Richard Penderyn outlines some of the current problems in the heritage industry, and some ways of introducing cultural democracy

Heritage and the historic environment in the UK is rich. It spans millennia and includes amazing sites, from Stonehenge to Caernarfon Castle and from Orkney to Osborne House. Such sites include human-made landscapes and gardens, and I am using the terms heritage and historic environment to also include the large collections of objects which are related to these sites through historic activity, and are exhibited in museums within these sites or kept in large museum stores.

These sites and objects are the material evidence that allows archaeologists and historians to validate historical events and articulate interpretations of past human life and activity. In recent years (but also in historic times) material evidence has been purposefully destroyed, often during war, in acts that have been almost universally condemned. An example was the destruction of the site of Palmyra and more recently the destruction of many sites in Gaza. Losing the material evidence means that we can only consider unsupported interpretations about the past and as such lose the capacity to debate and explore our history. This is why preserving material objects is important.

For the work of preservation and interpretation to take place, organised effort for managing and protecting cultural heritage is necessary. In the UK, this work is undertaken primarily by charitable membership organisations such as the National Trust and English Heritage. These are non-profit organisations whose main responsibility is to protect cultural heritage and make it available to people now and in the future.

Many national museums which are responsible for large and significant collections also function under charity law. While membership support for them is in some cases available, in general entrance for permanent exhibitions is free, while other access has to be paid for.

A communist approach to culture

In Britain's Road to Socialism (BRS), the Communist Party of Britain has laid the foundations of the role of culture in society, and in consultation with cultural workers it has also more recently published a short booklet called Class and Culture, available to download from the party’s website.  The main points articulated in the BRS document are:

1) Capitalist ownership undermines the potential of art and culture to contribute to the liberation of the working class, as it leads to its commercialisation and a focus on profit, irrespective of any social need both in terms of individual creative expression and in appreciation and celebration of cultural experiences

2) That art and culture has a central role to play in challenging the values, notions and thought processes of capitalism, through a sustained cultural struggle against it.

3) The state has an important part to play in the promoting, supporting and regulating cultural activities in order to initiate and extend working-class participation in art and culture as well as establish more social ownership and democratic control of cultural experiences, so that culture is made by and for the many, not the few.

In the UK we are taking for granted that cultural heritage organisations should be charitable under a membership framework which is basically paid access to heritage. Using the approach laid out in BRS, I am exploring here what the membership framework is, some of the problems that it generates, and how alternative models could function.

Finding other income sources

Some of these heritage organisations receive funding from the government, but increasingly in the recent years this funding has been reduced, and in many cases the government has withdrawn funding altogether while allowing heritage organisations to raise funds from outside any government budgets. The inevitable consequence for a heritage organisation not having secure funding is to shift its focus from heritage protection and access, to securing income.

As such new departments are formed to deliver fundraising programmes and product and business marketing strategies. Shops and cafes take priority, and sometimes become as important as the cultural attractions themselves. Typical examples are a) prime-location gallery spaces in museums being replaced by cafes and b) shops and infrastructure prioritisation for commercial activities in historical sites as opposed to activities for protecting and accessing heritage.

This not only diverts attention from the core function of heritage organisations which is to maintain and study the material evidence of our history, but it also increases the proportion of employees who are not related to that core function, as they are busy with additional logistical and managerial tasks to run the business / income making side of the organisation.

In many cases, projects to study and offer access to sites and collections are stopped because the expected “return on investment” in monetary terms is not adequate; i.e. the expected income from visitors is not large enough to justify the “investment”.

Some will say that a nice cafe and shop is an additional attraction to a site, thus increasing access to heritage for people, however in the next section I will argue why this is not the case.

Lack of funding also applies pressure to heritage organisations to engage in opportunistic activities which are connected to income generation. This has often meant receiving funding from organisations whose ethics are questionable, and monetising heritage by “discreetly” advertising corporations and big capital.

