C O N T E X T 9 9 : M A Y 2 0 0 7 37 Notes from the chair It’s time to prepare for a new phase of politics ‘Heritage protection is an integral part of the planning system’ said David Lammy MP at the Heritage Forum meeting a week after the launch of the Heritage ProtectionWhite Paper. The minister was being questioned by several people (including yours truly) about just how much joining up there is between the Department of Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) and the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG). To his credit, he clearly understands the vital importance of this linkage. We must work hard to make sure that everyone else does too, as the actual physical protection of historic places, as distinct from their identification and legal protection, will only be achieved through the planning system. While Baroness Andrews of the DCLG spoke at the reception on the launch day (and we look forward to welcoming her at our Liverpool Summer School), the Heritage ProtectionWhite Paper does not have her department’s logo on its cover. Indeed many of us expect that the forthcoming planning white paper will have rather more impact on the actual management of historic places than the DCMS one will. The DCMS all too easily slips into a mindset that sees the historic environment primarily as visitor sites, rather than as a cherished aspect of our everyday surroundings. That has been very obvious on the public occasions when the secretary of state has found herself extemporising on the subject. This is, of course, institutionalised in the dual roles of English Heritage, Cadw and Historic Scotland. They are expected to be arms of government in the wider historic environment, and simultaneously to be entrepreneurial managers of their visitor sites. My own view is that this is now a fundamental flaw in these organisations. It may have made some sense in the 1970s, when archaeological values led both the management of visitor sites and the governance of the wider historic environment, but not now. So what should we in ‘the sector’ being doing about it, and what are we doing? Lobbying. Influencing. It looks as if the present political ascendancy is in its final phase, so we must all make sure our voices are heard by potential successors in all parties. Conservation will always be a deeply political process, albeit guided by professional expertise, as it involves a balancing of public and private benefits. So we must be in there, and we are. Now back to the Heritage Forum. The meeting took place just three hours after Tessa J had announced a raid on the Lottery distributors to fund the 2012 London Olympics, including a further £90 million, yes, £90 million, off the Heritage Lottery Fund. I am amazed at our sector leadership’s reluctance to speak out against this extraordinary and disproportionate corporate vandalism, as if they were turkeys voting for Christmas.Yes, I know I am possibly in a minority in regarding spectator sport as the modern opiate of the people, but let’s just think of all the worthwhile things that will not happen up and down the land in order to fund this bizarre spectacle. Almost as galling is the fact that it is happening in the already over-heated South East. Is the much-vaunted regeneration not happening anyway, as the ripples from London’s property boom wash across the East End? The sooner the Olympics find a permanent home, Greece perhaps, the better for all of us. Until then it will be an increasingly disreputable display of political testosterone. Perhaps it is not so surprising that HMG has trouble working out where the historic environment belongs in governance, as the sector itself can present so many faces to the world. This has been highlighted for us within the institute by our discussions with the Institute of Field Archaeology (IFA) about closer working, in the context of the Professional Associations Research Network (PARN) study initiated by the All Party Parliamentary Archaeology Group and funded by English Heritage. The conclusion of the PARN study is that a merger is not appropriate, but that there should be a liaison committee of the two institutes. IHBC council has welcomed this advice, but it must be admitted that IFA at a senior level is rather disappointed. At present some of our members see our closest working linkages being with archaeology, but for many others the closest links are with mainstream planning, architecture or urban design. In the future this may well change for many of us involved in the public sector, as the Heritage Protection reforms and local government restructuring will encourage the creation of more multi-disciplinary historic environment teams. But for most of us that is some years away. Our multi-disciplinary membership is what makes the IHBC special, and will be particularly relevant to these new structures if we can formalise it into a faculty system on the lines I have set out in the Yearbook. That would enable us more readily to welcome into full membership those whose skills are centred on research or on construction, as well as those managing change to historic places. JohnYates, chair@ihbc.org.uk
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