|
|
| FURTHER FEUDAL REFLECTIONS - Alias: The Totnes Book of the Dead |
|
A fruitful town/ trust symbiosis or Siamese twins struggling to be rid of each other?
With Sam Richards on this web-site (‘The Rise and Rise of Feudal Dartington’), I am concerned about the non-transparent, non-accountable, and non-democratic governance of a significant stake in the Totnes region. Having long considered myself a friend of the enterprises in question—indeed, I came to live here in order to research ‘the first alternatives’ as promoted inter alia by the Elmhirst-Ash vision--I refer to what, at my least hopeful moments, I have reluctantly come to think of as ‘the long arm of trustee/ dynasty ventures inc’. My primary concerns are political, it being reasonably clear to me now that these ventures are propped up by a series of quasi-feudal dependencies, an archaic grace and favour system, and a very old-fashioned, co-opted or self-elected power elite, the whole adding up to an informal freemasonry which (unlike the founding Elmhirst-Ash mothers and fathers) does the region---and now the Dartington College of Arts--very little good. This, at basis, is to agree with Sam Richards, whose insights I want to explore a little further in this piece: with something of a feeling, I should add, a feeling shared with others in fact, that rather like Bush and Blair in Iraq, the empire has gone too far this time (‘imperial over-reach’) and that watching its death-throes could unfortunately become a local pass-time of the next few years. The trustees are doing the wrong thing, at the wrong time, with the wrong guidance… that seems to be the local consensus…such that the last Dartington memorabilia, tea-towels, trinkets and all, float off into the sunset, as the Titanic breaks up.
Let alone amongst the ‘ordinary citizens’ of the Totnes region itself, the sentiment that Sam and I now share can be found as close as Newton Abbot, where, sadly in many ways, the whole dynasty/ trustee empire—and its trivialized, post Seventies-to-Eighties fallout in Totnes pyramids and crystals—is a long-standing object of derision or a joke. What further concerns me and others in that connection, as we move out and away from New Age—though I would except important aspects of local ‘counterculture’ from that--is the sheer lack of imagination and vision in the trustee-, CEO- and manager-led policies presently being pursued in relation to what remains (which is precious little) of the old Elmhirst-Ash vision. Whether or not, like Iraq, the whole thing has gone beyond saving, amongst the trustees and those intimate with the empire’s inner circles, that vision might have its would-be ‘preservers’—as opposed to its ‘destroyers’. But precisely for want of democratic procedures—including open dialogue with the town—and thereby making ‘beyond salvation’ the most likely outcome, any preserving voices seem to be well and truly drowned out by the faction which is intent on a schism, not just with Dartington’s past, but also with Totnes itself.
If a ‘preserver’ figure like Michael Young—later Lord Young of Dartington--could flee and abominate the region out of revulsion at fellow trustee bungling, financial chaos, and in-fighting (the details are most recently written up by Walter King in the Totnes Review), then how much more likely now is a haemorrhage of real talent from the area? (I talk to such people most days: bail out now, or stay around to watch the Titanic go down, seems to be the general dilemma.) A related point arises: are new (non feudally hands-tied) talent or solid (non fly-by-night) investment—or outside grants and funding--likely to materialize in the Totnes region, while deterrents like non-elected power cabals, and lack of transparency and accountability, exist in these quarters at the top? As Sam Richards points out, unlike that of, say, Newton Abbott. Kingsbridge, or Dartmouth, the development of Totnes has been uneven and lopsided. Precisely because of the presence of the old empires, the region, culturally, politically, and economically speaking, has been overhung—and pushed in specialized directions—because of its choice as a venue for the Elmhirst-Ash ‘experiments’. So faced with the present proposals for pull-out or sell-off of what, historically, has been a bridge between town and estate—I mean by that the Dartington College of Arts—the region, understandably, has the sullen and non-accommodatory look of the proverbial ‘used woman’ (perhaps better, ‘used domestic’) now that the attentions of the ‘big houses’ have moved elsewhere.
Going back to uneven development: as with the oil sheikdoms—the so-called ‘curse of oil’—sudden, unearned, or easy money can only be a Pandora’s box. Public beheadings apart—though I suppose we still have the stocks—such money can only stand in the way of democracy and transparency too. Applied to the old empires and their regional impact, this would imply that that there just hasn’t been time for either the Elmhirst-Ash legacy, or the Totnes region (as its ‘whore’ or ‘domestic’) to catch up with fairer and more balanced ways of envisaging and administering an economy or system of governance. The imperial administration, to put it bluntly, looks out of line with modern democracy—more specifically, an impenetrably complex trustee set-up, surrounded by surviving relatives and old Dartingtonians, has something of that archaic and anti-transparent ‘curse of oil’ feel. We are talking here about great cultural, as well as economic, assets which--whether for good or for ill--have had, and still have, a major impact on the region. Yet the region isn’t even consulted—let alone represented—when it comes to the changes of policy, obviously affecting us all, that issue from our equivalent (including its peripheral Branscombe wrecker types) of an oil sheikdom’s extended ‘royal’ family.
This is where any possibility of a happy town/ trust symbiosis turns into the nightmare of a Siamese twin scenario, without any too obvious method of severing old ties. More accurately, though, I think, to put it in local currency, the town’s vision remains ‘holistic’, with more than ample room for the two trusts. It does not want the severance—and suspects, with good reason, that it is the ‘dualistic’ trusts that have been creeping off to consult the surgeon behind its back. And that in turn is the origin of the (‘Cartesian’) ‘facts and figures’ that (however speciously) spell, not just a death sentence for DCA, but also major changes in our inter-related neighbourhoods, as the new ‘vision’ (economic, needless to say, not cultural) continues to unfold. So my reading of present feeling is that indirectly, by way of the financial new-speak and ‘restructuring’ involved—and as co-passengers on this ‘holistic’ Titanic of trustee/ dynasty ventures inc where these last merge into the life-blood of the towns and villages--we are being told what to do with our aspirations and lives.
Getting back into bed with the empire
My intention is not to lay all of the blame at the doors of the trusts—more, as I shall argue later, much of the region now has the look of an extended dysfunctional (sub-royal) family, and as regards the Elmhirst-Ash legacy as such, most would agree that it too has its undeniable ‘spoilt’ hangers on. Nor is it my wish to point the finger at individuals—more to indicate salient trends, make a plea for transparency and democracy, and point out what I feel are some telling inconsistencies issuing from the ‘big house’ side of the present stand-off. Apart from a general sadness (and feelings of gloom and demoralization) that things have gone so far, I have few feelings, one way or another about the personalities involved. I only know a handful of them personally, anyway, and—except as material for academic research—local myths are no particular interest of mine.
