council of representatives from London branches of unions from all sectors of the economy. 13

Musicians, Singers and Other Artistes as Workers in the British Music Hall 1900-1918 John Mullen, University of Rouen, France, Research team ERIAC

The music hall in Britain has an image as old-time, classless entertainment, as commemorated in the long-running television show, The Good Old Days. The material reality was of course quite different. The thousands of touring artistes, the powerful theatre chains, struggling lyricists and in-house musicians inhabited a world where professional organization and conflict with employers was not absent. In this chapter, I will look at the development of music hall working conditions and union organization from 1900 to 1920, concentrating on three key moments: the turn of the century, the great London strike of 1907, and the years of the First World War.

Music hall was at the centre of musical entertainment in Britain at the turn of the 20th century. It is true that musical comedy was still in its heyday, that blackface minstrel shows (though they had declined in number) still had some success, and that gramophone records were gradually picking up sales among the wealthier classes; but the cheapest, most popular, genre was the music hall. Around a million tickets a week were sold in London alone. The front page of local newspapers around the country advertised the week's programme at the local hall; shifts of factory workers would organize for one or two of them to go to the show on Monday to see how good the week's offerings were and report back to their workmates.

Two main dynamics have been identified in the late Victorian popular music industry. Firstly, the concentration of capital, which meant the increasing domination of large companies, (music publishers and chains of variety theatres in particular), and the development of a national market for entertainment, based on touring acts. Its corollary was, as in every sector of the economy, a more precise division of labour and a professionalization of many aspects of work which had previously been more informally organized. Growing numbers of artistes and musicians would be pushed by this new impersonal structure of management to turn to formal collective organization in defence of working conditions, and to industrial action, as we shall see below.

Secondly, the sector was irrigated by the continuing obsession across society with "respectability", and the fear of "vulgarity" strongly influenced the content and structure of the entertainment, as well as ensuring a seemingly endless debate about the exact demands of respectability and moral uprightness. The declaration in the Edinburgh Evening News in July 1900 by a Mr Wilson, complaining I have listened to scores of songs sung, some of them by men earning huge salaries, which as regards their character could not be sung before any respectable and decent household … To what does it all add up? To the glorification of vice 1 is entirely typical.

The year 1900 arrived as each of these two processes was well-advanced, but not yet exhausted.

The consolidation of a national industry

A survey of the industry in 1900 shows that there was a tremendous amount of money being made. The music halls (or "variety theatres"), now several hundred in number, were growing in size and in capitalization. The logic of major investment was gradually replacing that of the self-made music hall proprietor who retained the common touch. 2 As Peter Bailey notes: Combinations of houses ... produced the largest operation of its kind with the formation of Moss Stoll Empires in 1900 with a capitalization approaching £2 million, and 40 outlets nationally, subject to centralized management and nationally integrated programming. Something like a third to a half of all remaining halls were under some form of syndicate control, many of them booking their artists through Moss Stoll. 3 The theatre chains had many advantages: they could sign up top stars for an entire season, thus preventing competitors from using the big names in their advertising; they could by-pass theatrical agents and negotiate directly with the performers; and they could buy from foreign networks a monopoly of touring artistes from those networks. They were prepared to pay key stars high salaries. The singer Marie Lloyd, in 1900, earned 40 pounds a week, 40 times the UK average wage.4

Rising professionalization

The industry was ever more professional, and theatres were tightly run businesses. One important aspect of the intensification of labour and of venue use was the adoption of the "two houses a night" system, which transformed the lives of both touring performers and house orchestras. The days when the music hall evening lasted many hours and patrons drifted in and out over the course of the show were almost over.5 Sadler's Wells Theatre in Islington used this new system, for example. 6 In May 1900 the Bedford theatre was taken over by new management and the "two shows a night" system was announced7 while in September the same year, the Battersea Palace reopened on the same basis. 8 The Tivoli theatre company chain opened a new theatre the same year in Birmingham, to add to their establishments in Leeds, Hull and Jarrow. All were worked "on the up to date plan of two performances an evening".9

Inside the theatres, as the equipment became more sophisticated (revolving stages, or huge water tanks for synchronized swimming numbers) the division of labour was changing, with the invention of a series of new roles such as that of stage manager. Larger groups of workers found themselves subject to modern management methods.

Firstly, the musicians: every music hall, cinema or opera house employed a house orchestra. Wages were not high, and working conditions could be hard for musicians playing up to four shows a day in addition to rehearsals for upcoming programmes, in a smoky auditorium. Damp in the halls contributed to tuberculosis, a frequent cause of death. 10 The very first musicians' unions in Britain had appeared in the 1870s, with the foundation of the Manchester Musical Artistes' Protective Association, which soon opened a London branch. 11 These organizations only survived for a few years. Others followed, hybrids between friendly associations and trade unions, and often criticized by those musicians whose view of respectability led them to refuse to look at their position as artists from the point of view of the defence of working conditions. In the 1890s, a more stable trade union was established, the Amalgamated Musicians Union. The cost of joining was lowered, from seven and a half shillings a year in 1890 to two and a half in 1898, a sign of the desire to recruit all grades of musician. In 1894, the AMU was affiliated to the national confederation of unions, the Trades Union Congress.

These trade unions had some considerable influence: in August 1900, the London Trades Council 12 announced that they would oppose the granting of entertainment licences to employers who were not fair employers in the view of the musicians' union and of the theatrical employees' unions. 13 What then of the artistes? Whether singers, instrumentalists or acrobats, from an economic point of view, they were in a contradictory position. On the one hand, one might classify them as independent artisans, who negotiated individually with their customers (theatres or occasionally record companies), and were in direct competition with others to get bookings or top billing. However, the average artiste was very much dependent on his or her employment, and was often most concerned with earning enough to live on, travelling from one cheap boarding house to another, and with that tiny but real chance of making it to stardom. The artistes had not yet formed a trade union, though there existed various forms of associations for mutual benefit. The biggest of these was the Music Hall Artistes Railway Association. Since artistes were more or less permanently on tour, the negotiation of special fares, in particular for their sometimes impressive amounts of musical equipment and other luggage, was not without importance. The organization regularly recruited new members and by December 1900 boasted a list of 5,196. 14 This association was to gradually extend its activities to become a proto-trade union, not without vigorous polemics between pro-and anti-trade union members.

Continuance of pre-industrial processes and habits

At the same time as the powerful processes forming a national industry, there remained a good number of customs inherited from the informal, locally based, traditions of earlier music hall; the music hall remained, to a large extent, "a socially intensive industry". 15 Though a few lyricists and composers were salaried workers for the large publishing companies, for example, many songs were still bought directly from the writers by singers, in pubs or at the stage door, and this was an atmosphere which included many informal links and exchanging of favours. In the catalogue of influential songs put together by Michael Kilgarriff one finds a very large number of composers and lyricists who wrote only one or two successful songs, which were no doubt sold informally. 16 Another continuance of older traditions was the "benefits" system. If less central than it had been in the 1880s, it was very much alive, acting as a nexus of a gift economy. 17 These benefits were specific shows where the profits were not taken by the owners in the usual way. They could be organized for charitable purposes, a vital necessity in a country which lacked even minimal welfare provisions for most. The Music Hall Benevolent Fund, for example, a charity set up to help widows and orphans of performers, would often hold benefit shows, and in April 1900, a benefit was organized to raise funds for victims of the fire at the Grand Theatre. 18 Other benefit shows were given, occasionally or annually, as a sort of "bonus" to add to the salary of particular employees, generally theatre managers. In April 1900, Mr Fred Law took his annual benefit at the Standard, and Mr Joe Lawrence, stage manager at the Empire took his first complimentary benefit, when "the house was packed at double prices". 19 Indeed, prices were often raised at these benefit shows, and they would be the occasion to return favours accumulated in the complex daily routine of show business. The same month George Sanderson, acting manager of the Belfast Empire, was accorded his first annual benefit under the patronage of the Lord Mayor of Belfast.20 Benefits could also be held for popular stars, allowing people (in particular other stars) to show their appreciation. In February 1900, Marie Lloyd was accorded a complimentary benefit. 21 Annual works' outings for the permanent staff of a music hall, both musicians and stage hands, another aspect of the old paternalistic atmosphere, flourished. During the year 1900, The Era reported briefly on many of them. The staff of the Palace theatre went for a day out in Folkestone, while in September the staff of the People's Palace in Dundee were also treated to a day at the seaside. 22 These practices survived despite the hardnosed financial calculations which were now central to the industry.

The music hall strike of 1907

The year of 1907 would mark a turning point where the modern habits of trade unionism and industrial conflict would take decisively more space in the negotiating of pay and working conditions, and the paternalistic or gift-economy aspects of the music hall would be pushed into the margins.

