In 1991, a French historian of ideas, Marc Fumaroli, published a remarkable and disturbing book entitled L’Etat Culturel. I don’t know if it has been translated into English, and I don’t know whether any members of James Boyle’s Cultural Commission have read it. But perhaps they should have before producing their bulky report last week.

For Fumaroli argues that what he calls “the obsessional culture promoted by bureaucracies” has created “a cultural desert” in France, and he warns that it would be the gravest possible error for other countries to adopt the French model which, in his view, has stifled the freedom of expression upon which any artistic flowering depends.

It seems that Boyle’s commission, however well meaning, is pointing us in the direction of a similarly arid Scottish cultural state. It proposes that parliament pass a Culture Act. For what purpose? Why, to confer certain “cultural rights” upon the Scottish people. These are stated to be: a) the right to fulfil their (our) creative potential; b) the right to take part in cultural life; c) the right to an enriching communal life in a satisfying environment; and d) the right to participate in designing and implementing cultural policy.

The very notion that these “rights” should be enshrined in an act of parliament is evidence of a statist mindset. For, in as much as these are “rights”, they may be considered natural rights, not something bestowed upon us by politicians. They are rights we already possess, and which we may exercise if we choose. Nothing even now prevents us from painting a picture, making music, writing a novel, even putting on a play, if we have the inclination or talent to do any of these things. This requires energy and enthusiasm, not an act of parliament; and all over the country there are people who exercise this right.

To give another example of the mindset: the commission calls for “a national strategy for developing storytelling”. What form could this take? People have been telling stories since men and women first sat around fires. Storytelling is as natural as singing or whistling or dancing when you’re happy. It needs no “national strategy” to flourish, or even to survive.

One of the Scottish success stories since the second world war has been the Edinburgh festival and the various other festivals that have sprung up around it. The commission suggests these should be converted into “national companies”. It sounds as if this might be a means of exercising state control over the festivals.

Of course these festivals receive public money, and these grants are made partly in the expectation that they will be of economic benefit to the place where they are held. But their success depends on the energy enthusiasm, and imagination of the individuals who run them. It is worth recalling that the Edinburgh festival itself came into being as a result of the enthusiasm of three individuals: Sir Rudolf Bing (then director of Glyndeboure Opera), Harry Harvey Wood, head of the British Council in Edinburgh, and Sir John Falconer, lord provost of Edinburgh. It actually began with a conversation between Bing and Harvey Wood in a London club.

In an earlier age, the Edinburgh Review, which had perhaps more influence on culture than any other Scottish publication, was the brainchild of two young Scots lawyers, Francis Jeffrey and Francis Horner, and an English clergyman then resident in the city, the Rev Sydney Smith.

The making of art and the dissemination of culture are alike the work of independent- minded individuals, not of state bureaucracies.

This is not to say that the state has no role to play in the promotion of culture. Of course it has. Indeed it has three roles.

The first is to provide funds to enable our national institutions and companies to reach and maintain a level of excellence. The second is to make it easier, and more rewarding, for individual artists and companies to work. Again, it is desirable that this body is at a very long arm’s length from government, and enjoys as much autonomy as is compatible with the spending of public money.

The third role of the state is in education; and it is here that its performance has been inadequate and disappointing. It is still true that in our schools — especially those financed by the state — music, painting, and drama are still regarded as peripheral activities. The result is that an overwhelming majority of children leave our schools thinking that the arts are not for them, and distrusting what is called culture. Consequently we inhabit a culture where the signing of a new footballer by Rangers or Celtic is news and matter for public discussion as the publication of a new novel, even by a writer as distinguished as William McIlvanney, is not. Culture begins in the home and in our schools, and, if it is not encouraged there, no Culture Act, enshrining our supposed cultural rights, is worth a damn.

There are some good suggestions in the Boyle report: vouchers for schoolchildren to go to theatres, cinemas and galleries for instance, subsidising our libraries to buy Scottish books; setting up Scottish Institutes in foreign cities, as for example, the French, German, and Italians do. But we don’t need a Scottish cultural state.

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