Journalists are quick to criticise decision-making in large heritage organisations in relation to funding activities and sponsorship from “unethical capital” partners, but they rarely touch upon the real issues which are: a) that the government does not provide enough funding and therefore it is inevitable that heritage organisations will engage in such activities and b) that capital is never ethical and therefore any sponsorship by “big money” is by definition problematic.

One example of sponsorship which has led to intense discussion and criticism is the money received by the British Museum from BP which is obviously linked to the climate change crisis. Another is the money received by many heritage organisations, including the National Portrait Gallery and the Tate from the Sackler family which is linked to the opioid epidemic.

If funding was guaranteed from the government, then the only focus for these organisations would be heritage, its study and access for people within a secure and long-term framework of planning.

The income from membership is of course significant and makes these organisations sustainable to some extent, but it means that only people who can afford a membership have access to heritage. I discuss this problem next.

Culture and class - visitors

Heritage organisations in the UK can be considered as bourgeois playgrounds. They are places visited by the better-off, who are economically powerful enough to donate generously towards maintaining the ideological narrative of the ruling class. In that sense, Capital "owns" the heritage industry. In many cases historic houses and collections are still owned by members of the ruling-class and their descendants, but they are managed by heritage organisations on their behalf because their up-keeping has become too expensive. In that sense Capital literally owns heritage and allows access to it. In both cases, access to heritage is to a large degree controlled by Capital.

The membership fee creates an immediate barrier to heritage for the people with limited finances. Therefore, again by definition, the membership-led charity is a construct of exclusion for the working class.

Many heritage organisations are showcases of colonialism, slavery and exploitation. They demonstrate a history of collecting activities by rich families. The starting point of each visit to a historic property or site is celebrating the money that made or bought the property and its gardens. The aesthetics and the language are distant to working-class visitors. As such, the environment is uncomfortable and often offensive for people who are struggling financially. When I struggle with the weekly grocery shopping, it angers me if I visit places celebrating extreme wealth and exploitation (even if I do not have to pay entrance fee, let alone when I do).

However, that is not the whole story. As the BRS document and the booklet Class and Culture make clear, culture can be an instrument of ideological oppression  but also can be an instrument of liberation.

Heritage organisations, through staff members who are making a real difference with their work, have made huge efforts to express alternative narratives, celebrate the achievements of workers and truly engage with the working class. They have led critical interpretation of colonial history and flagged the deep problems of capitalist exploitation. They have engaged with working-class communities in a regular and honest way. However, such cases of focus on the working class are still rare exceptions and the result of time-consuming research which requires significant funding.

One would cynically argue that the drive to diversify audiences by including stories of working-class people is led by a target-driven institutional culture in order to build better engagement profiles for future funding applications. However, it is true that many employees in these organisations do really care about their audiences, want to engage with communities and to make a difference to their well-being.

Due to the persistence and creativity of staff members in various heritage organisations a number of excellent initiatives are in place where access (including transport) to heritage sites is offered for free. In some ways  this is a positive action, but it also emphasises the inequality and the uncomfortable setup of charity.

And then we return to the issue of the cafes and shops: a day out for financially struggling families would certainly mean inability to afford a decent meal from the cafes of historic properties or sites. Does it really add to the attraction? I know well that it does not. It is a way of establishing an additional barrier between the rich and the poor, which is why I argue that the existence of the cafe and shop in their current money-making format is problematic.

Culture and class - workers

The employees working in heritage organisations often have rare combinations of skills including dexterity and knowledge of manual techniques, and also academic research and study. Many of them hold research degrees. If we consider these skills in comparison to the skills of employees in other fields, heritage workers are paid far less than what they should be, which is why there have been disputes in several heritage organisations including the Science Museum, the National Museums in Liverpool and the National Museum Wales.