In this year, an unexpected strike broke out in the London music halls. Stars and lesser known artistes, stage hands and orchestra musicians stayed out for over three weeks. The strikers received strong support from the trade union and labour movement, and the conflict made the front pages of the newspapers day after day. How could such an event take place among a group of people who were, according to one commentator, "Staunch individualists for whom a 'red nose' was infinitely preferable to The Red Flag"? 23 As we have explained above, by 1907 the music hall was very much an industry. It was dominated by chains of variety theatres such as those of Stoll, Moss and Gibbons, and by song publishing companies such as Francis and Day. The theatre conglomerates had been floated on the stock exchange and profits were high. The strikers of 1907 claimed that Mr Stoll made personally £35 000 a year from his theatres. 24 The political context of the strike was constituted by the Liberal government elected in 1906, which included 29 Labour MPs. This government was to pass a number of welfare laws (instituting the first Old Age Pensions in the UK in 1908 and the first unemployment insurance in 1911). From the point of view of working class experience, this is the period described by Robert Tressell in The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists25 and by Robert Roberts in The Classic Slum. 26 The trade union context was marked by the overturning in 1906 of the Taff Vale decision, a change which allowed unions, once again, to organize strikes without being legally liable for the loss of business suffered by employers. At this time, unemployment was falling, prices were falling too, and trade union membership followed a gradual upward trend. The great strikes of the match girls (1888), and the gas workers and dockers (1889) were still remembered, and the leaders of these strikes -Tom Mann, Will Thorne or Ben Tillett, remained very much in the public eye.

Working conditions

The artistes, as I mentioned above, normally played in several theatres the same week, and moved regularly from town to town. Maitland quotes the example of Whit Cunliffe, a popular tenor, [who] appeared [in 1906] in one week at the Chelsea Palace at 7 10 pm and 9 45 pm; at the Euston at 7 45 pm and 10 40 pm, and at the Oxford at 8 50 pm 27 If the stars commanded a good salary, most artistes had a much more modest standard of living. A Daily Telegraph reader refers to the situation of her husband:

It is the performer of four pounds a week I would like to speak of. Before he starts his week's engagements he has in all probability to come on a journey from say Manchester or Liverpool … The railway fare and carriage of luggage can cost from one pound to 38 shillings. Until just lately he also had to tip various people. 28 Orchestra musicians were employed by a single theatre, and earned low wages. The 1904 Board of Trade figures on working class family expenditure 29 show that a family with an income of 30 shillings a week spent 12.5% of its income on bread alone, and another 12.5% to buy a small amount of meat. Thirty shillings a week being, precisely, the wage demand for orchestra musicians during the 1907 strike, it is easy to see that these musicians do not belong to the privileged classes. The skilled electricians put forward the same wage claim of thirty shillings a week, labourers asking for 27 shillings and sixpence a week, and hourly hired labourers for tenpence an hour.

Music hall trade unions

A series of trade unions made up the alliance which ran the strike. The Variety Artistes Federation30 had been founded in 1906 by delegates from three existing organizations. Firstly, there was the Music Hall Artistes Railway Association. A sharp internal conflict in 1903 had opposed those who favoured a trade union type approach and others, with the "anti-union" faction winning a temporary victory.

The second founding organization, the Select Order of Water Rats [!] had been formed in 1890. This was very much an elitist body, initially limited to fifteen members. Its members wore a special uniform and carried out rather eccentric, quasi-masonic rituals.

Finally, there was an organization which had been founded in 1889, with an equally eccentric name, the Ancient Order of Terriers. It resembled more a mutual aid organization than a modern trade union. The Terriers offered health insurance and death grants to their members, as well as insurance for props, and legal advice pertaining to artistes' contracts. 31 In 1906, delegates from the Water Rats, the Terriers and the Railway Association, then, decided to form the Variety Artistes Federation. From the beginning, a straightforward trade unionist approach was envisaged. One of the delegates, Wal Pink, expressed the opinion that it was the industrialization of music hall which had led to the need for a union: He recalled the old days when a bargain could be struck face-to-face, with a handshake! The growth of the combines had killed that, with artistes increasingly seen as a collection of names to be shuffled around by "booking managers". 32 The demand for such a union was clear -2,406 artistes joined in the first six months33 , and a year later membership reached 4,487. A weekly magazine was established, The Performer, with its front-page slogan: "The greatest enemy to freedom is not the tyrant but the contented slave".

Union discipline was established over the following months. Well before 1907, some members, referred to as "traitors and blacklegs" were expelled or suspended from membership for having accepted contracts not in accordance with minimum union-agreed working conditions. A national coverage of delegates and meetings was also set up. On the 10th January 1907, two weeks before the outbreak of the strike, The Performer contained 53 separate reports of local union meetings that week. The union added to its services in that year by proposing low-interest loans to members in difficulty, and also by setting up a system of death levy stamps to pay death grants to surviving family of deceased members. 34 At the very beginning, strike action was not permitted by the statutes of the VAF but this situation changed almost at once. From the beginning of the 1907 strike, the union journal boasted that: artistes may now be looked upon as a body of men and women who are not afraid to fight shoulder to shoulder against the modern foes of liberty and justice. 35 Fighting "for liberty and justice" was seen, in this context, as a move towards respectability, which was a concept sufficiently malleable to be used for very diverse, and even contradictory, purposes.

The Musicians Union, as we saw above, had been established in 1893. Six months later there were a thousand members and the first successful campaigns against wage cuts in a music hall in Croydon were carried out. The union also offered death grants, as well as insurance policies for musical instruments.

The third union in the 1907 alliance, the "National Association of Theatrical Employees", was founded after a strike in London in 1890. It was initially called the "United Kingdom Theatrical and Music Hall Operatives Union"; it joined the Trades Union Congress in 1902 and changed its name in 1904.

Causes of the strike

It is the artistes' union which was at the origin of the strike initiative. Their objectives were threefold. Firstly, they aimed at securing payment for all additional matinees. At this time, it was not unusual for theatres to move from two to three shows a day, without the extra matinee giving rise to an increase in pay for artistes or musicians. In the worst cases, theatres moved from twelve to twenty shows a week without additional payment.

Secondly, the union hoped to limit the use of "barring clauses" in performers' contracts. These clauses aimed at ensuring the "rarity" of the "product" by not permitting the artiste to play in a rival music hall. A typical clause might ban an artiste from appearing at a music hall less than ten miles from the hall in question, for one year after the end of the contract.

Finally, the strikers demanded the banning of last-minute changes in halls or in timetables. Such questions were of great concern to many artistes who had to perform in several different theatres during the same week.

The union moved to the offensive in 1906, proposing to employers that banning clauses should not exceed 5 miles and 6 months (1 mile and 3 months in London). This demand was followed by a strike in Brixton, after which it was clear that further conflict was on the horizon. The alliance of three trade unions was then established to coordinate the campaign. The musicians, generally employed on long-term contracts in a single music hall were not concerned by the barring clauses, but shared the same demands as the touring artistes -singers, instrumentalists or others -concerning additional payment for matinees, and they also demanded increases in their wages.

In mid-January 1907, the Alliance communicated to employers a charter, which they asked employers to sign. This charter included the following conditions -All additional matinee performances should be paid at one twelfth of the weekly wage.

-No timetables should be changed after the Monday of any given week.

-Managers should pledge that union members would not be discriminated against.

-Conflicts should be referred to arbitration. (Arbitration procedures had become common over the previous twenty years in other industries).

-All stage hands should receive at least the minimum wage set down by their union. Some theatre managers agreed to sign the charter, but two of the most influential, Oswald Stoll and Walter Gibbons, refused; once the strike had begun, they succeeded in uniting almost all the music hall managers behind them.

The events of the strike

A number of writers on industrial relations have expressed regret that whereas strike causation has been widely studied, strike process has been somewhat neglected. 36 It is important to look in some detail at the actions and tactics of employers and strikers.

Strike action was taken by a large majority of artistes and musicians at the halls involved from the 21 st of January to the 13th of February. Strikers included big names of the Edwardian music hall scene: Fred Pollard, Tom Davis, Constance Moscow, Ernest Ball, the Sisters Tinsley, Little Tich, Marie Lloyd and Gus Elen, and the presence of the stars ensured that the strike enjoyed massive press coverage from the first day.

The employers took an uncompromising stance. Mr. Howell, the manager of the Tivoli hall in London was quoted as saying:

We can but pity the many misguided artists and others who are being thrown out of employment, perhaps permanently. 37 The run-up to the strike and its first few days saw a wave of people joining the unions involved. Three thousand new members brought the total of the three unions to fifteen thousand. Picket lines were set up in front of theatres, and on the 28 th January, two thousand strikers attended a mass meeting. At this meeting, the union leaders announced their intention to organize parallel music hall shows run by the union, to rival those involving strike-breakers. A large theatrethe Scala was booked for the following Thursday for a special gala show, which would in fact take place a week after.