More, in a politically non-partizan—though democratic--way, and having talked to a good cross-section of local opinion, it is the structural side of the local polity, culture, and economy that concerns me: and the present weighting of that to what I see as neo-courtly or even archaic ways of framing—and dealing with—the region’s problems. Particularly where these arise, historically speaking, from the presence in their midst of the Elmhirst-Ash legacy. My own position is very much that of a dispassionate museum-world friend who (without knowing all the details, but making the right guesses) writes ‘I suspect that these Trusts are struggling to find their way in the 'new world'. Their traditional income sources I imagine have collapsed. I am sure that along the way there will have been some maladministration - but a lot of that Elmhirst Ash idealism, I suspect, is unrealistic today - especially if it is not backed up by a fresh source of money.’
Fresh money, certainly: but—without crying for the moon of the old ‘idealism’—I would ask money of what kind and to what kind of purposes, is it to be quick returns from glitz (I don’t personally mind about tea-towels) or something steadier and more substantial? And shouldn’t a matter of this importance be referred to the town as well? Bringing us back to politics, too, isn’t transparency, or the lack of it, the single major factor that would attract or repel such fresh money? Culturally valuable though it was in its day, the old ‘Elmhirst-Ash idealism’, I’m sure most would agree, belonged to a different era, when a different political and economic dispensation was in place. My point for now is that if changes have occurred on the one front—the economic--then changes should occur on the other. We have to look at local politics—in the broadest sense of the word--particularly where residual archaism and behind closed doors procedures are in conflict (for all its short-comings) with modern, representational democracy.
Some kind of long-term solution to the woes of the two big houses might then finally be forthcoming—long-term being of the essence, since any short-term ‘deal’ will only defer the evil day. As things have stood—and still stand, though I suspect that the voice of the town is making itself heard at long last—Totnes, and I think the two big estates as well, can only contemplate the worst of all possible worlds. The situation, I mean to imply, can only be ripe for further confusion, ill-will, and dissension-sowing death agony, when the remnants of an old aristocracy—or a self-appointed one—join hands with a mock-up of the soul-less economic pragmatism that has been the fashion of the last twenty five years and more.
That fashion might be ending anyway—‘everything flows’ as the Greek philosopher (and Buddha) said—but with insufficient local precautions (meaning by that insufficient spread and balance in the region’s economy and insufficient communication between town and estates), I fear Totnes is all too likely to end up looking like a burnt-out Glastonbury, with the neo-aristocratic great and good all fled. (But hardly to the pseudo-naval constellation at Kingsbridge, Dartmouth and Salcombe, which even if it’s been overtaking Totnes for several years, would be too naff, one might assume, for the old set involved.) Returning to my political point, an alliance of town and trustees/ dynasty, its object the devising of a long-term plan for the integration and regeneration of the region’s different economic interests, could be the answer to all our problems—which I and many others I’ve spoken to don’t think will end with the DCA issue--particularly now that Blairism (or Blatcherism) is looking into an abyss.
As regards the presence in the region of the Elmhirst-Ash legacy—perhaps because it has been in the nature of a marriage, however uneasy and informal--the expression ‘for better or for worse’ comes to mind. As things stand—and here I have the proposed closure of DCA in mind—it is the empire (basically at present a private undertaking) that seems to want a divorce from the town. The town, on the other hand, as a focus for public concern, hopes to keep the bridges envisaged by the founding Elmhirst-Ash mother-fathers open, and not to sever what began life as a kind of informal marriage contract: a contract connected, one might hope, with mutual tolerance, forbearance, benefit, checks and balances, downsides, losses and so on. In lighter vein: no whoring off and dumping the frumpy domestic as soon as Mr D’Arcy flutters his eyelashes, no complaining about the household economy, and the need for the influx of a particular kind of money or visitor, because of past ill-conceived blow-outs or bouts of managerial miscalculation, and the neglect or damage resulting to the fabric of the stately pile.
In relation to this marriage contract and any rapprochement—putting any ‘trust’ back in the trustees--I would personally urge caution on the side of the town. At least, any premature getting back into bed with the empire (or any Regency Beau), without having first settled these matters of governance, culture and economy, could only lead to more of the same in the future—to more of the same muddled archaism with more of the same causes for future schisms and rifts. Put another way, cutting a premature deal would only leave the underlying political problem unsolved. Take the now dying Blair empire as a caution. As another neo-courtly set-up with its magicians, grooms, jesters, grace and favour dispensers, spin-machines, financial new-speak, non-elected governance--and yes, with Sam Richards’ SNAGs in mind, ‘sensitive new age guys’ and pyramids and crystals—this, on its final collapse, cannot but fail to have a higher than normal body-count: with the usual embarrassed face-saving and changing of sides.
As much as the ‘great and good’ who take Dartington as their fiefdom, the town, I mean to imply, should be alert to the need for an entirely new (and more formal) marriage contract before getting back into bed with anyone. Otherwise, not to mention the devastating and unacceptable way in which the proposed changes were launched on the town by the ‘great and the good’, the whole episode will have the retarded and retarding look of ‘late Blairism’—on top of that oil sheikdom feudalism--while the rest of the country moves on. In so far as it would most likely leave the basic power-structure untouched, any short-term solution to the DCA problem would likewise simply allow the issue—or something related—to raise its head yet again a little further down the line. Failing such cautions and orderly procedures—like active, elected representation on the two ‘big house’ trusts from the county and/or town--people like myself, who are used to more democratic, more transparent ways of deciding the fate of a region, a cultural enterprise, or a college, will most likely despair of this part of South Devon and leave.
But any respite from that for the empire can only be temporary, since the matter is unlikely to end with exodus: historians and their like have their duties, and a full and honest record of the Dartington tale and its subsidiaries—of the way in which, under the trustee regime (and that of pyramids and crystals), the Elmhirst-Ash gift to the region became a ‘baleful legacy’--is a very long time overdue. Making that task considerably easier, the dams that once held relevant historical information back now seem to be bursting—to the great benefit of the town as well, I think, such that with good luck and good will (and knowing far more about its own history, where that intertwines with the fortunes of the two big estates), it could be able to make a new start. Meanwhile, as the old empire lurches from crisis to crisis, a new library and arts centre—like the Flavel centre in Dartmouth—could help to insulate the town (where it, and not the trustees, now acts as the effective guardian the Elmhirst-Ash legacy) against the shocks of breakdown and decomposition.
Kate Caddy (nee Ash) on ‘alternative life-styles’ and ‘established institutions’
This question of the removal of the blind-folds which, under the trustee-managerial dispensation, have obscured our role as dependents or hostages of the two big estates, brings me to a related matter, again connected with the accurate representation of the historical record. This is to say that I feel it is misleading for Ms Caddy to suggest, in her recent, reluctant ‘family card’ comments on the Dartington issue, that ‘alternative life-styles’ are a ‘refuge’ and something new. (Are we to be consigned, I wonder, to some Totnes Book of the Dead?)
