THE ART OF THE MATTER

As the Minister responsible for the arts, culture and the Gaeltacht, Michael D. Higgins is, arguably, the single most influential person in Ireland in relation to the arts - and that includes rock 'n' roll. That said, there are many people who believe that the position of the arts is peripheral in the sphere of politics. This view is particularly prominent among those who mistakenly assume that the words 'art' and 'culture' are synonymous and that forms of artistic expression are somehow limited to an educated elite.

Heavily influenced by The Frankfurt School of theoreticians, such as Thomas Adorno and Herbert Marcuse, who integrated mass society critique into the analysis of monopoly capitalism, Michael D. Higgins sees "culture" as the set of customs, rituals and products that make up the way of life of every section of the community. As such, art is central to the democratic process and accessible to all.

The difference between these perceptions is hardly just a matter of semantics. Indeed, the more modern view can be seen as part of what Raymond Williams- another of Michael D. Higgins' influences - described as 'The Long Revolution', a reversal of cultural patterns which have been in place since at least the beginning of civilised society. In this sense one could also argue that there is no politician inn Ireland better suited to the position of Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht.

Michael D. Higgins was born in Limerick in 1941 and educated at University College Galway, Indiana University and Manchester University. Married to actress Sabena Coyne - a founding member of the Focus Theatre - and the father of four children, he has been active in the Labour Party since 1968. For many years he lectured in Political Science and Sociology in U.C.G. and, in 1992, became the first recipient of the Sean McBride International Peace Medal for his work for human rights. Also an author Higgins published his first book of poetry, The Betrayed in 1990 which was followed, this year, by The Season of Fire.

This interview took place over two ninety minute sessions in the newly-opened offices of the Department of the Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht in Dublin's Mespil Road.

JOE JACKSON: Cocteau's epigram, "Poetry is indispensable- if I only knew what for", is the opening line in a book which you once claimed had a profound effect on you. Why?

MICHAEL D. HIGGINS: Because Ernst Fischer's The Necessity of Art is a book I carried around with me for a very long time after I first read it around 1970. His approach was Marxist and focused partly on Brecht, who I was also very interested in at the time. I also read Raymond Williams - who has heavily influenced my views on broadcasting - and, later, Ciaran Benson's writings on the arts. In fact, I was also deeply influenced by being invited by Sandy Fitzgerald, during the 1970s, to chair some meetings of CAFE - Creative Arts For Everyone. I was fascinated by Ciaran Benson's 1979 report on the arts and even more so a paper he gave at one CAFE seminar. It was about whether creativity was to be defined on a totally individual basis or whether it was to be defined socially. Benson had thrown his lot in with the argument that we are symbol-using people - sharing symbols - therefore creativity is social. Linking that to Fischer, if creativity is social it then becomes a right and that sets up all sorts of questions that are central in the educational system and so on.

Linking Ernst Fischer to Raymond Williams is the belief that art/culture operates as a site of struggle between ruling and oppressed classes.

Definitely. And that too is something that was brought into focus for me by studying sociology in the 1960s, out of my reading of Herbert Marcuse and that whole Frankfurt School. What they highlighted was the fact that the forms of social forces that were oppressive, or regressive couldn't be confined to exploitation at the point of production. So you had to think of domination within the sphere of culture in relation to class, time, space, gender. That's why, even back then, I never believed that the feminist agenda could simply be disposed of by saying 'when you have a socialist society, patriarchy will disappear'. I couldn't see any evidence for that because, obviously, that particular struggle still takes place within the realm of art/culture.

That said, there are many who have a 'sneering disregard' for you and your intellectual pursuits, as I think you discovered after you'd written a column on this subject in Hot Press.

Indeed there are. But I stand by what I said then, which is that you do not have to sacrifice intellectual rigour, academic freedom, and scholarship of the highest excellence, to be engaged in contemporary society. And I won't deny that intellectual questions have been preoccupying me for most of the last 25 years. Yet at the same time I have learned there is great dishonesty in Irish intellectual life and often an appalling moral cowardice, and unwillingness to acknowledge the social responsibilities of intellectual pursuits. So I do understand where some of my critics may be coming from.