On the 5 th February, no sign of the end of the conflict was in sight, and informal talks took place between some of the stars, including Marie Lloyd, and representatives of the employers. The union representatives were not invited to take part. The employers expressed their desire to limit negotiations to questions concerning the artistes, and not to discuss musicians or other employees' demands. The stars taking part in these discussions were strongly criticized by the union leadership, and as a result one of them left the VAF.

On the 7th, a number of union-organized shows took place, while the press was expressing the opinion that the end was in sight. In particular, the Daily Telegraph insisted that if the stars were satisfied, the strike would collapse, since all the other employees were relatively easy to replace. The same paper noted however that the employers were willing to make major concessions in order to end the strike. This is no doubt why a compromise solution was proposed on the 9th by employers. The trade unions refused to accept the proposal, noting particularly that they found the salaries proposed for musicians to be too low, and that the employers had not pledged that all strikers would be re-employed. In this context, a mass meeting of artistes on the 10th voted to continue the strike. It would not be for long: on the 13th the two sides of the conflict accepted the idea of binding arbitration, and in one of the theatres involved in the strike a special "Peace Night" show "with all your favourite stars" was announced.

The arbitrator agreed upon was Lord Askwith, appointed by the Board of Trade and no stranger to the role, having intervened in a series of major strikes in previous years. He quickly announced an interim award, to be applied immediately while plans were established for hearings of all involved in the conflict. Three months later, after many hours of hearings, the arbitrator gave his decision, which reflected the new balance of forces revealed by the strike, and was widely considered as a victory for the strikers. The major concessions made by the employers were the following:

-All supplementary shows would henceforth be paid.

-Turn timings would be fixed each Friday for the following week and could not be changed afterwards.

-Barring clauses would be limited in scope.

-The arbitrator's decision would remain in force for five years before a new consultation was arranged.

"No mean victory for the federation ... the arbitrator has awarded us fully seventy five percent of our demands" boasted The Performer of the 20th of June. A dissenting minority within the artistes' union suggested that signing a five-year agreement was an important concession on the union side, and would make it more difficult to build on their newly found militancy to make further gains in the years to come.

The arbitrator ruled on minimum wages for theatre employees. Daymen were to receive 27 shillings and 6 pence a week, electricians 30 shillings, stage hands tenpence ha'penny an hour. Musicians would also receive a minimum of 30 shillings, with the exception of drummers who would receive 28 shillings. The ruling, as it stood, applied only to London theatres, but negotiations were to be set up in the different regions on the basis of the arbitration award.

Strikers' actions and tactics

The strikers came to use, during the conflict, many standard trade union tactics, and the building of collective consciousness and confidence was at the centre of strategy. Every Sunday, mass meetings aimed to reinforce the unity of a workforce spread around among many theatres. The collection of money also had to be organized, since most strikers had no other means of subsistence. It was decided that artistes working in the provinces should contribute 5% of their salary each week to the strike fund, in order to provide strike pay to artistes, musicians and stage hands. The union claimed to have received £5,000 on the first day from these provisions. Collection of money from the public was also organized. On the 27 th January for example, 140 meetings of support were held across Britain, the aim being to collect £12,000. 38 The extreme popularity of the music hall stars involved in the strike helped fundraising. Popular heroine Marie Lloyd made a public call for contributions.

Strikers organized picket lines in front of all the theatres involved, each team of pickets under the responsibility of a "picket captain". Union sources speak of 2,500 pickets in all. On the picket lines, stars sang parodies of their own songs, adapting the words to speak of the conflict. Others sang adaptations of children's songs:

Twinkle twinkle brilliant star Oh I wonder where you are With the VAF so bright You will not show here tonight 39 Placards asked the music-hall-going public:

Whom will you support -your popular favourites or the managers of the music hall trust? … Support no hall that does not enable artists musicians and stage employees to obtain a living wage under fair working conditions as laid down by the British trades council. 40 Finally, a million leaflets were distributed around the theatres and in shopping streets.

The Performer published, in its edition of the 7th of February the names of fifteen artistes expelled from the union for strikebreaking. A hundred or so names of non-unionists who were not respecting the picket lines were also published. Some divisions appeared within the union: a group of artistes circulated an appeal to end the strike. But solidarity was available from other sections of the labour movement. Southwark Trades Council, for example, held two open-air meetings with speakers from a series of manual workers' unions and from the Independent Labour Party. The Hammersmith tram drivers' union expressed its support too, while the Fabian Society passed a motion which wishes them all success in their struggle against capitalist tyranny, and urges all other sections of the brain-working proletariat to follow their example in organizing themselves for their own defence. 41 A group of Labour members of parliament, including Will Thorne, Ramsay McDonald, J R Clynes and Keir Hardie sent a telegram of support. And Ben Tillett himself, leader of the great dockers strike of 1889, spoke at the strikers' mass meeting. "The organized Trade Union movement of this country is behind you to a man", he declared. 42 International solidarity was expressed in telegrams from the White Rats of America and from the German branch of the International Artists Organisation.

Employer tactics

On the employers' side too, the strike took on many of the standard characteristics of a class conflict. The employers all pulled together and agreed, firstly to refuse any separate truce agreement, and secondly to "lend" each other non-striking musicians and stage hands. "In short, the managers have decided to stand or fall together" commented the Daily Telegraph. 43 Some managers, such as a Mr.

McNaughten (who managed a dozen or so theatres), who had initially signed the union's charter, withdrew their signature once the conflict was underway in order to stand alongside the other employers.

Attempts to intimidate or bribe potential strikers were also used. Higher fees were offered to performers who agreed to break ranks and go on stage during the strike. In the provinces, employers asked 'their' artistes, with some success, to sign a declaration "I do not believe in strikes". According to the Daily Telegraph, two thirds signed.44 Some managers attempted to replace musicians with strikebreakers brought in from abroad: one agent claimed he could provide a hundred Hungarian musicians at three days' notice.

The police and the courts were also used against strikers. The police were very much in evidence in front of the theatres to ensure that strike-breakers could go to work. The courts granted injunctions to some employers, forbidding artistes under contract from appearing in union-sponsored shows. 45 Ninety of the strikers were taken to court for breach of contract. 46 The characteristics of this strike were, then, closer than one might expect to those of a classic industrial conflict,and the result of the strike was tied up with the perspectives for the labour movement in general. The strike's success no doubt encouraged the development of trade unionism in other sectors. Lord Askwith, the arbitrator, gave his view on this:

From the Labour point of view, the serious aspect of the dispute was the notorious and advertised success of a strike in obtaining recognition, order, and a vast improvement in conditions. For years trade union after trade union had been struggling for these results, but their efforts had excited no popular interest ... then this unexpected strike caused a thrill of interest. Every phase was reported in the newspapers. The reports were followed by the whole of Great Britain with more interest than those of an international football match. 47 In the entertainment sector, the most immediate effect was the founding, later the same year, of a trade union for bioscope operators (the ancestors of cinema projectionists). These operators frequently earned only 15 or 18 shillings a week. 48 The strike of 1907 was therefore a strike like other strikes, even if it is true that the heterogeneity of the workplaces and the situations of the different workers meant that the music hall "community" did not have the coherence of "classic" manual working class communities of the time.

The First World War

Let us now jump forward a number of years to the outbreak of the First World War. All social organizations: political parties, churches, trade unions and charities were thrown into turmoil and transformed in the fire of total war. In this third section, then, we shall look at the music hall artistes' trade union, its priorities and actions in wartime. 49 By the beginning of the war, the Variety Artistes' Foundation counted around 2,600 members; an editorial suggests that this was more than half the number of artistes in the country eligible to be members. As in many unions, numbers increased during the war and at the end of 1918, the VAF had 3,900 members, which was 700 more than the previous year. 50 Another sign of the dynamism of the union were the annual elections. In January 1915, for example, there were 86 candidates for the 36 places on the national committee. 51 In 1914, members paid a £1 entrance fee on joining, in addition to weekly subs, but this fee could be paid in up to eight instalments if required: we see that care was taken to attract poorer artistes. 52 A third of the members were singers, and many others instrumentalists. Many earned just enough to scrape by, and were frequently unemployed. If they were working in London, they would still often play at three or four theatres during any given day; and on tour, they stayed in specialized lodging houses, offering "three to a room, for thirty five pence, which that included a morning cup of tea and fish and chips at night." 53 They would be working by now in quite big theatres, 1,000 to 3,000 seats. The Paisley Hippodrome (opened in 1906) had 1,400 seats, the Empire in Preston (1911) and the New Hippodrome in Folkestone had 3,000 each.

Virtuosity or novelty -one or the other -would be the Unique Selling Point of a given turn. In May 1917, for example, extracts from operas were on tour at the halls and at the Hippodrome in London, a famed Russian pianist was performing. 54 At other times during the war you might watch "Harry Mutch and the trombone kings" or "Jan Naylor, violoncello virtuoso". On a less traditional note, successful turns included "the handcuffed violinist", "the Apache lady violinist", "the only girls bagpipe band in the world", "the Grainger girlsthe only singing cyclists" or "Odette Myrtil, who sings a French song and plays the violin whilst dancing".