The ‘first alternatives’, including ‘spirituality’, were in fact very much a feature of ‘Old Dartington’—and Sharpham continued that ‘contrarian’ tradition under Ms Caddy’s father Maurice Ash. Much of this ‘alternative life-styling’--not the same as grooming or (Carol and Cherie) hiring a personal trainer--was affiliated to the early 20th century ‘life-reform movement’ (German Lebensreform). This could be early ‘hippy dippy’—as witness George Orwell’s hated cabbage juice drinkers with their beards and sandals, cited by Young in his book on Dartington--or (as per Dadaists in wing-collars) more conventionally dressed. Both strands were found in the early counterculture: Ascona, a famous ‘counter-colony’ in Southern Switzerland that stood in a similar relationship to the Munich avant-garde as Dartington to London’s Bloomsbury set, was frequented as much by naturists and nuts and berries types, as by earnest Wagnerians, Theosophists and Jungians. (In his Mountain of Truth, the counterculture begins, Ascona, 1900-1920, Hanover and London 1986, the cultural historian Martin Green gives full details of the clientele involved.)
Both strands—the dishevelled and the high bohemian--have a long history locally; and far from being a simple refuge, both have contributed greatly to experiment in the arts. (As other examples of ‘country house modernism’, Coole Park in Ireland under Lady Augusta Gregory, the patroness of Yeats and other figures in the Irish revival, as well as Garsington Manor near Oxford under Lady Ottoline Morrell—which attracted D.H. Lawrence and most of Bloomsbury—could be brought into this discussion of Elmhirst-era Dartington too.) Young documents some of this ‘alternative life-styling’ in his study, The Elmhirsts of Dartington; and as a historian of modernism, I have researched the matter in some detail, not just with reference to ‘Old Dartington’, but also to that international complex of ‘first alternatives’ (rustic, countercultural or country house modernism) to which Elmhirst-era Dartington belonged. From a cultural historian’s perspective, ‘alternative’ yes, ‘refuge’ no; ‘life-reform’ yes, ‘life-style’ no—that is a rough general picture of the situation appertaining in Ms Caddy’s grandparents’ day. And outside of the two big estates, as changed well-nigh beyond recognition by trustee revisionism, it is the situation appertaining through much of the Totnes region today. (True, there is an undeniable ‘hanger-on’ component that the trustees might want to deter; but—without the baby going out with the bathwater--that was the case at ‘Old Dartington’ too.)
As for Ms Caddy’s point about the distrust of the founding figures for ‘established institutions’—omitting to mention, however, the fact that such ‘institutions’ were very different (more stolid, ‘bourgeois’, and non-creative) in the founders’ day--DCA is most obviously ‘institutional’ by virtue of its public funding as an arm of Plymouth university. (That in turn appears to have come about as a form of bailing out for the old Elmhirst arts-college in face of the general trustee mismanagement documented by Walter King.) In other respects, to persist with the history involved—and laying aside the ‘mainstream’ if not actually ‘institutional’ nature of the unimaginative courses adopted by both sets of trustees since the deaths of the founders at both Sharpham and Dartington--DCA keeps the ‘experimental’ spirit of Old Dartington alive.
Albeit in a more democratic—or post-aristocratic--spirit, one might add, given the ‘demotic’ nature of the public funding involved. A type of not simply demotic, but also ‘institutional’ funding, one might further add, which has but lately gone into the restoration of the ‘green tourist’ quay at Sharpham—a quay to which there is no proper boat-service, and which can only be used at high tide. From what Sam Richards writes, it seems that--this time in the shape of several millions pounds worth of ‘hardly used’ college equipment—a great deal more of such apparently infra dig ‘institutional’ money stands to pass the extended empire’s way, if DCA is given the thumbs down. There seems, to say the least, to be a profligate element of public/private cake and eat it with this matter of (mere) ‘institutions’ and their sometimes financially handy, but mainly (I guess) tone-lowering relationships with the once—and seemingly as yet would-be--‘aristocratic’ or ‘anti-established-institutional’ estates.
The other legatee of the original Elmhirst-Ash vision is, of course, the Totnes region in general. This is neither institutional, nor simply ‘hippy dippy’ in any banal or vulgar sense. The personnel involved—at DCA and in the Totnes counterculture—may be less well heeled and well connected, less ‘Bloomsbury-in-Devon’, than during the glory days of the two big estates—which, as Christopher Titmuss points out on this web-site, border (and in part ‘define’) Totnes to North and South. But what (New Age crystals apart) these ‘survivor’ groups do have in common with the founding vision at both Dartington and Sharpham (before the present drift towards a money-spinning/neo-feudal set-up, decoupled from the town as such) is the same distrust of the mainstream, of the merely commercial, of the lightweight. Nor is it just a question of an esoteric, DCA-cum-countercultural constituency turning up its nose at gloss and marketization: the town and the various councils--even, it seems, the farmers--do not want to see the old vision junked by being pushed yet further along (to use neo-liberal jargon for another round of trustee-led chop and change) ‘restructuring’ paths like these.
That is why, the more baroque ins-and-outs and twists-and-turns of the DCA issue apart—all those doubtless diversionary ‘facts and figures’ which purport to underwrite a death sentence-- local feeling runs so high. Something distinctive to the region stands—yet again--to be taken away. No, not by multinationals—more, by a neo-feudal ‘great and good’ who ask us to believe that they are guarding a precious historical legacy by behaviug in much the same, eye-on-the-main-chance way as the big corporations of prophets of globalization like ‘Lexus and olive-tree’ Thomas Friedman. Which perhaps explains the colonization of our lanes and roads—if not by Friedman’s Lexus—then by the Chelsea tractor and its life-style (not life-reform) addicted drivers. The same superficial life-style, I think, of which Ms Caddy complains: the syndrome isn’t local—it’s imported, and of a piece with the ‘corporate/ designer’ side of the policies which (even only amateurishly) she and other trustees, whether at Sharpham or Dartington, now seem to endorse.
What comes next? Gated communities? As now rampant in prime locations in Scotland, Donald Trump style golf-courses and bits of dinky lease-hold? Multinational conference centres? Albeit that, more than likely, they’ve come in ten years too late on a soon to vanish ‘new rich’ fashion, if the trustees, for the most part, behave like silent, faceless, and unaccountable oligarchs—and confining themselves to historical inaccuracies, tell us so little of the plans which so directly impinge on our lives—is it surprising that people fear the worst?