How much of what you do is fired by the fact that you were, you claim, 'culturally deprived' as a child. How deeply did that effect your desire to make sure that Irish people in the future are not similarly disadvantaged?

It's a powerful impulse. I definitely feel that no child should have the exclusion from cultural opportunity and participation that I experienced. People who work with me here in the Department say, 'Minister, I'm interested in this kind of music' - or whatever - 'but I wouldn't be good on arts in general'. And I reply, 'Work with me to ensure this never happens again, that all the children of the State have access to all the arts, to whatever form of cultural expression they choose'. And I firmly believe we must put structures in place to open up this area for everybody.

Was cultural deprivation, during your childhood, largely a result of poverty?

Yes, but at the same time my mother loved reading, though people nowadays might regard what she read as trivial. She probably read all of Annie M.P Smith, who was a district nurse and published about 20 books. I read most of them myself! But there was a phase where I read insatiably, almost anything. I read Nat Gould, because I loved horses! And I am quite delighted I read those books. So, despite the poverty we still had access to books, to reading, which is the important thing.

Do you agree with those who argue that there shouldn't be a hierarchical value system placed on the process of reading itself, that people making the choice to read pulp paperbacks is just as legitimate as people choosing Marcuse or whoever?

Absolutely. Because, irrespective of the choice, people are making their own way through their own literary curiosity and will arrive at different points. That's their right. I remember reading the play Edward 11 and becoming fascinated by Marlowe. I originally thought that play was better than Shakespeare's Richard 11 but coming to Shakespeare later in life I could see better the wonderful economy of his work. That's a different way of encountering and appreciating Shakespeare. And, to me, it's better than swallowing wholesale society's idea that we have defined what is great in literature and the great will be rammed down the public's throat and if there are casualties, so be it. I don't believe in that. It's wrong. There is, of course, such a thing as 'great' literature, music, poetry etc. but the key question is how we define 'great'.

What was your response when, in the Sunday Independent recently, Eilis O'Hanlon - referring to Anthony Burgess' belief in the 'sanctity of art' - suggested that , basically, not everybody has a story to tell and that the 'peasants' should be kept out of the temple, as it were?

Before I address that abominable view may I answer one other allegation in that article? This person, who I never met, who never rang me, or asked for an interview, opened that particular column with an outrageous allegation when she suggested that RTE had asked me to go on The Pure Drop because, as the Minister for Broadcasting, I had removed the CAP. The reality is that I had been on The Pure Drop on several previous occasions long before I was anywhere near being Minister and I was invited to be on that programme long before the Government was formed. You can put what she said down to a mixture of vindictiveness, inaccuracy and sloppy journalism. It was appalling.

And your reaction to her comments about community arts?

To suggest that you have to choose between personal creativity and genius on the one hand and community art, on the other is mere stupidity. To be clear about it, what Anthony Burgess is talking about is how such things would interfere with the fire of inspiration in the realm of the private and the personal. There is a big difference - which I wouldn't expect Eilis O'Hanlon to understand - between the private and the personal and crass individualism. So her's was an unfair use of Burgess' quotation for a start. But, on the issue of community arts what she says is nonsense. Artists themselves, such as John O'Connor, will tell you that the more people who are aurally aware, and the higher the base of knowledge of the piano and of music among the entire population, the better the audience is and his genius is assisted onto a higher plateau, again, because the audience is both more appreciative and more insightful. The goal of community arts programmes is to allow as many people as possible to explore their creativity, and to improve the quality of people's understanding of and response to the arts generally. In both instances the point is to improve the quality of people's lives right across the social spectrum. And anyone who opposes that is either an elitist, a philistine or both.

Yet Leonard Cohen once argued, in Hot Press, that the art of poetry, for example, had been debased during the 1960s and 70s as the masses "stormed the temple" thinking that their every utterance could be read as a poem.

And I agree with that argument. There is a real problem when you say 'everything is poetry'. And reviews of my own poetry books have touched on this subject. Craft is important, but to suggest that people who decide to use a particular form are, therefore, ignorant of more rigid metrical devices or rhyme or rhythm, is clearly nonsense. Of course there is such a thing as the integrity of form and one is entitled to require that integrity of those who practice in a particular art form. I have never believed otherwise.