The revolution in variety which had started just before the warthe rise of the revue -was changing artistes' lives. Instead of an evening entertainment made up of individual turns, ever more theatres were moving to a single team showrevue-an artistically centralized form, integrating music hall turns. Revue was a result of the concentration of capital, and a show which created newish groups of semi-skilled workers such as chorus girls. In July 1918, the Performer lists the titles of 87 revues on tour in the UK. 55 These changes meant that artistes were ever more prone to use collectivist tactics to improve their situation. Union discipline was essential, and the dispensing of legal advice and provision of legal representation was also an important service. In 1915, 77 legal cases for members were supported, and there were 52 the 52 The Performer, 21 January 1915. 53 James Harding, George Robey and the Music Hall (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1990), 27. At the time there were 240 pennies, or twenty shillings, in a pound. 54 The Encore, 24 May 1917. 55 The Performer, 4 July 1918 following year. 56 Although negotiation for artistes' salaries was individual, the union supplied pro forma contracts, was involved in negotiations with employers concerning national minima, and supported strike action when it came about. But the union retained important aspects of a friendly society. A key example was the organization of death levies which we mentioned above. Each member paid, in addition to weekly subs, a fixed sum every time a member died. The sum collected in this way was given to the member's family. In 1915, the death levy was sixpence. That is to say, the family received around £300 as a death grantthis represented a year's wages for most artistes. In 1915, there were 19 death levies to pay, in 1916, 20. 57 The amount given to the widow(er) or family varied, but the VAF would hand over immediately 25 pounds on proof of death -enough to pay for a burial in keeping with the demands of respectability.

The VAF was also closely associated with the music hall sick fund, and with the rest homes for retired artistes, set up in 1895 in Scotland and in 1911 in England. Regular charity carnivals were held in aid of the rest homes, as well as events to raise money for the Variety Artistes Benevolent Fund, and the Music Hall Ladies Guild. This last would take children of poorer artistes on holiday in the summer (40 went to Bognor Regis in 1913, for example) and in the winter would visit sick or retired artistes and give them free coal. 58 Finally, the association had some characteristics of a professional organization, defending the music hall sector, without distinguishing between artistes, employees and managersin their campaign against the imposition of early closing for variety theatres, for instance.

The Performer and its wartime priorities

The union journal included debate and opinion on all aspects of show business, but it was also used by members for down-to-earth needs such as getting bookings: members advertised in the journal with a list of vacant dates on their schedules. There were advertisements for hampers to transport props, and for agents for hire. An important section was the list of digs, a weekly necessity for the thousands of touring artistes. The lodgings boasted "cooking and cleanliness a speciality" or "a piano in each room". Some were proud to announce "lavatory in house" or that they are situated just "one minute from [the music] halls. A few could go as far as "electric light" or would promise "trains met with lorry on receipt of wire". 59 Like many other milieux, the music hall professionals declared patriotic support for the war as soon as it had begun. Contrary to myth, it was more a matter of consensual patriotism than jingoism, and was coloured by the excellent relations with the many German artistes which had held sway in the pre-war period. The first editorial of the war is worth quoting at length: It is impossible as yet to say or even to imagine what effect this terrible tragedy of a European war will have on the music hall industry. We know nothing of politics, and the Variety Federation is not a political organization. We have been good friends with the International Artistes Lodge of Germany for many years, and they have done much to lighten the burden of the British artiste when on the Continent. If Fate places us in different camps, it is for each to do his duty to the State to which he belongs, trusting, when it is "all over" to renew the friendships of the past. It is neither "ours" nor "theirs" to reason whyand neither would respect the other who did not put his duty to his country before everything. What has to be in the meantime is in the "lap of the Gods". 60 This "pragmatic" attitude to the war is maintained over the following years. The editorials of the union newspaper do not try to persuade members to join the army, although the paper shows itself proud of those who choose to do so. It refers favourably to an attempt to put together a battalion made up only of men from the music hall industry. 61 All VAF members who become soldiers were kept "in benefit" for the duration of the war, provided they were fully paid up when they joined the army: "the federation is thus loyally backing up the patriotism of all its members who are with the colours".62 Members of the union frequently appeared in benefit shows to raise money for army charities, and the union organized in 1915 a massive collection of cigarettes to send out to soldiers, under the appellation "Smokes for the trenches". 63 Another patriotic symbol was the decision, taken in 1916, to oppose all hiring of "enemy aliens" in theatres for the duration of the war and for the three years following the end of the war. 64 When, in the same year, the country was embroiled in a heated debate on the introduction of conscription, the newspaper attempted to remain neutral: With [sic] the political aspect of the subject we are not interested. What is of more direct importance to variety artistes is… to what extent would the music hall and the music hall profession generally be affected? 65 The main priority throughout the war was recruiting new members to the unions. In 1914, a "Gold Medal" award was instituted, given to the member who, in a given year, recruited the largest number of newcomers.66 A specific campaign was run to recruit workers in revue. Demands were put forward which would be of particular interest to these groups: the union demanded strict limits on unpaid rehearsals, and that no worker might be dismissed without notice, for example. 67 In September 1917 the union defended a chorus dancer who was injured while doing an unpaid rehearsal and who Moss Empires, the theatre chain, refused to insure since she was "not yet under contract". 68 Special meetings were held, in London, Glasgow, Hull, Newcastle and Belfast for members working in revues. 69 A new rule was introduced that any performer earning less than four pounds a week could join the VAF for an entrance fee of one shilling rather than the usual guinea.

The journal spent a good deal of space on issues of what was seen as artiste professionalism, which was often linked to a conception of what it meant to be a "respectable" entertainer. Humorous articles and cartoons urged members to renew regularly the content of their turns, and, above all, to avoid vulgarity on stage. A number of editorials during the war spoke of this need to eliminate vulgarity, or (at times) claimed that it had been largely eliminated, in response to attacks from groups such as the National Vigilance Association. When, in 1916, one comedian wrote to the Performer denouncing moralism and defending a more relaxed attitude to vulgarity, 70 an avalanche of letters was published disagreeing with him. 71 In June 1916 the Editorial was entitled "vulgarity and the halls" and its attitude to the risqué comedian was quite clear: "where one fool would applaud his suggestive witticism, hundreds of decent people experience no feeling beyond that of disgust". 72 One gets a clear impression that this was a debate carried out with great emotivity, but, perhaps, little objective analysis.

Defending the music hall industry

Many pages of the journal in the war years concentrate on defending the music hall industry, employers and workers together, against encroachments of rationing in particular. So we see a protest at the imposition of early closing to save energy. This campaign does have a class aspect: the music hall was hit by the curfew whereas the night clubs for the upper classes were left alone.

Wages and working conditions were obviously a priority. At the start of the war a "Cooperative scheme" held sway for a few months: everyone was sure that income from music halls would collapse, and the union negotiated a pro-rata wage reduction in the hope of enabling everyone to survive the few months it was thought the war would last. This caused much debate inside the union, partly because of management abuse of the system, and the scheme was abandoned when it became clear that ticket sales had rapidly recovered and were even booming.

Several articles in The Performer dealt with health and safety issues, in particular damp and draughty dressing rooms, 73 but no doubt the two most important campaigns were against the Sunday opening of music halls, and against what became known as the "split week". After a series of mass union meetings, it was decided in late 1914 that members accepting contracts for less than one week's work would be disciplined. 74

Relations with other workers 70 The Performer, 6 April 1916. 71 For a more general discussion of vulgarity and the music hall, see John Mullen, 'Victorian Respectability, 'antisocial behaviour' and the Music Hall, 1880-1900' in Sarah Pickard (ed.), Anti-social Behaviour in Britain: Victorian and Contemporary Perspectives (Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2014). 72 The Performer, 22 June 1916. 73 The Performer, 26 September 1918.

The pages of the union journal contain precious information about the relations with other workers in the theatres. Lord Askwith, in the framework of the arbitration set up after 1907, made an award which was to last the duration of the war. Wages increased and certain employees such as dressers who had been paid by tips only now have a minimum wage (6d a night). In 1918, the Editorial carried a discussion of tips given by artistes to stage hands, and proposed they should be replaced by a fixed system for specific services (setting up or operating turn equipment etc.) The union was generally against tipping as not dignified, and would prefer a wage scale. This was the subject of discussions between the VAF and the National Association of Theatrical Employees. 75 On this issue, then, the union was playing its role in working towards standardizing payment, and not allowing it to depend on subjective criteria which could only prevent solidarity between workers.

