Anniversary Address

Extract

Finance. That ill-omened word demands a sentence to itself at the beginning of this address. During the past year the claims of revenue in one form or another have hit the humanities, if not the sciences, more savagely than air-bombardment or inflation. The mechanized forces of rating-assessment have struck—not, it is astonishing to note, without some vulgar applause—at that single-minded repository of enlightenment, the London Library. It is to be presumed that this and other cases of the sort were in the mind of the Minister of Housing and Local Government when, on the 22nd of January 1958, he appointed a Committee to report upon the rating of premises in England and Wales ‘occupied for purposes of a charitable nature and other similar purposes’. The action was a timely one, and we may await its outcome with such hope as uncertain faith and over-strained charity admit to our experience. At the same time, on a wider front, the Board of Inland Revenue has withheld the refund of income-tax on seven-year covenants to a whole host of cultural charities such as our Society, with consequences that must be nothing short of shattering. Under modern economic conditions the official decision, if confirmed, means the end or drastic diminution of much that we value, of much that we can do and should do if we are to contribute our mite to human understanding. It is not for me, here and now, to comment upon the mechanics of the law or the wisdom of the Board of Inland Revenue. I hope that that will be done in another place. Nor do I propose to anticipate the sort of retrenchments which our Treasurer and Council will be compelled to impose upon us in the face of an income reduced by more than £2,000 a year. But there are certain general observations which are appropriate to the present occasion.