Good money to drive out bad: old politics and (lack of the) new
Dorothy Elmhirst is reported by Young as having wanted to use (‘good’ anti-establishment/ alternative) money to combat the power of (‘bad’ mainstream) money in the theatre by funding experiment and innovation. (Not a word, please note, of any ‘plus’ or ‘artistic excellence’: except as the enemy, the ‘bourgeois philistine’ idea of ‘Art’ and the early theme park were definitely not her concern.) Though the fact is scarcely mentioned locally, the original Elmhirst vision was ‘cultural modernist’, in the technical, history-of-art-and-ideas sense. Modernism, in this sense, was a great—frequently and, I personally think, sometimes viably ‘neo-feudal’, ‘anti-modern vitalist’, ‘aristocratic’, ‘anti-establishment’ or ‘romantic anti-capitalist’--movement in spirituality, life-reform, and the arts (perhaps preserving that order). In a climate of massive eclecticism (and uncertainty), modernism’s political leanings were utopian socialist (seldom Marxist, though that was represented locally too), or romantic communitarian right (as per Niall Ferguson’s Indian Raj-related coinage ‘Toryentalism’), though sometimes ‘proto-fascist’ as well.
As subscribed to on the two big estates—and at other rural counter-colonies like Ascona or Taos in New Mexico--modernism was very much an ‘alternative’: more fully, drawing not just on the ‘shock of the new’ but also on the ‘shock of the old’ (including the Orient and the ‘primitive’), it was an ‘aristocratic’ alternative to what was known as ‘bourgeois philistinism’, ie (as per the trustee set’s present obsession with ‘artistic excellence’) the hand-in-glove-with-commerce, capital A ‘Art’ cult of the day. Generally speaking, the ‘aristocratic’ component in the--by that stage late modernist-- mix became (imperfectly) democratized during the 1960s: and that’s how we arrive, not only at ‘lords and rockers’ (or polonium in your sushi bar), but also at the more motley--and alas too often consumerized--‘counterculture’ of our own times.
So much for a very brief picture of the ways in which ‘alternative life-styles’, modernism, counterculture, and ‘life-reform’ (though hardly Chelsea tractors and sushi bars) intertwine with each other, whether on the international or the local cultural historical map. Room, I should have thought there, for any well-intentioned preserver or ‘saviour of Dartington’ (and not just of DCA) to make a conservationist (not the same as ‘conservative’) approach to the Tate. Or failing that to the American ‘arts and culture’ money with which (the Mellons, for example) Dorothy Elmhirst was connected. As a chapter in (English, of all things) modernist history, what we have--or once had--locally is every bit as important as the art colony at St Ives: more so, an art-historian friend maintains. Conserving or saving the Elmhirst-Ash legacy, I mean to imply, should be a top priority—but not simply as a (‘conservative’) museum. (Hill House made a valiant start on that, but then--one presumes because of in-fighting—went the way of so many trustee/ managerial ventures.) Like the Totnes region counterculture—crystals once more aside--the DCA, after all, is a still creative, active, and living link to the ‘modernist’ past outlined above (beware, then, all trendy talk of the ‘postmodern’), and though obviously embedded in the larger question of the fate of the Elmhirst-Ash legacy, not yet ripe for a ‘heritage’ inscribed glass case. Nor, I hope is the counterculture—though (see below) the trustees could conceivably raid it as a source for walk-on actors in some grand son et lumiere (or late Merchant Ivory) staging of Old Dartington/ Sharpham as they once ‘really’ were.
I and many others fail to see why, decoupling from the original vision, the trustees of the two big estates apparently have no wish to make use of their true assets, or (bringing up the DCA issue again) to keep this kind of–elsewhere by now democratized--‘alternative’ vision alive. Though passed over by Ms Caddy—this being evidence which does not suit--Maurice Ash’s own position seems to have been quite clear: because of its growing commercialism, Dartington for him had become ‘that place’, and as reported by Christopher Titmuss on the campaign web-site, he said at the end of his life that he felt ‘despair’ at the new directions at Sharpham—but felt too old and tired to change them. As previously at a trustee (mis)managed and increasingly mainstream Dartington, the original ‘alternative’ vision (with elements of late modernism, this was mostly ‘spiritual’ and philosophical in Sharpham’s case) was being taken out of the founder’s hands: and that–with Shakespearean touches to my mind--even while this locally much loved and modest figure was still alive.
Though Sharpham is the junior and smaller trust, the matter is of some importance for the way it illustrates a (‘baleful legacy’) trend: namely the ever-increasing speed with which, on the estates, founding intentions are overlooked or bowdlerized, once the business of overview, and supervision, on the part of the founders is terminated by death or becomes difficult because of old age. The usual kind of evidence points to factional in-fighting between the preserving and destroyer parties on the big estates: but even though they affect the region profoundly, the town is only treated to whispers of these quarrels, as if (more feudal retardation) it did not merit inclusion in the secret discussions that impinge on its fate. Time and again, it would appear, the trustees--who inject the ‘baleful’ into the legacy--forfeit good-will on all sides: and this non-democratic secrecy, this high-handed lack of consultation—or is it simply an autism?—seems to be the starting point of offence.
‘Archaic privilege’ hand in hand with the Blairite view of ‘culture’: why not a super-casino to put everyone out of their misery?
In Sharpham’s case—accompanied by a loading towards the subsidiary cheese-and-wine ‘Sharpham Partnership’ away from Maurice’s own philosophical and Buddhist interests, with a paring away of the once immensely popular ‘open’ Tuesdays —the turnaround (explained to no-one in an adequate ‘this is what’s afoot’ kind of way) was in favour of superficial ‘green’, ‘outdoor’ and edible/ potable initiatives of an unimaginative and predictable kind. As with the proposed closure of DCA—which has its parallel in the running down of Maurice’s unloved (because, one presumes, less lucrative) Buddhist interests, including the once vibrant Buddhist college: another bridge to the sprit of ‘Old Dartington’--none of those affected locally by the new money-spinning schemes at Sharpham, not even those who might have wanted to help the would-be ‘preservers’, were asked for their views. As Sam implies with his very pertinent questions—who actually wants an Arts Park, who defines what goes on in and around Totnes, and most important, by what right?—the ‘loop’ obviously does not include obedient everyday peasants like him, me and you. With Christopher Titmuss, I would ask if the trustees of both big estates have lost their way. But I would also persist with the political point, that the spirit, in both cases, is one of a quasi-feudal go-it-alone, of a highly illiberal flouting of any interests other than those of the big estates—the last now ignominiously reduced to financial considerations (so why not that super-casino?), with a thin veneer of community-invoking rhetoric when it suits.
In other words, to continue with my plea for democracy, it’s a latter-day form of ‘archaic privilege’, a kind of feudal entitlement—both of them assumed or taken for granted, but not actually rooted in anything ongoingly ‘aristocratic’ (or ‘anti-establishment alternative’) where the marketed ‘products’ are concerned--that’s deciding our (parody of a marriage) fates behind closed doors. So returning to Ms Caddy’s ‘family card’ statement, it seems in the light of this new style of (feudal/corporate) marketing, with its abandonment of any hint of the old noblesse oblige, that we’re being asked to condone the disappearance of any ‘institution’ (like DCA) that tries to keep a spark of the old vision alive, in so far as that might interfere with the pushing of those new ‘products’, with their ‘non-aristocratic specialist’ or mass-market appeal. So do we have to wait, in effect, until a new Dorothy Elmhirst comes along, waving her ‘good’ alternative money to combat the ‘bad’ mainstream products now being pushed by the extended trustee and family empire—with a degree of hauteur, perhaps, but little noblesse and no oblige?