The journal showed its support for various strikes of in-house musicians and of stage hands during the war. In particular, it applauded the Amalgamated Musicians Union on their long 1914 dispute with the Stoll theatre chain, and support was expressed for the stage hands on strike in August 1916, after all the union members in one hall had been dismissed. 76 The end of the war in November 1918 was, of course, greeted with relief. But union work had to go on, and sometimes with new concerns. An editorial in December 191877 expressed anxiety that the many amateur soldiers who had discovered a liking for entertainment while they were in the army, might be tempted to turn professional. The editorial warned such people that the profession was overcrowded.

Conclusions

This panorama of early twentieth century working conditions and conflicts allows us to be reminded of the situation of the average performer: a very long way from that of the stars, about whom one hears so much more. Singers, musicians and others were pushed to collective action both by the needs of their profession (railway discounts, lobbying of governments) and by the modernized management methods which were on the rise as capital became more concentrated and the formation of a single national market was completed.

The main union we have looked at, the Variety Artistes' Federation, combined different collective activities aimed at improving the lives of artistes. As a type of friendly society, its death grants and rest homes provided much needed solidarity in these days when public services were scarce. Its work as a national negotiator, and the acceptance of union discipline by performers, helped maintain working conditions at an acceptable level. Strike action lost money for the employers, and pushed them to give concessions, and the threat of repeatedperhaps contagious -strike action led government to provide arbitration awards in the interests of industrial peace. At the same time, the union organization and its publications participated in some crucial projects of the British ruling class, for example by providing effective support for the war, and by promoting the powerful ideology of respectability and encouraging its flourishing among mass audiences.

Respectability was a multiform and ambiguous ideology, and it is unclear how strong its hold was on artistes as workers, despite their cooperation with some aspects of it, which were rooted in the repertoire. Undoubtedly, to be respectable could include respecting the established order and so avoiding conflict with employers; yet it also included the idea of respecting oneself, and as such was sometimes used by the union to bolster its attempts at defending working conditions. To insist on fair treatment could be presented as a way of moving away from the "lower classes" and towards the "respectable working class" who were somewhat better paid, and certainly better-organized.

Midge Gillies, Marie Lloyd, the One and Only (London, Gollancz, 1999), 89.

Bailey describes a show lasting five and a half hours, in 1885; op. cit., 42.

The Era, 13 October 1900.

The Era, 12 May 1900.

The Era, 25 August 1900.

The Era,

November 1900

The Era, 14 April 1900.

The Era,

April 1900. 21 The Era, 17 February 1900.

The Era, 15 September 1900.

Honri, Peter, Music Hall Warriors: A History of the Variety Artistes Federation (London, Greenwich Exchange, 1997), V.

The Performer, 31 January 1907.

Robert Tressell, The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 2012) (first published 1914).

Robert Roberts, The Classic Slum, Salford Life in the First Quarter of the Century (Harmondsworth,Penguin, 1990Penguin, ) (first published 1971)).

Maitland, Sarah, Vesta Tilley (London, Virago, 1985),18;

Daily Telegraph, 24 January1907.

Quoted Roberts, op.cit., 102.

This may be the only trade union history book containing a foreword written by a serving prime minister. John Major, whose parents were music hall artistes, agree to write the foreword of Peter Honri's book.

We see here two common elements in the history of trade unions -the development of unions from mutual help organizations, and the involvement of rituals and rites in the earliest trade union type organizations.

Honri, op. cit., 22.

Including, incidentally, Kitty and Tom Major, parents of the future prime minister.

The Performer, 15 August 1907.

The Performer, 31 January 1907

For example, Michael Kelly, 'A study of white-collar unions in dispute', Industrial Relations Journal 14/4, 1983.

Daily Telegraph, 23 January 1907.

Daily Telegraph, 28 January 1907.

Daily Telegraph, 23 January 1907.

Quoted Daily Telegraph, 26 January 1907.

The Performer, 7 February 1907.

Daily Telegraph 31 January 1907

Daily Telegraph, 2 February 1907.

Daily Telegraph, 28 January 1907.

Daily Telegraph, 30 January 1907.

George Askwith, Industrial problems and disputes (London, John Murray, 1920), 128.

The Performer, 21 March 1907.

For a broad panorama of the popular music industry in the First World War seeJohn Mullen, 'The Show Must Go On!' Popular Song in Britain during the First World War (Farnham, Ashgate, 2015).

The Performer, 19 December 1918.

The Performer, 21 January 1915.

The Performer, 1 February 1917

The Performer, 22 November 1917.

The Performer, 7 January 1915.

The Performer, July 3 1913.

The Performer, 6 August 1914.

The Performer, 4 February 1915

ThePerformer, 13 April 1916

ThePerformer, 3 February 1916.

The Performer, 2 December 1916.

The Performer, 23 July 1914.

The Performer, 4 November 1915.

The Performer, 6 September 1917.

The Performer, 25 November 1916.

The Performer, June 6 1918.

ThePerformer, 3 August 1916.

The Performer, 5 December 1918.

This cartoon emphasizes the benefits of union membership.

The union tried to encourage equitable wages, and discourage the practice whereby certain stage hands relied exclusively on tips.

Wages across the economy rose during the war. This cartoon complains that music hall wages lagged behind.

John Mullen is professor in British history at the University of Rouen in France. He has published research both on the history of British Trade Unionism and on the history of British popular music. His book The Show Must Go On: Popular Song in Britain during the First World War was published by Ashgate/Routledge in 2015. Other recent publications have included "Anti-Black Racism in British Popular Music 1880-1920", as well as articles on Irish songs in Victorian and Edwardian music hall, and on the Notting Hill Carnival as it has reflected, over thirty years, questions of immigrant identity. He is presently working on an edited volume on popular song across the world during the First World War.

Periodicals

Daily Telegraph, national daily newspaper.

The Performer, weekly newspaper of the Variety Artistes Federation, founded by the union in 1906.

The Encore, A Music-hall and Theatrical Review, professional magazine of music hall artistes.

The Era, theatre review covering mostly prestigious theatre, but also variety.

The following cartoons were published in The Performer during the war years.

The role of the Music Hall in raising people's spirits amidst the dreadful stress of war is underlined in this cartoon.


THE 'SOCIAL' IN THE INSTITUTIONALISATION OF LOCAL CULTURAL POLICIES IN FRANCE AND GERMANY

Vincent Dubois and Pascale Laborier International Journal of Cultural Policy, 9 (2), 2003, p. 195-206. Can one produce an international comparison of cultural policies, and if so, how? These are our initial questions. The possibility of a comparative approach appears as a particular problem in France, where the thesis positing the very existence of cultural policiesamalgamated with the existence of a ministry for cultureas nationally specific enjoys a broad consensus, thereby depriving any comparative analysis of an object. Whether it is celebrated or denounced, i the 'French exception' is scarcely questioned. Furthermore, the 'French model' has become the object of an export drive, as is shown by the occupation by agents from the Ministry of Culture of positions in international institutions (Unesco, the Council of Europe), the recent organisation of the 'Malraux colloquia' whose vocation is the diffusion of this 'unique model' across the world, and even the references in other countries to this supposed 'model'. ii Against this flat refusal of any comparative approach, seeing no foreign cases for comparison, one can setnotably in the framework of specialised international organisations the juxtaposition of national monograph studies that presuppose a common identity for objects presented as equivalent. This was the case, for example, with the programme of studies launched by Unesco in the 1970s and 1980s, which gave rise to the publication of some sixty brochures on 'cultural policies'. The more recent programme for the evaluation of national cultural policies developed by the Council of Europe also puts side by side situations whose homogeneity, to say the least, is not an a priori given (from Sweden at the end of the 1980s to the Eastern European countries ten years later). The seemingly intractable question of the standardisation of indicators for evaluation is, moreover, itself a good indication of the problematic character of such homogenisation (see [START_REF] Gray | Comparing cultural policy: a reformulation[END_REF].

Absolute national specificities on the one hand, indiscriminate generalisations on the other hand: for opposite reasons, these two postures divert attention from what could constitute a true comparison. To move beyond this impasse, a comparative approach must not, as it seems to us, focus on 'things' conceived as the distinct manifestations of a common essence (cultural policies in France and Germany), but rather on processes, namely the construction of the categories of public intervention in cultural matters. iii The object of comparison then becomes the way in which domains of action are divided up; the aggregation of objects and practices of intervention which are thereby brought together and conceptualised conjointly; the production of principles bringing elements to cohere that in other times and places would be considered separately. In other words, the point of this article is not so much to compare the conduct of cultural policies whose form might be seen as identical from one country to another, but rather, precisely, to confront in the two cases under consideration the work that gave these policies their form, and through which the policies were presented and given meaning.