Yet there are those who suggest that the lines in your own poems do ramble and that the work does not have integrity of form in terms of rhyme, metre and so on.

(Laughs) I've spent years studying form - and I'm not talking about racing! But the point is that the process of composition, and the subject matter, dictates form. Longer poems tend to push themselves into an arrangement that is almost narrative. And the structure of the very personal poems in the second half of the current collection is consciously very different from the poems in the first half. When I am telling a tale, as in 'The Death of Mary Doyle', I try to be faithful to the mythic quality of the woman's life and this suggested long, round shapes to me. On the other hand, deeper pain is sharper, so that suggests shorter lines. And there are certain poems in the latest collection where I deliberately change tack. I would defend that. I'm not going to be grandiose about it, but when I was a student reading Walt Whitman I certainly found no difficulty in accepting the different phases in Whitman's poetry.

How did you react to the critical responses to your latest collection in general?

Well, what wasn't clear from, say Fred Johnson's review in The Irish Times, was whether or not he had really read the poems at all. He began by quoting the blurb on the back of the book, in relation to Brendan Kennelly. Then he suggested that the feelings are all right but not worth poetic language. Yet there was no attempt to engage the poems as poems, to look at the structures. And these are the people who accuse me of form-lessness? But there is another row brewing here that people haven't the guts to state and it's that many are against performance poetry itself, they think that it 'impurifies' the art. What really bothers me about this is the implicit suggestion that if poems work through performance, or if they work because they resonate in the lives of a large number of people, then it's assumed that you can't have paid any attention to the discipline, the craft, the form. That's nonsense.

What has been the public's response?

A nun wrote to me and said that another nun came to her and told her that she had stayed up all night reading the poem - it transpired that, until that point in her life, she hadn't grieved for the death of her own father. The nun in charge said 'do you mind if I tell Michael D. about this?' She said 'I don't care if you tell the whole world'. To me, that single response justifies my writing of the poem. And writing poetry.

Ernst Fischer argued that capitalism has always doubted the worth of art because 'art doesn't sell'. Is that the basic problem you encounter in terms of trying to get the business community to invest in the arts?

Fortunately, that attitude has become out-dated in many areas. Indeed, I'd suggest that the attitude you describe, in that old Marxist sense, is more malignant in the music industry than it is in other areas of the arts - specifically in relation to the power of the big multi-national organisations. Recording artists have said to me that their work is mediated through structures which are so heavy in terms of deals and companies and so on that it's only when they become very successful and powerful themselves that they can fight being screwed up by corporate exploitation, particularly in terms of not allowing their art to become debased and homogenised. In that sense it is extremely important to retain control over your mode of artistic expression.

Some would argue that the rock music business, as part of the entertainment industry, has always been used that way - as a palliative, a means by which endless dreams of romance and materialism are sold, usually in the service of the State.

Obviously, there are exceptions but, quite frankly, there is a lot of evidence to support that view. People must ask themselves that fundamental question 'what has it made passive and what has it released?' Yes, it has released some very positive energies and some vital images but it has equally been an anodyne for generations of people.

Radio is a major factor in this process, obviously. Is it true you favour the model used by Canadian radio in relation to the amount of indigenous Irish music you believe should be played on the nation's airwaves?

Yes. What I'm interested in is devising strategies for impeding cultural domination. I see the Irish music industry as being very much part of this site of struggle. The real choice is to decide whether the people who make up the community are to be divided into passive consumers broken down into advertising segments. That was certainly the thrust of policy in Britain under Mrs. Thatcher. But my view is of citizens within a communicative order and the only way you can establish that order is by retaining concepts of public service broadcasting, with accountability and transparency. As to whether this can prevail, I don't know, we have to fight for it.

Translated into practical terms does that mean that there may be the stipulation that Irish radio must play, say, 30% or 40% Irish music?

I haven't gotten as far as laying down quotas yet. But I am working, at the moment, on a Broadcasting Bill which involves all these issues and it will effect the whole structure of broadcasting in those areas.

What's your opinion of the performance of the IRTC?