(The Buddhist party at Sharpham tells us in the brochure that ‘great emphasis is placed on the value of Buddhist practice in revealing our interconnectedness with, and responsibility for, others’. Noble enough, and as may be: but the incongruity with the mayhem created by the ‘green tourist’ faction is quite glaring for anyone who knows the situation nearby. Once again, did it but occur to the trustees, consistency—and evenness and dialogue combined with transparency and democracy—could help everyone here.)
The Independent and Guardian obituaries described Maurice Ash as a ‘writer and administrator’, a ‘man of profoundly philosophical bent’—not as a ‘farmer’, which is the present Sharpham spin on the matter (more fixing of the historical record), doubtless because of its compatibility with the syllogism that ‘today’s hard pressed farmers have to diversify’ so ‘outdoor’, ‘edible/ potable’ and ‘green tourist’ are good.
I write that not out of simple irritation, but because—amongst ‘the great and the good’ and their managers--Sharpham’s true assets, like Dartington’s, are so obviously disregarded or not even seen. What kind of entitlement is it, that so gaily subjects our lives and livelihoods to the brutish political mores and methods of ‘merrie England’ (not to mention those oil-sheiks), without there being the slightest inkling of what—money and ‘breeding’ apart--permitted the entitlement in the first place? Even granted a certain local weakness for raw ‘feudal glamour’ (taken straight), it can only be by virtue of what the Elmhirsts and Maurice Ash contributed culturally to the region—a contribution which the trustees and dynasty seem to neither understand nor wish to keep--that any claim to entitlement could exist at all. The rest is a form of idle, out-dated, amoral, irresponsible, non-accountable droit du seigneur whose dire, destabilizing effects on the region might better be referred to the charities commission than applied to our aspirations and lives. Looked at from this perspective, the marriage of town and estates, such as it was, can only be null and void. Only an entirely new contract—democratically rewritten--could revive it: but is it so easy to trust an erring and roving partner, when no contrition, no diminution of hauteur, is shown?
Their robber-bishop founders aside, why not look to Oxbridge colleges as a model (or go to them for help?)
Historically attuned changes of policy are not necessarily the same as marketization (I write ‘attuned’ not ‘necessitated’, since —to take no more than the economics involved-- nothing is actually predetermined or necessary locally, as against dictated by fashion, whether past, present or passing.) As a mixture of private and public money, Oxford and Cambridge, for instance, have changed—but they haven’t become ‘institutional’ in a suspect sense, they haven’t flashed any credentials for ‘excellence’, they haven’t come up with a logo, they haven’t added any ‘pluses’, and they haven’t dumbed down. (Being a democrat not a populist, just as I never read books with ‘and beyond’ in their title, so I would never visit a cultural institution—or meta-institution--which, in the spirit of 3 for 2, offered me some kind of ‘plus’.) Oxbridge colleges retain a good deal of the ‘Old’ without that becoming neo-feudal, stuffy, trivial—or the preserve of a tiny, decision-making cabal. The whole of the senior university (in contrast to that local cabal) votes on matters of importance--and at Oxford, as is well known, they refused to give anti-educational/ slasher Thatcher an honorary doctorate. Local businesses there, true—and in fact why not, have made something of Inspector Morse: but the colleges as such steer clear of any such obvious commercialism.
The big estates could, I believe, retain their dignity—and keep much of the original vision alive—if they looked into that Oxbridge college model more closely. (Though, admittedly, in that case—freeing up the university and town to move on--there is the advantage that the 16th century robber-bishops who founded those august institutions are a comfortably long time dead.) It sometimes seems to me that it could only be in Devon—with its far greater insularity than the rest of England, and its still quasi-feudal system of social relations--that a multilaterally damaging (and not merely, for the estates, suicidal) episode like this could occur. New talent and solid investment are not attracted to Bermuda triangles, where grace and favour elites, extended royal families, and obscure free-masonries call the tune (would you place any bets on Texas, Saudi, or Sicily?). Aside from its unprofessional nature, that kind of patronage system is demonstrably self-defeating: exactly as with ‘late Blairism’, the more frantic the old Mandelson/ Campbell like attempts to shore up the crumbling edifice, the worse the publicity—‘don’t touch it with a barge-pole’ becomes the consensus, and with a Dubya type ‘hick’ as the final verdict, yet another neo-courtly set-up bites the dust, unable to stave off the evil day of modern democracy. And come to think of it, of truly ‘free’ and transparent markets too.
All in all, then, I find an (alas all too typical) tragic insularity in the episode, the greatest tragedy for me being that the two big estates are making next to nothing of their true cultural assets—and nothing at all, beyond PR and marketing, of that broader integration with Totnes and region which was part of the old founding vision. In its stead, we have the old tendency to attempted ‘seduction by feudal glamour’ (to borrow a friend’s expression), what can seem like a persistence of the old horse-trading and grace and favour system, as if the region--and its ‘simple, but ignorant peasants’--had not moved on. (Some of it, true, the behind closed doors, complicitous or Branscombe wrecker sector, has not.) The whole, including the recent ‘family card’ statement, looks very like a series of attempts to avoid democracy, accountability, checks and balances, transparency—modernity, in the good sense of the word-- as if some pre-modern political system were still in place.
Representative democracy and elections: another very old new idea
Yet how different it all could look if—in a spirit of cooperation with the town and region--some, at least, of the trustees of these two important estates (which, true enough, face their own problems of transition from one age and system of governance to another) were elected by the county and town. The problems are not all on one side—real or pretended deference, eyes on crumbs from the manorial table, unwillingness to speak out, striking of short-termist or self-advancing deals, people being too much in each other’s pockets: these are general local problems (and dealt with, in a general way, by the historian Eric Hobsbawm in his analysis of the spiders-web of systemic obstacles facing ‘primitive rebels’ within peasant economies). Quite clearly, any inner sanctum’s underlying hold on any region is enabled to remain intact when an extended courtly or feudal system has everyone in the palm of its hand. Adapting what the poet W.B. Yeats said of dancer and dance—and with some bearing on the ‘tasteless’ (so Ms Caddy) mutterings about the founding fathers and mothers turning in their graves (come out with it, I mean, let’s break the feudal silence)--who is the player and who is the played in all this?