Let us initially recall the principal characteristics of this policy-forming process. In France, the Ministry of Cultural Affairs, created in 1959, established itself by marking itself off from neighbouring categories of public intervention, such as popular education, leisure, or later sociocultural animation. This process of institutionalisation through differentiation can be seen equally at the level of local authorities, who gradually equipped themselves with specifically cultural administrative structures, separating these from larger groupingsdepartments for sports and fine arts, animation, youth, etc.which previously had been able to integrate the elements constituting local action for culture. French cultural policies, whether local or national, thus assumed their identity through a work of classification that emancipated them from more general categories (such as, notably, sociocultural animation). Kulturpolitik in the Federal Republic of Germany, developed at the level of the regions and municipalities, brings together not simply the cultural sector in the narrow sense of the fine arts and cultural institutions, but sometimes also education, even if the institutionalisation of cultural policies took place here, as in France, through a differenciation with regard to other sectors of intervention.

In order to account for these differenciated processes of categorisation and formation, we have chosen to focus on what, both in France and Germany, has been and continues to be problematic: the insertion of the public treatment of culture in a social context. For it is here that comes into play, among other things, the question of the definition of the type of culture for which intervention is appropriate (legitimate, popular, subversive…) (see [START_REF] Passeron | Figures et contestation de la culture[END_REF]. Equally, it is here that come into play the principles giving legitimacy to those agents that intervene: the social competence of the animateur, the political vision of the engaged artist, or the technical expertise of the cultural manager. It is in the formation and questioning of such loose and intermediary categories ('socioculturel' in French, 'Soziokultur' in German) that we can observe most clearly the moves to cross and mark frontiers constituting that work of categorisation we wish to study.

In the 1960s and 1970s, new forms of public treatment of culture were invented, characterized by a strong anchoring in local areas, the involvement of activists, and a deliberate distancing of legitimate culture. This was sociocultural animation in France, and Soziokultur in the FRG. The agents and points of reference associated with these movements, although playing a not inconsiderable role in the formation of public intervention in culture at a local level, were generally sidelined as this policy developed. New agents, laying claim to cultural expertise and referring to a body of professional knowledge, organised, especially from the mid-1980s onwards, the relegation of these 'pioneers', brought down to the rank of amateurs or activists, full of good will but with only limited professional competence. Some of the themes characterising those older forms of policy have nevertheless resurfaced over recent years. It is by laying claim to a new type of expertise, this time linked to their knowledge of the 'terrain' and to the 'cultural' management of the social and urban crises, that the professionals of local cultural policies have been reoccupying problematics against which they had previously constructed their identities and established their positions.

What were the conditions for the invention, in France and Germany in the 1960s and 1970s, of forms of treatment of culture structured around explicitly 'social' objectives? What position do these forms occupy in the development of public intervention in culture at a local level? Finally, what are the logics presiding over the relegation and then the partial rediscovery of these modes of intervention? It is around these questions that we would like to provide some elements of comparison between the French and German cases. Besides confronting different modes of categorisation of local public policy in different places and times, reviewing these transformations will enable us also to shed light on the different forms of expertise in play at a local level: from the disparagement of expertise in the name of activism and proximity to the social 'terrain', to the moves laying claim to a professionalism associated with the constitution at a national level of a body of 'cultural mediators', to, finally, the invention of new types of know-how and professional positions at the interface between the social and the cultural, tied to an 'expert' understandingi.e. mediated by technical procedures and specialised forms of knowledgeof the local terrain.

SOCIOCULTURAL, SOZIOKULTUR: SOCIAL MOBILISATIONS AND CULTURAL INNOVATIONS

Following the manifold local initiatives of the 1960s, and after the processes of mobilisation issuing from the contestatory movements of the end of the decade, new kinds of relation to culture were invented both in France and the Federal Republic of Germany, locally situated and detached from the 'dominant' culture. Sociocultural animation in France and Soziokultur in Germany enabled in different ways the diverse networks of associations and activists to form coherent groupings, followed by the institutionalisation of a new category of public intervention.

In both countries, suburban districts and urban areas in general, at different times and following different rhythms from case to case, often constituted the sites of powerful social mobilisations around cultural issues. In the 1960s and 1970s, the most visible form of these was the mobilisation and investment of the middle classes in the communitarian and civic utopias of sociocultural animation. iv This localised production of cultural life was strongly marked by the local and social identities it symbolised. Suburban cultural action was thus inextricably enmeshed in the general sphere of social relations.

The social insertion of cultural policies nevertheless took place in different manners in the two countries. The social effects of cultural action oscillate between 'integration and subversion' [START_REF] Gaudibert | Action culturelle, intégration et/ou subversion[END_REF], and one might schematically associate developments in France with the first term of this opposition, while developments in Germany can be considered as coming closer to the second term.

Social integration through local cultural action

In France, the task of inserting cultural policies into social contexts fell to the constellation of post-war popular education groups (such as People and Culture or the Federation of Houses for Youth and Culture). v It was also carried out with the support of local politicians, notably but not exclusively from the Left. Thus 1960 saw the creation in France of the National Federation of Local Cultural Centres (FNCCC -Fédération nationale des centres culturels communaux), which defended an alternative model of cultural action to that propounded by the new Ministry for Cultural Affairs. The local politicians and animateurs affiliated to the FNCCC advocated a cultural policy closely related to local associations and looking to promote forms of local sociability (collective outings, amateur practices…) that were supposed to organise around the municipality a stronger sense of social cohesion. Their 'experience of the local terrain' was put forward to counter the 'theory' of ministerial experts denounced as 'gurus' and 'technocrats' (see [START_REF] Dubois | Pour la culture ou contre l'Etat? La FNCCC et l'institutionnalisation des politiques culturelles au début des années soixante[END_REF][START_REF] Urfalino | L'échec d'une contre-politique culturelle. La FNCCC[END_REF].

Communist local politicians participated in this type of mobilisation, but did not bring with them the discourses of revolution or working-class autonomy, since these had been officially abandoned by the Central Committee meeting at Argenteuil in 1966 (see [START_REF] Lambert | Politiques locales et enjeux culturels: les clochers d'une querelle[END_REF]. Certains elements of the 'New Left' were also present in these processes of mobilisation, without for all that bringing with them any kind of cultural radicalism. Overall, while 'the social functions of culture', to use the typical vocabulary of the time, were constituted as a suitable issue for politicisation, they were hardly conceptualised with reference to the supposedly 'subversive' virtues of artistic creation. More stress was placed instead on intermediary and not exclusively artistic forms of culture (festivals, carnivals, extracurricular acitivities…) whose promotion was envisaged as a 'soft' way of managing social problems: the improvement of the urban environment, efforts to make the new urban estates more human, etc.

A more radical politicisation: Soziokultur in the Federal Republic of Germany This politicisation takes on a more subversive aspect in the Federal Republic of Germany, where the promoters of Soziokultur at the end of the 1960s base their work more than French animateurs on politically committed forms of art (see [START_REF] Laborier | Politiques locales et enjeux culturels: les clochers d'une querelle[END_REF]. It originates in the radical denunciation of traditional cultural institutions by activists of a so-called 'alternative' culture, coming both from small extreme-left groupings and also from the new social movements. Intellectuals and politically committed artists, such as Peter Weiss or Josef Beuys, became the heralds of this culture of 'resistance'. The culture promoted by this 'critical' new left and the social movements included initiatives undertaken in urban districts to bring art out of the museums, as well as avant-garde artistic expression as a whole. To some extent, the sociocultural programmes also pursued the goal of rehabilitating and respecting the cultural practices of certain 'minorities', whether understood in 'ethnic', sexual, social or religious terms. The aesthetisication of everyday life was thus based on a 'multicultural' approach.

Soziokultur was thus originally fostered by the 'alternative' elements of the new left. Their challenge to the legitimacy of the State attracted a myriad of movements with a sociocultural vocation, forming so many composite intermediaries that would over the 1980s inflect the content of cultural policies under socialist municipal councils, by successfully claiming subsidies for their community projects.

THE INSTITUTIONALISATION OF NEW CATEGORIES OF ACTION

These processes of mobilisation were to a large extent, in France as in Germany, at the origin of the development of local cultural policies, in particular in suburban districts. In fact, they were followed by a twofold movement, professionalising and dividing up a sector progressively specified as 'cultural', to the extent that its designation gradually shed the prefix 'socio'. This transition from multiform mobilisations evolving out of given circumstances to more compartmentalised local policies inscribed in established institutions and positions was not self-evident. For how are activist engagements converted into professional positions? How does one maintain a role of social intermediary while at the same time developing a cultural specialisation? The transformation was all the more problematic since, as well as their professional conversion, it also led to the relegation of agents and discourses that had promoted the very development of these policies.

Contradictions generated by a process of institutionalisation

The distinctive attribute of the anti-institutional movements, whose promoters campaigned for a break with preestablished categories, was to be brought up finally against a choice between disappearing and giving up on their original project. They could disappear when the initial activist engagement lost impetus; or they could give up on their initial principles when these groups became institutionalised, when wide-ranging forms of intervention became just one compartmentalised sector of activity, and when personal engagement gave way to professional positioning. From the 1970s in France, the development of the 'sociocultural' sector was accompanied by a form of renunciation; in the Federal Republic of Germany, this was less pronounced and, above all, occured only later.

