Morning:
14°c
Hodge: 'Proms are wrong kind of British'
Joe Murphy, Political Editor04.03.08
Arts minister Margaret Hodge is under fire after she attacked the Proms for failing to promote Britishness beyond a narrow audience.
In an extraordinary outburst that outraged Gordon Brown, she said the summer concert series was not doing enough to promote a shared cultural identity.
Her claims astonished fans of the Proms, whose colourful last night with its chorus of Land of Hope and Glory is one of the most popular and quintessentially British events.
It also enraged the Prime Minister who quickly let it be known he regards the Proms as a bastion of Britishness.
Ms Hodge spoke out in the Guardian newspaper ahead of a speech on cultural values.
"The audiences for many of our greatest cultural events I'm thinking in particular of the Proms is still a long way from demonstrating that people from different backgrounds feel at ease in being part of this," she said.
"I know this is not about making every audience completely representative, but if we claim great things for our sectors in terms of their power to bring people together, then we have a right to expect they will do that wherever they can."
Ms Hodge was later spelling out her views in a speech to the IPPR think tank, calling on British institutions to be harnessed for politically correct moves to spread shared values.
Allies of Mr Brown angrily asked why she failed to clear her speech with No 10. "What is she on about?" demanded one MP close to Mr Brown.
"The Last Night of the Proms makes us all massively proud to the British. Last year people came from all around Britain to enjoy the last night in municipal parks. She has an outdated view that these sorts of events belong only to an elite when in fact they are shared by the whole country.
Shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt said: "There is probably no better example in the world of a series of concerts that attracts a huge audience to often quite challenging classical music."
Ms Hodge was slapped down hard by the Prime Minister's official spokesman who said Mr Brown was a strong supporter of the Proms.
The spokesman insisted her comments had not been intended as an attack on the festival, which he praised as a "wonderful, democratic and quintessentially British institution".
He went on: "She supports the Proms, as does the Prime Minister. The Proms have done a good job with the BBC in broadening its audience."
Conservative leader David Cameron said: "I think we want more things where people come together to celebrate Britishness and more occasions when people think the Union Jack is a great symbol of our Britishness, rather than sniping at it."
A spokeswoman for the Proms said: "We are proud that the BBC Proms is world renowned for the way it combines excellence in classical music with an ongoing commitment to bring it to the widest possible audience.
"Indeed, this has recently been recognised by three nominations for audience development in the Royal Philharmonic Society Awards."
The eight-week Promenade Concerts were founded in 1895 and are now the biggest classical music festival in the world with 70 concerts and Proms in the Park all over Britain on the last night.