The 1988 Act, which I criticised myself at the time, was drafted in terms of being a charter for commercial radio. It was very narrow in setting out a philosophy of local and community radio. However, the Act had a section which suggested possibilities for monitoring the development of stations after they had been granted licences and I was very disappointed to find that more wasn't done by the IRTC in this area. Since 1988, of course, around the country, people have voted with their ears and proved that they want stories and current affairs and local coverage. The clever people running stations realised this and changed tack. The ones who went for wall-to-wall music are changing.

Except of course 98FM and FM104 in Dublin, who can produce very impressive listenership figures.

Let me put that in perspective - measuring success in radio depends on the yardstick you use. In their own terms, 98FM and FM104 can claim to be successful but that doesn't answer the question as to whether the procedures used to capture those audiences, or the mechanisms used to measure them, are appropriate. It also doesn't answer the question as to whether what's currently on offer from those stations is a complete and adequate provision in broadcasting terms.

So are you firmly opposed to the concept of wall-to-wall music on radio?

Yes. The people who started out from a commercial ethos thought that broadcasting was merely a licence to print money. But that isn't what it's about. Around the country there are stations in difficulty. Some are seeking to get out of their difficulties by considering mergers; others are terrified of mergers, afraid they'll disappear. I intend addressing the various problems being encountered by these different groups of people and have a list of ways in which I hope to come to their assistance. But of the dozen or so measures that will be implemented, all will be driven by a belief that I have to put local and community broadcasting - and that includes Dublin - on a healthy basis, to avoid, as I say, audiences being reduced to mere advertising segments.

Are you anticipating any tensions with Fianna Fáil when you come to restructure the Arts Council and review the workings of the IRTC?

I feel no tensions about this at all, though whether other people might be feeling tense in relation to this issue is another question altogether! But if you take, for example, the new Film Board you will see that the top consideration, in my mind, was to build up the best Film Board possible. I was limited under the Act to seven people, which is very restrictive, but I can put my hand on my heart and say I did not ask myself what people's political persuasions were. There is the perception that Ministers put onto boards like the Arts Council and the IRTC people who are politically close to them. That won't guide my considerations, let me be quite explicit about that, although, for example, I will be very concerned about gender equality. I don't expect any great difficulties in this area when it comes to my restructuring various boards but it should be remembered that everything I do will be policy driven. I myself am, after all, accountable to the Cabinet, the Dail and the public. Those are the factors that will influence my considerations on such issues.

So, are you saying then that as a member of the party which is the junior partner in Government you too will remain ultimately accountable to Fianna Fail and to the power structures that have already been set in place?

On the contrary. The parties in government are working very well together, thank you. And I can assure you that I am not finding my path impeded in any sense as I try to effect changes in these areas. If anything, I have been assisted, particularly in relation to what I did in terms of the Film Board. I had the total support of the Cabinet and the specific support of the Taoiseach. And I suspect that this is how things will remain.

What is your view of RTE's future?

RTE have been the main carrier of the concept of public service broadcasting, to which I am deeply committed. But in the period after the Stokes-Kennedy-Crowley report, RTE was put under pressure to manage itself and I get the sense that, as the station came under pressure, the creative component got blocked and that out there in RTE you have many people who have ideas to produce new, exciting programmes and that energy has to be unleashed. I think it is time to chart a new course for RTE.

Mightn't some RTE employees claim you have potentially curtailed their creativity by opening up the market to independent programme makers?

Some were nervous along those lines but what I want is an inter-active creative space between a creative unit in RTE and independent programme makers. In my legislation, I've left RTE as the broadcaster with editorial responsibility for excellence and standards - so what I am looking for is a new departure within RTE, to match the new and creative relationship with the independents .

Who do you see as being responsible for the shelving of the Irish language soap and what ramifications does that have for you concept of an all-Irish language television station?

The soap is going to come back, I'm quite confident about that. There was a misunderstanding there in relation to, for example, what is a pilot programme? And when a pilot has been successful, is it then handed back to the broadcaster? Plus, what then, is the relationship of both to my new proposals for Teilifis naGaeilge. All the people involved now understand the importance I attach to all of this and that I'm for real in relation to what I'm trying to do with Teilifis Na Gaelige. What's important for me is to have a new television station which will enable people in the Gaeltacht in particular and Irish speakers in general to be part of the communicative order through Irish.