Firstly, community-based forms of mobilisation were progressively municipalised. The themes of 'citizen participation' and 'improved cohabitation' developed in France thanks to the fostering of cultural programs in 'pioneering' cities from the middle of the 1960s onwards (notably in Grenoble and Rennes), and then very extensively after the muncipal elections of 1971 and 1977, which brought left-wing non-communist activists into municipal councils.

In the Federal Republic of Germany, politicians and intellectuals close to the German Socialist Party (SPD) or left-wing trades union organisations very rapidly set in motion, albeit in a euphemistic manner, the dynamic of institutionalisation, in groups for consultation and evaluation such as the Council of German Cities (Deutscher Städtetag) or the Society for Cultural Policy (Kulturpolitische Gesellschaft). Emphasis was placed largely on intermediary forms of culture, the improvement of the 'living environment' and on the 'humanisation' of new urban estates, as in France, as well as on defending more generally a 'culture of daily life' for all.

The institutionalisation of socioculture in socialist regional governments or municipal authorities, as in the city of Frankfurt or the city-states of Berlin, Bremen and Hamburg, turned this policy into an object of competition between the SPD and the Greens. However, this competition was subsequently displaced once the programmes of conservative regional and federal governments at the end of the 1980s took socioculture into account. Certainly, this integration constituted a new opportunity for sociocultural animation, but at the same time it unhooked this animation from its activist networks as it based itself above all on criteria of professional competence.

The initiative for the creation in the FRG of alternative sites of culture came in over a third of cases from citizens' movements and in over half of the cases from individuals; administrative bodies seem to have occupied a marginal role in the organisation of socioculture (5.5%) and to have left all the initiative in this domain to 'civil society' (see Hussmann's survey, 1992). Nevertheless, once they had been set up, these district and local centres generally found themselves under the authority of municipal councils as far as the supervision of installations and the permanent employment of social workers were concerned.

Secondly, on the basis of these once activist and subsequently municipal practices, a new sector of intervention was constituted and recognised through the setting up of sites where it could be formalised, public forums constituted by the different specialists and practitioners involved. It was in this way that, despite conflicting representations of their cultural objectives, the different agents of cultural policy managed to establish a compromise through the construction of a common language.

The harmonisation and diffusion of this new model of public action were developed principally in the FRG through the framework of the Council of German Cities, a national pressure group representing municipal councils before the regional and federal governments. Its new strategic orientations of 1973 and the institutional launch of socioculture were the achievements of a group of critical intellectuals from the SPD (or close to this party) engaged in the implementation of municipal policies. In France, several bodies played a similar role: the Socialist Party's Culture Office created in 1974, groupings of elected politicians (the FNCC and FNESR), federations issuing from the popular education movement (Léo-Lagrange Clubs, Houses for Youth and Culture, etc.), or again the sites for the training of animateurs (the CFNA, INJEP, and ADRAC…) as well as reviews (Cahiers de l'animation, Pour, Silex…). vi This transition from informal practices to municipal policies therefore brought with it a professionalisation of sociocultural activities. The transition from volunteers to salaried workers in these domains resulted in France, and to a lesser extent in the FRG, in a professionalisation of work previously carried out by activists and its transformation into specific types of activity paving the way for new kinds of professional logic. The processes of institutionalisation and professionalisation of cultural action were marked at the end of the 1970s, as much in France as in the FRG, by the intervention of new categories of agents in the social treatment of culture, who progressively took the place of the representatives of the community and activist networks. Once public action took over from voluntary action, and once the latter tended to be converted into professional specialisation, the management of issues became a technical matter requiring their conceptualisation in formal terms by experts thereby becoming effectively a delocalized form of management. This transition from voluntary worker to professional, from human qualities (the ability to relate to people, 'charisma', etc.) to technical skills is described as an experience of being torn between two poles in the abundant literature on the 'profession of animateur', which stresses more or less critically the difficulties of reconciling a politically based (in the broad sense of the term) personal engagement and the attributes required by the specialist seeking professional recognition. vii

Institutionalisation and relegation

The institutionalisation of a sociocultural sector did thus not take place without contradictions. Furthermore, whereas the voluntary activism characterising the sociocultural constellation helped local cultural policies to emerge, the institutionalisation of these policies and their 'cultural' specification, the specialisation of the structures and of the agents implementing them led to a sidelining of the agents and discourses of the 'sociocultural' domain, which had become the residue of a henceforth illegitimate inheritance.

The specification of cultural policies detached from the adjacent sectors of animation or leisure, autonomous with regard to the social networks that contributed to their emergence, and equipped with specific rules and norms, led to a considerable transformation of the position they occupied in the space of local society.

The process of professionalisation which characterised them meant that, over the course of their development, a whole series of social agents were sidelined (amateurs, voluntary workers, community activists, trade unionists, social workers, even politicians) who previously could have taken part in discussions. The principle of cultural delegation was thereby transformed: the agents authorised to speak of culture in the name of the social group were no longer those who through their voluntary commitment or political acitivity had been assigned representative functions, but rather those who could boast of a specialised competence, guaranteed by the fact that they belonged to the world of the professionals.

It is therefore understandable that local cultural policies, after a period of intense politicisation, might appear as depoliticised: those who were defining them had managed to win their autonomy with regard to elected politicians, but also with regard to politically constituted networks of support (politically partisan networks, or the post-1968 movement in France, for example).

It is equally understandable that this process was accompanied by a process of 'delocalisation'. Agents engaged in cultural matters had previously been predisposed by the position they occupied to invest in and valorize local matters (elected politicians 'close to the people' and more generally on the political left, community activists issuing from the middle classes). This state of affairs was succeeded by the invention of professional positions, whose success implied the sidelining of both local attachments and also references to heteronomous discourses (political ideologies, and principles inherited from other social spaces, such as that of social work). The tendency that has often been observed for municipal cultural policies to become standardized is one of the indicators of this delocalisation -itself induced by the growing importance of norms defined in a nationally constituted professional milieu for the elaboration of these policies.

Finally, it is understandable that all this has been accompanied by what one could call the 'de-socialisation' of local cultural policies. These policies had originally been constituted partly on the basis of collective mobilisations and around 'social' objectives; they tended over the 1980s and 1990s to become a matter for 'specialists' who proclaimed their political and social neutrality by invoking cultural excellence, and who were predisposed to assert specifically cultural objectives (the democratisation of culture, aid for contemporary creation, etc.) to the detriment of more 'social' objectives that were left to the specialists of the sector for social action.

THE REINVENTION OF A 'SOCIAL' ROLE

While over the 1980s, references to the social aspects of cultural animation were progressively eclipsed by other logics and agents (those of cultivated culture, the field of the media, economic interests, etc.), it seems that we have been seeing increasingly over recent years the reemergence of properly social objectives for the public treatment of culture. viii This reemergence has been particularly strong in France in working-class suburban zones, and in the Federal Republic of Germany in the context of unification, where the integration of the East German population raises likewise the problem of the 'social' integration of certain marginalised social categories.

In France, since the end of the 1980s, this reemergence has given rise, for example, to the invention of new and diverse cultural and institutional forms, such as the public commissioning of contemporary works of art designed to 'restructure urban space' and to 'revitalise the democratic debate'; the setting up of writing workshops for young people experiencing difficulties; cultural support and legitmation for practices deemed specific to suburban areas, such as rap or graffiti; the sometimes very 'cultural' tone of regeneration projects developed in the framework of urban policy (contracts issuing from the urban social development unit (DSQ) and from the unit for the social development of urban districts (DSQ)), etc. In the former East Germany, it is a question more generally of valorising initiative, the 'apprenticeship' of individual autonomy and freedom of expression, and thus of implanting and transferring a tried and tested form of democratic culture (see Laborier, 1996a). Here, the federal public funds attributed to socioculture in the new regions partially take up again the explicit principles of the first institutions from the years 1975 to 1979, assigning themselves as objectives the intitiation of people into the social forms of political work and democratic culture, and the development of a culture of resistance against 'fascist forces'. Nevertheless, it is no longer a question in this context of mixing together different age-groups, social origins or nationalities, but rather of integrating German populations into the West German model. This reemergence of references to the social context in local cultural action only appears to represent a return. For this 'return to the social context' assumes different forms to those prevalent over the first period, due to the presence of new types of agents, who are the bearers of different types of discourse and logic. It follows principally two paths that are contradictory as far as the 'cultural theory' underpinning them is concerned (cf. [START_REF] Passeron | Figures et contestation de la culture[END_REF], but which are often mixed up in practice. The first path forms part of the movement aiming at the 'cultural rehabilitation' of socially disadvantaged populations, developed especially over the period of the second Lang administration (1988)(1989)(1990)(1991)(1992)(1993). This cultural labelling consists in an ethnographic and/or aesthetic treatment (i.e., in both cases, conforming to the criteria of professional expertise) of practices that are external to the universe of consecrated culture, and indeed socially stigmatized. ix The second path of the 'return to the social context' consists in the intervention of professional and recognised artists in 'difficult zones'. The case of public art has already been evoked, and one could add the funding of artists in residence in working-class districts, or again the staging of performances by theatre directors or choreographers in partnership with the local population. These practices can sometimes seem very close to two formerly prevalent and symmetrically opposed orientations. However, at least in rhetorical terms, they aspire to distinguish themselves from these, denying their proximity to classical cultural proselytism by stressing how they organise the capacity of the relevant social groups to voice their concerns in a cultural perspective, and denying their proximity to old-style sociocultural animation by stressing the reference to 'creation' and the intervention of professional artists.

