of the money it needs to keep open the offices it has in 109 countries. The alternative is that DFID may start to impose its own priorities on how council money is spent.Ms Short’s emphasis in taking charge of the newly-formed DFID has been on providing help to the poorest nations. The British Council, meanwhile, sees a broader role for itself, with an intellectual, not to say rarefied tradition that goes back to the era when WH Auden and other 1930s poets could travel under its auspices.Running educational courses – chiefly in the English language – remains fundamental to the council’s raison d’etre, and such enterprises worldwide earn it more money than it receives from the Government Nobody has any complaint about that.
The other pounds 32m comes from Clare Short’s Department for International Development (DFID). But for how much longer? There are suggestions in Whitehall that DFID may sever its direct grant to the British Council, leaving the Foreign Office alone to administer a possibly reduced budget. The difficulty here is that Britain’s aid budget, which the Government is committed to increasing, would lose out. Now, however, the council is feeling the wind of change that has accompanied the arrival in power of New Labour. Questions over policy and funding have created uncertainty about its future.
A fundamental review of the British council’s spending is being conducted by the Foreign Office, the source of two-thirds of its pounds 100m annual grant. And what’s amazing is how the Scientologists bought this – without any questioning , they bought it.”Channel 4 has not experienced anything yet..