You were accused of acting in a pre-emptive manner when you didn't bother to consult with the National Newspapers of Ireland before lifting the CAP.

In the joint programme for Government it had been stated that the CAP would be lifted. Yet I don't want to take refuge in that. I read a number of surveys. I looked at the advertising industry's report and they had analysed what had happened since the CAP was originally established. The argument of the National Newspapers of Ireland was that the CAP was only just beginning to work. In fact I subsequently met all the interest groups, including the Provincial newspapers and discovered that one common myth in all this is that advertising in the visual medium can migrate to the print medium. That's just demonstrably not so. And the other side of it was that within the televisual sector shoots for the making of ads had massively declined and the employment among those making them had frozen first then dipped. In addition to that, because you had less time available, the cost of getting on television had gone massively up. This was discriminating against small companies, new products and so on. Also, because it was now more expensive it was proportionately a greater part of the advertising budgets of the big companies and they therefore had less to spend on print. So the very thing the NNI was arguing would assist them was, in fact, depressing the amount of money available for print advertising. It also was driving money out of this jurisdiction. UTV, whatever they might say, were getting more and more and people were seeing alternatives.

Did the NNI accept that argument in the end?

They realised, I think, that there was a good enough basis to it. I inherited a situation where you had up to 300 protective notices about to be served in RTE, the advertising industry in Ireland had lost jobs, as had the film industry. It was an impossible situation. But I listened very carefully to what the NNI had to say and there are many things I would like to see which might improve their situation. I'd like, for example, the VAT rating to move towards zero rather than what it is now. I am very aware of the difficulties they face in relation to competing with British newspapers.

On that specific issue what can you do to ease the problem?

I favour a move towards zero VAT rating. Another side to this is that the NNI pointed out to me that there is no Minister directly responsible for newspapers and I indicated that, should Government decide they want me to deal with all aspects of communication, including the print media, I would be delighted to take on these additional responsibilities. I'm very sympathetic to such requests as the concept behind everything I'm doing is to create a pluralist communicative order and one that is editorially pluralist. You mustn't allow the concentration of ownership to defeat editorial pluralism. I see the future of provincial newspapers and national papers as part of this communicative order, the same as local radio.

In terms of this hoped-for pluralist communicative order would you oppose the idea, say, of Independent Newspapers moving in to take over the Sunday Tribune?

I certainly see it as a serious matter for concern. I don't think it is a good thing to have nearly half of the newspapers printed in any one week, concentrated in a single source of ownership. The argument is made that you can retain editorial independence within an ownership structure which is heading in the direction of monopoly but I'm not convinced of that.

You recently came under severe attack from Sunday Independent columnist Eamon Dunphy who, following the announcement of your lifting of the CAP, called you 'a national self indulgence, a faintly ridiculous caricature of Ireland's vision of itself - the caring nation' How much of that do you see as a response to the lifting of the CAP?

That was a piece of personal abuse that was very offensive - when you read something like that, it's very hard to listen to Joe Hayes making the case for the high standards he and the NNI, particularly the Independent, are supposed to be after. And again, more recently you had that article by Eilis O' Hanlon, which you and I spoke about earlier in this interview. There has been a sustained assault on me over a long period. On another occasion Patricia Redlich suggested that everyone wanted Saddam's finger to be stopped from pressing the nuclear button, except me - which is an outrageous suggestion. In another article, published on Mother's Day, Eoghan Harris couldn't write without attacking my wife because she expressed opinions about the Gulf war. Then more recently you had Gene Kerrigan's piece about trying to avoid me in Galway. In fact I was in Dublin, working on the Structural Funds and was free to attend only a small part of the Arts Festival. And what is unfortunate is that this stuff follows a pattern. You will find individual journalists in the Independent who would want to disassociate themselves from that but yes, I do think that particular attack was related to the CAP.

Do you think the Independent Group is out to get you?