Amongst written accounts of the original vision, Young’s comes closest to showing what the downsides have been (he stresses, plus ca change, poor choice of managers: see below), and what the true assets really are. (For a man who parted company from Dartington in extreme ill humour, his book is in fact remarkably fair.) If an Oxford or Cambridge college abandoned its historical past and intellectual/cultural substance—and whether with hyper-marketization or life-support ‘zombie trust’ type goals in mind, gave its managers, bursar and a handful of (not necessarily qualified) ‘worthies’ free rein to revise and remodel the transmitted enterprise—there would be a national outcry. Transposed to ‘the’ local issue, there has to be a more professional—and balanced—way of dealing with things than this. (Indeed, a simple ‘zombie trust’ set-up, one that did little more than keep the corpse alive, would surely be preferable to the present, constantly juggled and somewhat hysterical mix of factors, which seems to envisage hitting some jackpot or making the big time. The big time, as we all know, mostly lies in the past, with DCA as one of its living local extensions—the other being the Totnes counterculture, where that steers clear of the trivial, the simply mythic, and the outright mad.) Far too much is at stake for the matter to be amateurishly or modishly dealt with, kept behind closed doors, spun ad infinitum, very possibly stalled, and ultimately bodged.
As things stand, the region feels held to ransom—the atmosphere turned heavy and sour—by virtue of the confusion, offence, and chaos caused by the non-transparent dealings of the supposed guardians of the Elmhirst-Ash legacy. These are sad but important days for anyone with the slightest glimmer of belief that a democratic resolution might be forthcoming—yes, even here in this over-specialized part of South Devon--for important matters like these. What I have written above has still deeper implications, of a political, cultural, and economic nature. I turn to these now.
Helmand Province on Dart
At first I thought of calling this piece ‘The Bigger Picture: feudalism, Freud, the sell-off, and Dartington College of Arts’ or ‘Fear and loathing in Totnes’. Then I toyed with ‘The Totnes book of the dead’, since I think that’s where we could all be headed if nothing radical is done. By way of critical self-examination, in the first place, then concerted challenge, that is to say, to the archaic power-structures involved in this new episode of high-handed treatment of the region, twinned with by now familiar failures of communication and lack of preliminary consultation.
Talking about it all, another friend pointed out that it’s like Helmand Province in this part of South Hams. (Sam suggests ‘Alice in Wonderland – or in this case Malice in Blunderland- how can I have more if I haven’t had any yet?’) You think you’re getting somewhere—but you’re not. You think something’s established—but it’s not. Everything’s too protean for any sustained agreement, ‘sustainability’ lasts five minutes, new initiatives simply subside, prospects of ‘dialogue’ get stalled…now you see it, now you don’t. Like Dartington College of Arts. All-right, so there’s Buddhist ‘impermanence’ and that ancient Greek thing about how ‘everything flows’, as I said. But this is going too far.
New initiatives subside into what, more precisely? Into a series of feudal dependencies, we decided, this friend and I. These, we thought, suggested Freud: dependency is ‘infantile’, Totnes has been called the ‘town of the child’ (more true of ‘the stars’ than ‘the scene shifters’, as Sam Richards points out), Dartington thus far has been a kind of ‘daddy’, Sharpham a kind of ‘mummy’, so what’s going to happen when the teat is taken away? A child typically cries or has a tantrum. It simply reacts. It doesn’t ask deeper questions. There’s no bigger picture. Short-sighted fixation on the old source of gratification annuls the ability to think or act in pro-active ways. Eyes simply follow mummy and daddy. (That doesn’t mean I’m knocking the so-called ‘nanny state’ by the way: it’s the hands-tied precursor of that I have in mind here.) Alternatively, if you don’t like Freud, try Elizabeth Kubler-Ross: we’re working through a bereavement, more properly we’re anticipating one…as Sam writes, ‘Like looking after an aged relative who’s on the way out but we’re not sure when’.) We get awash with emotion and myth, forgetting the importance of level-headed thinking. And who can pull our strings then? Why, mummy and daddy of course.
In any case, since we’re off balance, there’s this tendency towards--not ‘education’ (thrice: what I really mean is getting as much clued up about the bigger picture as all those ever-shifting details)--but reaction, reaction, reaction. £20 million is mentioned—no question of pausing to think ‘OK, there’s lies, damned lies and statistics’— instead we swallow it straight. The neo-squirearchs set the agendas in their speeches and statements—and forgetting ‘act don’t react’, abandoning any insistence on our own equally valid reality (in this, the town of the therapist), we follow every word. Pre-empted by divide and rule type tactics—or treated as if we need to ask permission before we voice any objections--we swap all thoughts of pro-active policies for any such tid-bits of the intrigue-ridden, behind-the-feudal-scenes story (lies, damned lies etc) as happen to be fed our way. So any forward bases in Helmand Province that might have been established—that ‘sustainable’ for five minutes which is even shorter than Warhol’s ‘famous’—have to be abandoned: in this case, to the region’s (now corporately savvy) neo-feudal power-elite: and their PR versed henchmen of course.
Nor is it always simply a case of that power-elite trying to impose its vision from above, or from behind closed doors. We can equally well slit our own throats--we, the larger, dependent/ dysfunctional (and feudally retarded) family, too often exhibit severe symptoms of ‘trickle down’, not from speciality tourist money, but from that atavistic form of patronage-dispensing power-regime which, through the centuries, has held the region back.
So everything gets swallowed up--new ideas, critical questioning, other possibilities, other visions (not necessarily of Joanna)--before they have a chance to be properly discussed. Unless, Old Dartington and New Age fashion, the ideas are rooted in the conveniently mythic. People are duped, end up in one another’s pockets—and democracy, fairness, and even-handedness are strangled at birth. Myth-hysteria reigns supreme—and on top of it all, above it, the extra-ordinary delusions (or simple money-spinning) of the big house legacy preserving /destroying oligarchs call most of the shots. Once again, we simply react, join forces with the fashion-victim, myth-hysterical babble. Even to the point, I think, that some arm of dynasty/ trustees ventures inc could try to take the campaign for soft-headed and hijack it through the back door. There’s an octopus-like power in this, the insulating and blinkering hold that the non-elected power elite, the patronage-withholding or -offering neo-squirearchs, have on the region. And to go by my own ‘awakening’, it’s the harder, I think, to see, the longer you’ve been here, since the abnormal comes to seem normal with the passing years.
Cosa Nostra (on Dart again)—well, actually, that Totnes Book of the Dead
In talking about these feudal dependencies with Sam, we agreed on their vertical/ hierarchical--as against horizontal/democratic—nature; on the ways in which, historically, they’ve either held the region back or led to a lop-sided development (contrast eg Newton Abbott, which had something, at least, of an industrial and therefore working class revolution); that for all its one-time positive cultural contributions to the area, one of the downsides of the ‘Elmhirst-Ash vision’ is its implication in this holding back: politically and economically above all. (At first, I never understood why there was all that local talk about the ‘great’--but anonymous—‘cathedral builders’, about ‘the medieval mystics’, about humble Eastern sages. Now I see why: it chimes with the obedient and faceless, meek and mild, pre-modern political model that’s promoted by the ‘feudal/ corporate’ few, to keep us happy, but ignorant peasants in our place.)
