The Guardian view on the arts white paper: no direction home | Editorial

There is too much gobbledegook and bland generality in Ed Vaizey's new statement of government policy for arts and culture. It lacks the focus of Jennie Lee's white paper of 1965

Half a century after the last white paper on the arts, Ed Vaizey, the government's culture minister, has just published a successor. The white paper of 1965, by the Labour arts minister Jennie Lee, was Britain's first expression of a national cultural policy. It makes interesting reading now: both for what has been built on her vision, and for what remains undone.

Lee aimed to make the arts available to the many, not just the few, and in all parts of the country. She thought the state had a moral duty to help artists nurture, not squander, their talents. She wrote: "In any civilised community the arts and associated amenities, serious or comic, light or demanding, must occupy a central place. Their enjoyment should not be regarded as remote from everyday life." She wanted Britain to be a "gayer and more cultivated country". And she raised government funding by 30%.

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