I've written for the Independent, so I've no bitterness against the Independent Group. But I know there has been a decision taken to target certain individuals and I'm one of them.

As in allowing Eamon Dunphy to describe Dick Spring as a bollox?

Yes. There also is that other appalling thing, about which everybody is so polite now: the Bishop Casey affair during which they advertised a bogus interview over the radio airwaves. That has created immense problems, when I look at it from the perspective of Minister for Broadcasting. The inappropriateness of advertising this alleged interview in the way that they did was appalling and the back-down was mealy-mouthed. The idea of a sackcloth-wearing Eamon Dunphy on Questions and Answers was singularly unimpressive.

Eamon Dunphy also suggested that you capitalised on your visit to Somalia by shedding tears for the camera after a child died and that you dressed in battle fatigues for effect.

I can disprove what he says, factually. I was in Bidoha, where I was witnessing the burial of 120 people in mass graves that each held 12-20 people. I travelled back by road and didn't even go near the huge horde of journalists that were attending on President Robinson. I didn't want to be included in any interviews. I was there not seeking coverage but participating in a documentary being made about Trocaire's work in the area. In the course of that, a woman who had walked 120 miles was in camp and one of her children was seriously ill. And we made an attempt to take that child to medical help in a jeep. Just as the local Bishop and I were assisting the woman and her baby down, the baby's body began to stiffen and the baby died.

Very shortly afterwards, someone asked me what I'd seen in Somalia for the documentary. I had been there, interested specifically in two points. One was the delivery of seeds and implements etc. so as not to miss the short rains and the other was my own worry as to whether civil society could be created on the clan system at all, after what has happened. But when I was asked what I'd seen I described the child's death and was visibly moved. In fact, I did not shed tears, but I was visibly shaken. And, by God, I do not apologise for that. And I certainly wasn't wearing fatigues. That's a reference to my work in Nicaragua. But that kind of writing does make me angry because it was an insult to the dead children of Somalia as well as to the orphans of Nicaragua and those that suffered as a result of the Contra war. And I think it was an appalling, disgraceful, untruthful, slanderous reference. And I can understand why Jack Charlton would say he can't talk to Eamon Dunphy. Then Dunphy turns up on television and says that his boss is a lovely man who lets him write what he likes! Frankly, that kind of writing is a reflection on Eamon Dunphy, as well as the editor and the owner of the paper. It was a disgraceful piece of journalism and I will not go through the bogus affectation of imagining that I regard Eamon Dunphy in the same way since he wrote that. He is a scurrilous hack of the same type as the journalistic bootboy in the Sunday World who attacked Dick Spring crudely and then tried to intimidate me with the line: 'If you think this is bad Michael D., you ain't seen nothing yet'.

What can you do as a form of defence in a situation like that?

Well, firstly, it raises the question of people who come then looking for assistance. Yes, their newspapers are entitled to be assured of a place in the communicative order. But they also are required to operates standards. And what worries me is that the most powerful are in fact the ones who are operating the lowest standards. As to what can be done as a form of defence, you do nothing, you go on. But the point is that they don't, and they won't, dissuade me at all from anything I'm trying to do. But one thing I'm not going to do is to pretend that I ignore it. I don't ignore it. I have those articles on file and I would like, when I get my next communication from the NNI, for Joe Hayes to go back through all those things that were written and tell me how they fit with what he told me - and I accepted it at the time - about their interest in ensuring standards in the newspaper industry. We discussed matters such as the fact that in this country we don't have a Press Council. I've always felt that one shouldn't be imposed, that it should come from the industry itself. But if this sort of thing goes on and we don't have self-discipline at a professional level then we must seriously ask the question, what mechanisms do the citizens have to defend them in situations such as this?

NEXT ISSUE: Michael D. Higgins talks about job creation in the sphere of the arts, heritage and culture. Focusing specifically on the film and music industries he also suggests that Neil Jordan's movies and U2's music should be studied in TCD and suggests that Aosdana, the Arts Council and Revenue Commissioners should look again at their definition of "creativity" and the position of the artists in relation to tax and government grants. Plus, Higgins' answers criticism of his position in relation to Section 31, the IRA and Northern Ireland. All in the next issue of Hot Press.