Sam and I further agreed on the ways in which, even today, the region is subtly ‘tied’ by these dependencies (as a peasant to his cottage); on the ways in which local power-elites, along with impenetrably baroque trust structures, rest on archaic political arrangements stemming from well before the modern age. Sam also noted the luck of the draw for the peasant, as to whether he gets a ‘good’ Henry VII or a ‘bad’ King John. This led me to wonder if the local councillors might play the part of the ‘good barons’, providing Totnes with its much needed equivalent of a Magna Charta.
Without there being any too obvious a link these days to the often benign influence on the arts (and sciences) once exercised by traditional ‘aristocratic’ elites, the trustees, on such a view, would be the new ‘lords and ladies’; while the managerial and CEO types would be the new, extra-powerful bailiffs who have to deliver or lose their jobs. (Room for a Frankie Howerd type skit, perhaps.) Transferred to a national level—and look at cash for honours with Tony’s cronies—it looks like the return of a savvied up version of dim Tim, the minor public school boy who, in the thrall of ‘life-style’ (that Chelsea tractor again), carries clout in the city for conspicuous consumption, mixed with a bit of New Ageism (and a lot of sushi). Locally, though, where the original Elmhirst-Ash vision has become most bowdlerized and constricting, even ‘green’ and ‘organic’ can start to look like code for ‘feudal’: the same with ‘art’, ‘Buddhism’ and ‘spirituality’ (and the ever lurking ‘medieval’), if we’re not careful to nuance, we create tyrants out of those things. (Sam suggests an embargo on these ‘S’ and ‘B’ and ‘A’ terms ‘for, say, five years’, as a way of ‘helping to install some common sense’ into local arguments about the fate of the region and so on.)
We’re supposed to be contented, docile peasants, remember, living in a South Hams time-warp equivalent of Tagore and company’s ‘Indian village community’, and ruled by the enlightened ones with their instant command of myth. (‘A myth which, in this case,’ writes Sam, ‘rests firmly on inherited millions. There’s an irony here. The millions were American – Dorothy Elmhirst’s – the very nation whose rhetoric was aimed at obliterating the old European class structures.’) Amongst the unimpressed—and not entirely unfairly--Wyndham Lewis, the modernist critic of modernism, had piquant terms for the well-heeled trendiness: these were the fashions of ‘the gilded rabble’ and ‘the revolutionary rich’. And a couple of critics of Tagore call the underlying political philosophy ‘the aristocratic-folk ideology’. Not all of it necessarily bad (we make allowances for eg Nietzsche and his cult of ‘natural aristocracy’), that was nearly a hundred years ago; and that’s what we’re still ruled by locally, whenever the trustee/ dynasty political take on (and ‘peasant’ complicity with) the now debased Elmhirst-Ash legacy raises its head. There’s a big secondary literature on this—the fear of modern democracy—but beyond mentioning T. J. Jackson Lears’s study No Place of Grace: Anti-Modernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880-1920, (Chicago 1994: the book deals with ‘anti-modern vitalism’, Orientalism and medievalism) I won’t go into that here.
What can we do to avoid entering the pages of that Totnes Book of the Dead? Politically and economically, the prospect can seem truly daunting. Given new-found alliances with consultancies, PR, the spread-sheet mentality, ideas of quick returns (the Anglo-US corporate model referred to by Christopher Titmuss on the campaign web-site), it seems we no longer have any choice in our method of execution--short of a challenge, that is, from the town and DCA to the shifts in policy issuing from the (thus far, nature-of-local-culture-defining) ‘big houses’ and estates. Where landowners and millocrats once fought over the merits of their respectively ‘old’ and ‘new’ forms of political and economic oppression, their latter-day descendants, nationally first of all, then locally where the ‘great and good’ have regrouped financially, now add up to one and the same party: the result, especially round Totnes and region, is a kind of ‘Gone with the Wind’ (or ‘deep South’) variant on ‘Thatchero-Blairism’ (or ‘Blatcherism’), a form of ‘neo-liberal economics’ that has a decidedly feudal cast.
In a nutshell, and perhaps worthy of a novel by J. G. Ballard, ‘corporate-hand-in-glove-with-feudal’--and with the ‘Bla’ in Blatcherism—is the would-be executioner, while we, the tied and dependent peasants, are assumed to have no say over our fate. (For the theme of a series of multinationals buying out a beauty spot, and converting it into a ‘Centre of Excellence’ for the new--‘Plus’--managerial class, read Ballard’s Super-Cannes. The managers become a thuggish mafia and terrorize the old ‘human all too human’ population into acquiescing in a new business-based Reich.)
A book I’ve been reading on Sicily—Cosa Nostra—argues very convincingly that when ‘capitalism’ meets the ‘aristocratic-folk ideology’ (alias the feudal nexus) these corporate/ feudal kinds of aberration occur. The American critic, Michael Lind, argues much the same for Bush’s Texas: when Yankee ‘capital’ meets Southern ‘chivalry’ (or Country & Western), the most monstrous hybrids are born. As for us ignorant local peasants, the old ‘human all too human’ inhabitants, our prospects—short of concerted self-protecting action—are either sheep’s-entrails-through-the-letterbox style silencing and expulsion or enforced collusion and complicity with the power-elites. (As Hobsbawm points out, because of the pyramidal dependencies involved, peasant revolts—or even mutterings--are more than usually open to ‘divide and rule’ type tactics on the part of those who hold the manorial power.) Alternatively, we opt for dumbfounded self-isolation as we wait for the heaving Titanic of trustee/ dynasty ventures, the more recent of them launched perilously late in the economic cycle, to break apart at its weak points and sink.
The initial lack of consultation over DCA—linked as it was (and still is) with Byzantine intrigue and secrecy—had ‘feudal’ written all over it; and as the story unfolds, the assumption seems to be that we, the dependents and ‘subalterns’, have no right to speak. (Sam qualifies: ‘It’s worse than that. We have the right to speak and they have the right to ignore us. Enlightened feudalism, but feudalism none the less.’) According to the dictates of the new corporate-cum-feudal gospel—this atavistic version of unelected government from some invisible sofa--our local variant on Helmand Province is fated to stay well and truly stuck in the past. In some never-never land ‘Indian village community’ maybe, or perhaps in a paste-board parody of the high middle ages. That Totnes Book of the Dead again or a Conan Doyle style lost world.
Dartington plus etc: cultural surge or dead cat bounce?