The reaffirmation of the necessary 'social' anchoring of cultural policies (i.e. their mobilisation in the treatment of social problems) is thus not an identical repetition of the practices of the 1960s and 1970s which, after their relegation, have thereby been in part 'recycled', x and hence partially integrated into the invention of new forms. This recycling is indeed partial: in France especially, sociocultural animation continues to act largely as a foil, even -and perhaps especially -for those cultural professionals who have invested most in 'social' issues.

What, then, are the principal logics governing this 'return to the social context' in local cultural policies? We would like to propose two hypotheses here, which by no means exclude others. The first hypothesis concerns the link between this 'return to the social context' and the budget constraints weighing on cultural policies, which appear to exert opposite effects in the two countries. In the FRG, after a period of relative consensus, it is budgetary pressure that has brought Soziokultur back on the agenda, and it is denounced again as representing a bad use of public funds and is thus designated as a prime sector for cuts in the culture budgets. The reduction of sums allocated to culture seems to point more in the direction of a 'social' reclassification of cultural expenditure. It is all as if, since the argmument of 'cultural democratisation' now appears dated and the budgets are under threat, new types of 'investments in appearance' xi had to be agreed that could provide justifications for funding in line with the political priorities proclaimed both locally and nationally of the 'struggle against social exclusion' and the 'reduction of social division'. One should not fall prey to the cynical view that activities are simply being 'dressed up' in social terms for self-serving ends, for the current conditions are no doubt likewise ripe for reactivating the belief among cultural professionals in the re-socialising virtues of their activities. Nevertheless, it is conceivable that many projects of so-called social 'requalification' through culture (in the sense of rehabilitation) correspond also to a recategorisation in 'social' terms of cultural interventions translated into and reproblematised through the perspective of the 'struggle against social exclusion' and the restoration of the 'social bond'.

The second hypothesis concerns inverse movements between local and national levels in the two countries. In the FRG, Soziokultur, initially invented in a period of intense politicisation thanks to the emergence of the Greens as a political force, and then relayed by left-wing municipal councils, was by the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s accepted even by conservatives as a legitimate component of cultural policy. Thanks to reunification, the assertion of the necessary social anchoring of cultural policies would finally become part of a national discourse. In France, one sees in some ways a movement in the opposite direction. The process of professionalisation evoked above, and with it the relegation of the 'sociocultural' domain, are largely the product of national policies initiated at the beginning of the 1980s. The same is the case for the 'return to the social context' that takes place locally, not through some kind of revenge on the part of 1970s activists and animateurs, but to a great extent in conformity with the norms of the national model of professionalised cultural policies.

***

The attribution of social objectives -in the sens of social policies -to the public financing of culture is thus also a function of the relations between the different levels of public intervention -the local and the national levels in France, and the municipalities, regions and federal State in Germany. The differences between these sets of relations in the two countries helps explain the differences between the forms assumed by the 'return to the social context'. This rediscovery also goes beyond the national framework; it has become, so it seems, a norm at the European level.

Germany and France are not the only countries in Europe to have witnessed such an evolution. In Italy, public investment in culture has often been presented as useful in the struggle against unemployment, and in Ireland or Great Britain, it has been integrated partially into programmes of so-called social cohesion. As was the case in the 1970s around the notion of sociocultural animation in cities, an international institution such as the Council of Europe tends today to highlight in its programmes and meetings the need for a cultural dimension in projects of social integration, particularly in disadvantaged urban areas. The 'struggle against social exclusion' is a topic for debate and the exchange of experiences among the networks of cultural professionals. xii Finally, the attribution of social policy objectives to the public financing of culture takes place especially at the level of the European Community, for several reasons. Firstly, the relative weakness up until now of European Union programmes for culture has led to funding for cultural projects to be sought via programmes with a 'social' dimension (such as PHARE, or URBAN) and, consequently, to the 'social' recategorization of these projects. Secondly, the resistance of representatives of several member States -in particular Great Britain -to the assertion of a European Union role in the cultural domain has made it necessary to resort to other than specifically cultural arguments to legimate the development of interventions in this domain. These have included arguments based on the promotion of European identity, support for development of the tourist industry and thus of the economy as a whole, or equally the notion of a 'social cohesion' strengthened through culture.

Translated by Jeremy Ahearne française.

i See e.g. [START_REF] Rigaud | Culture et pouvoirs publics sous la Cinquième République[END_REF]. For an overview of these debates, see [START_REF] Dubois | Politiques culturelles et politiques médiatiques[END_REF].

ii This was the case notably in Italy during the debates over 1995 and 1996 concerning the establishment of a 'French-style' Ministry of Culture (see [START_REF] Monsaingeon | Un ministère pour la culture? L'Italie entre traumatisme, tutelle et tentation[END_REF]. The reference to the French case was also present when the regional government of Baden-Württemberg wanted in 1990 to unify responsibilities that were 'dispersed' among five ministries under the authority of a grand regional ministry for culture (see [START_REF] Pongy | Politiques culturelles et régions en Europe[END_REF]. The reference to the 'French model' was also present to a lesser degree during the debates associated with the creation of a British Department of National Heritage in 1992, and subsequently with the creation of a Department for Culture, Media and Sport in 1997. iii This comparative sketch is based on studies which originally had no directly comparative aim (see Dubois, 1994 and[START_REF] Dubois | La politique culturelle. Genèse d'une catégorie d'intervention publique[END_REF]Laborier, 1996). These empirical studies allowed us to adopt together a comparative perspective that looks to pay heed to the salutary warning and the propositions recently put forward by D. [START_REF] Gaxie | Remarques sur le comparatisme, le franco-centrisme et quelques autres sujets topiques[END_REF] iv See e.g. [START_REF] Pinçon | Classes moyennes, enjeux culturels et trajectoires sociales[END_REF][START_REF] Saez | Vers un mode d'être 'culturel local'?[END_REF][START_REF] Simonot | Les couches moyennes au pouvoir: le cas de Louviers[END_REF][START_REF] Schulze | Die Erlebnisgesellschaft. Kultursoziologie der Gegenwart[END_REF] For a sociological analysis of the mobilisations through associations characterizing these 'middle classes' in the cultural domain, see Balme, 1987. v vii See e.g. Besnard, 1980; Ion, 1982; Moulinier, 1980; Poujol, 1978; Simonot, 1974; Liebald, 1992; Hussmann and Steinert, 1990. viii For a partial survey of cultural projects structured around the 'struggle against social exclusion' in France, see e.g. 'La culture pour s'en sortir', Télérama, hors série, January 1996. One should add certain programmes of the Ministry of Culture, notably after 1995, such as those targetting 22 'difficult' suburban districts. See 'L'an II des projets culturels de quartiers', Policultures: la lettre des politiques culturelles et artistiques, 15, April 1997; 'Projets culturels de quartier: premier bilan', Lettre d'information du ministère de la Culture, 2, 29 janvier 1997. ix For a case-study, see Dubois, 1994a. x The expression is from Lascoumes, 1994. xi Investissements de forme -see Thévenot, 1986. xii One might cite, for example, the network of European suburbs, that has been based around the Laiterie in Strasbourg, and that is designed to valorise the cultural experiences of working-class districts; or, more punctualy, the meeting on 21-22 October 1996 at La Villette of representatives from 16 cultural institutions in different countries, who came together to debate the responses of cultural spaces to problems associated with unemployment, poverty and delinquency (see Bedarida, 1996).

  [Translator's note: on post-war popular education groups, see Brian Rigby, Popular Culture in Modern France, London, Routledge, 1991, pp. 39-67] vi [Translator's note: the FNCC stands for the National Federation of Communes for Culture; the FNESR for the National Federation of Socialist and Republican Politicians; the CFNA for the National Centre for the Training of Animateurs; the INJEP for the National Institute for Youth and Popular Education; and the ADRAC for the Association for the Development of Reaearch on Cultural Action]