A cellist in high places: Thangam Debbonaire, Shadow Culture Secretary

Going through airport-style scanning past a pair of machine gun-toting guards tells me that Portcullis House, sandwiched between the gothic ostentation of the Houses of Parliament and the glass-and-steel functionality of New Scotland Yard, isn’t an ordinary venue in which to interview a cellist. But then, Thangam Debbonaire isn’t an ordinary cellist: a former member of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, she has been in the Shadow Cabinet since 2016 and was appointed Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport in September last year.

With the imminence of a general election that Labour are widely expected to win, Debbonaire represents the first opportunity in recent memory for classical music to have one of its own at the heart of power. So I ask what her younger musician self might have hoped for from the government of the day, and I’m keen to learn what will be her first concern when she comes into office. The answer to both questions is the same: education.

“I was very fortunate in that my parents were both musicians and I was able to make use of some fantastic publicly funded music education – there was a series of youth orchestras in Huddersfield. We weren’t living there, but because my dad was working at Huddersfield Polytechnic [now University], I was able to take part in those. I wasn’t able to take part in those in the area where we did live: that level of provision wasn’t universal then and it definitely still isn’t. So I would have wanted to ask the government ‘why not make sure that really good music education is available for every child’. That should include a range of different things: orchestras, choirs, big band, jazz band and nowadays electronic music, sound engineering, the sorts of things that I know are taking place in our conservatories and colleges.”

What she’s hearing from the Musicians’ Union and from music teachers adds up to a picture that music education is currently on a downward path overall – albeit the picture is patchy. “There are too many gaps in provision geographically. Too many specialist music teachers have told me that they’ve left the profession: they’re no longer teaching because the sums just don’t stack up. The music hubs are doing a fantastic job, but they’re about to be restructured into great big music hubs, which will work for some areas but be a challenge for others. And certainly, there has been nowhere near enough attention paid to the importance of music education in primary schools.”

Debbonaire claims to have the support of her front bench colleagues in addressing this. “Music Education, as part of a wider arts curriculum for every child to the age of 16, is a commitment that Keir Starmer, the Leader of the Labour Party, Bridget Phillipson, the Shadow Education Secretary and myself as Shadow Culture Secretary have all made, and we feel very strongly about this. Keir benefited from good music teaching as a young person, but also, Bridget knows just how much it matters, not just training the next generation of musicians, but as any musician will know, the skills it gives you: being part of a team, being able to work hard and focused on a specific skill. Those are all transferable skills.”

Recognising the importance is one thing, but finding the money is another. Debbonaire doesn’t mention Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves on her list of supporters and doesn’t give any specific reassurance on the subject of arts funding, even if she clearly understands its importance: “My other priority is getting money into the arts, and that’s going to be a challenge. Over the last 14 years of successive Tory governments, a lot of arts organisations have suffered terrible cuts: there was a £19 million cut to the Arts Council budget in 2010, and there have been real terms cuts ever since. Local authority budget cuts have also fallen on arts organisations because funding them is not a statutory requirement for a local authority. 

“Getting more money into the arts and creative industries more widely is really important. It’s important for its own sake, because arts are just a good thing that make our lives worth living; they’re how most of us remember the good times in our lives and help us get through the bad times. But also, the arts and the creative industries are one of our best sectors for economic growth, for exports, for attracting foreign direct investment. Foreign film companies come here to work with session musicians in this country, not because they’re the cheapest, but because they’re the best. Our session musicians know how to sight-read like demons. I remember when I was in sixth form at Chetham’s, there was a young woman who was never destined to be a great soloist, but she was earning a packet before she even left school because she was just brilliant at sight reading.”

The emphasis on education and access to music echoes the theme of Debbonaire’s speech to the Labour Party Conference last year. I put it to her that this laid out a kind of “trickle-up” strategy, where money put into the grass roots will result in success at the elite level, and I ask whether she thinks that Arts Council England – who are responsible for supporting both – strike the correct balance?

“The Arts Council have been handed a very tough gig by a series of Tory governments. Some of the things that they’ve had to do over the last few years, you know, cuts to certain organisations which have caused us all a lot of pain, were handed to them by government policy. I want the Arts Council to have an equal emphasis on access and excellence. I do not see them as diametrically opposed. If you don’t have the education, the infrastructure, the training opportunities, you reduce the chances that you’ll get the excellence. Okay, you might, there are some who will still manage they are parents who can pay for specialist education or whatever, you will get some but you won’t get that breadth as well as the depth. 

“If you’re going to get the excellence, you need to buy the building blocks which help you build grassroots arts organisations. It’s from those that great careers grow, as well as local enjoyment of local arts organisations. The number of people in this country who are members of amateur choirs is just quite extraordinary. I never phone my mum on a Tuesday evening, because I know exactly where she is!”

When I press Debbonaire on the tradeoff between supporting, say, the Royal Opera House and funding a raft of smaller grassroots organisations, she is noncommittal, saying only that we need both. “If you don’t build up the training and education opportunities, you won’t get the excellence in performance for the Royal Opera House anyway. But if you don’t have the Royal Opera House, then you don't have that inspiring quality of performance to aspire to. So it’s tough for the Arts Council – but I also know that both the Arts Council and arts organisations themselves are really good and getting better at bringing in a mixed economy for investment.”

Debbonaire comes from a highly political, staunchly Labour family, so it probably shouldn’t have surprised anyone that she became politically active herself, lobbying on questions of women’s equality and domestic violence. “In 1996, there was a groundbreaking piece of legislation, now called the Family Law Act, which transformed the law on injunctions that women (and male victims as well) can use to bar their abuser from coming near them. I had a transformational experience watching from the gallery of what is now my place of work, the House of Commons, watching a labour Frontbencher speak from the dispatch box about the issues that I’d been briefing him about for weeks, and change the law in a way which has probably helped millions and millions of victims of domestic violence.”

Her music career, she says, prepared her in many ways for a life in politics, starting with the basics: rule number one is to turn up on time, because you can’t play brilliantly if you’re not there. That’s part of a need to be extremely self-disciplined and organised – she feels that the discipline of practising really hard, learned through a lifetime of classical music, has been invaluable. Politics, of course, is itself something of a performance art: “I practise what I’m doing, whether it’s in the chamber or on broadcast, as much as possible. And understanding how musicality works and how performance works helps you if you’re going to use your voice in a speech, knowing when to stop and when to pause to allow the audience to absorb something. I think lots of my colleagues have got great timing and great delivery, but I certainly learned the techniques through being a musician.”

She hasn’t lost the thrill of music-making. “I play almost every day. I have a string quartet: we’ve performed in parliament before now we’ve performed in other places. I think being a happy amateur is an incredible privilege; one of the things my music education gave me is that lifelong enjoyment and I’m really fortunate to have it.”