Castles: The Original Gated Communities.

On a muggy day in tranquil, rural mid-Wales I stood alone on the stone remains of the medieval Castle Dryslwyn and looked down over the fertile valley created by the meandering river Tywi. Although the modern world intruded in the form of the monotonous sound of a tractor labouring over the ancient land, it was not difficult to imagine the past and the lives of those who, remote from the affairs of the rest of the world, had once depended upon the castle to safeguard their modest living - until it was finally overwhelmed by those who coveted it.

Whenever I see ruined castles I try to assess their strategic importance and by doing so gain some understanding of the conflicts of the past that brought them into being. In some cases they are fakes, built by landowners to enhance the vistas on their estates – a consequence of the popularity of romantic landscape paintings in which ruins are depicted to add visual drama, lend mystery and hint at legends. But whether authentic or fake, our country without these remains would be poorer: they are part of the collective memory that helps to bind society; they remind us that the present is built upon the past and that the status quo is temporary and subject to change. One day people may similarly revere the stumps of abandoned wind turbines and the hulks of de-commissioned atomic power stations.

But our cultural heritage is measured by much more than ruins: it also includes, for example, Otis Redding. The documentary film of Otis’ short but important career which I watched later that evening was fascinating, not so much because of his music (I was never a fan), but because it covered some key events in the development of popular music. Otis recorded with the Stax label whose records sold only to black Americans. The crossover to a white American audience came via success in Europe – especially England. The chinks in the armour of racial apartheid were beginning to open in the USA and music became a powerful factor in its dismantling. Black American artists were the inspiration for the British soul scene but the 60’s reverse invasion of America by British bands led to a creative cross-pollination resulting in diversification of styles and genres.

I was on a cultural-heritage-induced high by the end of the film but the next day I was brought down by news of the possible closure of several museums, among them Manchester’s Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) because of the proposed withdrawal of Government funding. Closing museums to save money is never good news: closing MOSI, an institution dedicated to preserving and explaining the very why and wherefore of Manchester’s existence, would be an act of cultural vandalism. Government will justify it on the grounds of austerity brought about by the global economic turndown. It will push the idea of alternative funding through charitable giving while it directs scarce public resources to the four big items: defence; education; healthcare and social welfare.

But the defence budget appears to be spent on the destruction of other countries’ infrastructure and cultural heritage; the education budget on training children not to think for themselves; the healthcare budget on management re-organisation, cover-ups and pay-offs and the social welfare budget on desperate remedial measures to compensate for the follies of the other three.

While privately owned financial institutions are bailed out with money that belongs to society and too many rich individuals and corporations evade taxes and abjure social responsibility, public funds contract and pressure is put on the philanthropic few to make up the shortfall. Cultural heritage gets short shrift as Britain looks increasingly like a poor country run for the benefit of a few rich individuals – just as it was in medieval times.