The low salaries of employees working in heritage organisations have significant consequences:

1) Employees who cannot afford to work in heritage: they receive such low salaries that financial independence is impossible, let alone supporting dependants. They often rely on family to continue working or have partners with better-paid jobs who support them. The same applies to volunteering posts, where it is broadly expected to work for free for a period of time (typically several years) before one can be considered for a paid post. Considering the greater proportion of female workers in memory organisations, this also fuels gender (sex) inequality, and  leads to workers seeking employment elsewhere because they simply cannot afford to work in the heritage sector.

2) Employees who have income from other sources and do not depend on their salary: Typically they come from affluent families with little understanding or experience of the working class. This means that these employees are difficult to be motivated in a class struggle sense to improve conditions of work, including salaries. It also means that any effort of interpreting historical evidence with a focus on the working class are the result of academic research, as opposed to own experience and as such it becomes distant. In this case a low salary leads to the job being transformed into a hobby based on cultural entitlement as opposed to a focus on access.                                                                                                                                                   

Culture and class – senior management

The framework of the charitable organisation also requires a complex governance structure. This typically includes a board engaged on a voluntary basis and a paid chief executive alongside a senior management team. While in the past such organisations where typically ran by people with a background in heritage, the fundraising focus means that the board and the senior management is required to have expertise in managing commercial activities.

In general, board members and senior post-holders of heritage charities care about heritage and want to make a difference. But they fail to recognise the following problems:

1) Their voluntary contributions and/or their paid work includes an element of self-importance because it translates into isolated decision-making based solely on their views and beliefs. It is extremely rare to have decision-making processes that involves workers and volunteers. When a senior post is appointed, the organisation changes without the employees ever making any decisions. Policy and strategy comes from the top down and priorities are set based on somebody’s grand vision, as opposed to the interests or ideas of the employees who have the primary experience of working with heritage objects and visitors. Realising the grand vision is typically measured through quantitative metrics. Reaching targets means that board members and senior manager have another success story under their belt, on their way to knighthood. None of this serves the interests of the working class.

2) The salaries of senior posts for large charities are many times bigger than the salaries paid for junior posts. The argument is that higher salaries attract more capable leaders, and that the savings made by cutting a senior salary will not actually save significant amount of money in the wider scale of economics in the organisation. But it is ethically problematic that senior members of staff benefit financially from the work of lower-paid colleagues within a charitable framework where maximum use of membership income needs to be shown to be invested in historic, material evidence. In an ideal scenario, the gap between top and bottom paid posts in an organisation would be minimal. In the present situation, the senior manager should return a significant part of their high salary, as a donation to the charity.

Another world is possible

To sum up, heritage belongs to the people, and it is the people who should care for and benefit from it. The current system of charitable organisations based on membership income does not serve the people:

1) It generates significant ethical issues around access and funding and often diverts attention from the main objectives of protecting and studying heritage,

2) It excludes people from enjoying culture and learning from it,

3) It leads to unreasonably high executive salaries and low-paid employees, leading to minimal working-class representation and additional ethical concerns.

In order to develop a heritage landscape truly serving the interests of the people and fulfilling our duty of care for future generations, the following points should be considered as part of a wider government plan for cultural democracy:

1) Heritage should be managed and protected under a long-term plan of centrally funded and guided activity, based on local communities with the main focus on access for the working class, enjoyment and appreciation by the working class, and better terms and conditions for workers in the heritage industry.

2) Heritage must be freely accessible for everyone, and it should become an anchor of social engagement for communities. Heritage must be owned by the public and form a core asset in education, underpinning the critique of historical injustice and exploitation of people by capitalists and thus becoming the vehicle of realising the power of the working class.

3) The leadership of heritage organisations should be appointed by democratically elected committees of heritage workers and local stakeholders. The massive inequalities of pay in heritage organisations should be eliminated.

4) Apart from education and access, decision-making about the management of heritage must be based on scientific analysis and expert knowledge, and not with income generating criteria.

To quote from Britain’s Road to Socialism: “The role of art and culture as a liberating form that can stimulate as well as stifle human development has to be fully appreciated. It is an important medium through which the values, notions, prejudices and thought processes that serve the interests of capitalism must be challenged.”