Chapter 12 - Politics

Summary

The general outlines of Vaughan Williams’s politics are encapsulated in a remark to Rutland Boughton: ‘Ever since I had a vote I have voted either Radical or Labour’. He was born into considerable financial security, in a family broadly of religiously Nonconformist and politically liberal bent. Despite living as rentier capitalists (with a private income produced from a landed estate, and in the composer’s own case, later, from music royalties), the family and Vaughan Williams himself felt that sensitivity to class difference, and to a harmonious coming together of the classes, were the bedrock of a progressive politics. Hence his musical style, which blends ‘low’ and ‘high’ aesthetics, and ‘folk’ and ‘cosmopolitan’ styles. And hence, too, his professional work with amateurs, both as a composer and conductor, and also as an advocate for the highest quality of musical production (which he felt to be to the benefit of all), both in broadcasting and in competitions he helped to adjudicate. At the national level his was also an important voice on the panels of both the British Council and the Arts Council of Great Britain (as well as its predecessor, the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts).