Forty years ago, the Tories launched a scheme to foster entrepreneurs – but artists from Jarvis Cocker to Rachel Whiteread saw another way to use it. So did a government seen as hostile to the arts kickstart Britpop and the YBAs?
In the summer of 1983, British politics was in a fractious place. In June, Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government roared to re-election after victory in the Falklands, eviscerating Michael Foot’s Labour party. Within weeks, new chancellor Nigel Lawson announced swingeing spending cuts, despite the fact that more than three million people were out of work and the number was rising. Plans for large-scale privatisation of national industries – the PM’s second-term obsession – were in the works. Britain was about to become Thatcher’s Britain.
That same month, a new government initiative was rolled out nationwide. The Enterprise Allowance Scheme was the brainchild of a Treasury civil servant called Peter Kemp and had been trialled over the previous two years. Despite its bland name, it was a daring concept. If citizens wanted to set up a small business, the government would guarantee an income of £40 a week for up to 12 months, and an escape from dole checkups. If your business plan and a savings test passed muster – and for three-quarters of applicants it did – you were good. For the decade or so that it ran, more than half a million people ended up using it. Many were under 25.