Then there’s the cultural point, the gutting and strip-mining of ‘Art’ for evanescent profit, the ‘death of the university’ (in this case, twinned with the running down of the Buddhist college at Sharpham, the proposed closure of DCA.) True enough, as at present, these are general trends: art as ‘showbiz’ (so the tedious and vainglorious Hirst), along with ‘market driven’ courses assigning students to this or that slot/ coffin. Education/ art as indoctrination and imprisonment, creative and cerebral death—wrought by the Gorgon’s smile or Medusa’s kiss of the ‘managers’. But laying aside the possibility that these degrading and degraded trends elsewhere could add up to a marvellous excuse for slipping all that designer ‘plus’ and ‘excellence’ stuff into Dartington’s green and pleasant grounds, do the two big estates actually have to go along with the age’s all-consuming populism, its mindless drivel about ‘art’ and ‘culture’ (not to mention its obsession with ‘issues’), its banal and hypocritical ‘planet saving’, its self-seeking games with ‘green’ and ‘organic’, its never-ending assaults on intelligence, and determination to kill off education in any meaningful—life of the mind--sense of the word? Do the estates have to assist in encouraging a rot which, to go by growing signs of public disaffection with the mass media version of ‘culture’ (and pretty well everything else), may in fact soon see a major backlash?
And what, after all, was the old ‘romantic anti-capitalist’ modernism and ‘neo-medieval’ Arts and Crafts a la Dartington all about…Mark Tobey, Bernard Leach and so on...were they slaves of ‘market forces’ and ‘commerce’ or the opponents of such trends? Far less to quarrel with, at any rate, back then…a communitarian period piece maybe, which, however naively, wished to integrate with the surrounding region (as per the photos of Tobey in the Staverton nativity play). No doubt that’s all irretrievable, a kind of age of innocence, part of the long vanished ‘Elmhirst-Ash idealism’ (though Maurice only died recently) of which my museum world friend writes. But is there no middle way? Translated into a corporate-cum-let them eat cake ‘Arts Park’ or ‘Centre for Artistic Excellence’, the recipe—cultural ‘surge’ maybe—is most certainly no way to face the precarious and daunting early 21st century. It’s as if 9/11 had never placed a question mark over one-world globalization and ‘the roaring nineties’—as if the world were awash with real wealth (as opposed to printed money) till kingdom come. ‘End of history economics’, wall to wall shopping mall, exploitation of everything (even of ‘saving the planet’), I call that elsewhere. (Though what I do in fact suspect here is the argument ‘small specialist colleges are under threat’—‘so it’s a good a time to pounce with our new brochures and plus’.)
Agreed, this (surging) ‘plus’ and ‘beyond’ stuff is a bit more upmarket—not that I personally feel its very different from Big Brother or would hesitate, with Keith Vaz, to call on the perpetrators to ‘re-consider their positions’--but the après moi le deluge, devil-take-the-hindmost principle is certainly not so very far away. And this is perhaps even worse, anyway, than the straightforward, shop-till-you-drop (or ‘iPod therefore I am’) version of the End of History, since feudal-joined-hands-with-corporate aggravates—and gives spurious cachet to--the sell-off of the region that’s happening, threatening to divide us into (a very few) new rich and (a majority) new poor. That reaches down through the older, more shabby genteel, arts-cum-counterculture blow-ins, now being replaced by far more rapacious, non-socially conscious ‘designer-cum-makeover’ successors. As with nth generation mobile phones, now only accessible to the few with the right know-how and eagle-eyed vision (see Sam’s ‘feudal’ piece for ‘sleight of know how’), the region can’t keep up with the super-consumer demands and poseur expectations, the feral road codes and brand-name pretensions, of the new visitors and blow-ins. And the irony for the power-elites is that these new ‘mainline’ (life-style) attractees to the region won’t be half so deferential as the old ‘alternative’ (countercultural) ‘Arts’, ‘Green’, ‘Buddhist’ (etc) constituency of yore. So the future of Cosa Nostra on Dart looks pretty bleak that way too.
Regeneration and coming of age for the region?
All the more reason to say ‘no, we don’t want Totnes to be treated like a pre-modern dependency-ridden joke. It’s come of age, thrown off the feudal yoke. The cultural capital that the trustees are trying to cash in on with their patents and logos is now spread throughout the region. Let them have their logos if they so wish. Totnes and region will ensure that they don’t have any cultural value. A bit long in the tooth though we are, there are plenty of baby boomers around, plenty of old 1968-ers, and plenty in the town and amongst the students who think along similar lines. Very much as the old student revolutionaries pointed out of the archaism- and old duffer-ridden universities of their era, the cultural gold-standard now lies outside—and not within—the domains of the trusts. Let them print their worthless, Pepsified money to their hearts’ content—locally, it’ll have the value of the Deutschmark under the Great Depression. “Centres of Artistic Excellence” fool no-one: they’ll be empty once boom turns to bust and the global cognoscenti crowd—and its gold-festooned chav imitators--pulls in its horns. Conservative—small c—and balance make better sense in the local economy than any amount of gloss.’
Flawed though it was in several ways—I’ve touched on its proneness to (in fact, modernist) myth-making earlier--the original Elmhirst-Ash vision was at least one of integration with Totnes and region. Nevertheless, in the face of yet another round of decoupling from the town and surrounding villages on the part of the supposed guardians of that big house legacy, the Totnes region now has the chance to turn its back on an arrested and specialized development—and regenerate. On its own if need be, but with the cooperation of the trustees—that revised and clarified marriage contract--if they so wish. (See my recent piece on the totler.blogspot.com website, posted 9 Jan 07. Back in the not-so-mythic 1968, what I’m proposing there actually happened. People from different walks of life got together, proposed a democratic re-integration, at first outside the ‘normal’ channels---and then, faced with the prospect of cultural suicide and worthless educational currency, the old vested interests, the old institutions, gave in. If initially short-lived—though eventually brought within as part of a new model--the anti-university of those years was an engine for changing ‘mainline’ universities beyond recognition. The same could hold good of the ‘anti-Dartington’ I propose in that earlier piece.)
Totnes only became a joke, I think, because of its feudal ties and dependencies, because of big house related special development (compare ‘old’ Anglo-Irish ascendancy Ireland, another ‘big house’/ peasant system), because of an increasingly devalued ‘Buddhism’, ‘arts’ and ‘green’. Let’s revalue them, halt the drift towards eco-babble and spirituality-and-arts-lite. In this, our Orwellian age (1984 sense), look at the meaning of words: reject the dumbed-down clichés that issue from what (since you can’t use the patented names any longer) Sam Richards calls ‘sssssh...you know where’. No more tied-down, grace and favour dependencies; no more whatever-is-is-right arguments about the ‘jobs’ that the trusts help to create. A united and regenerated Totnes that possesses and develops the region’s real cultural capital—the capital bequeathed by the original Elmhirst-Ash vision--could create far more jobs of its own.
(due to size restrictions, this article has been split into two parts - please click on the My Views button and select Part 2 to read the rest of this article)
|
|
|
|
|
|