The worrying case of the Wedgwood Collection

This Dickensian image was used by Dr Tristram Hunt MP during a Westminster Hall debate on 19th October (read the full transcript here) to describe the situation facing the Wedgwood Collection in Stoke-on-Trent. 

Dr Hunt and his fellow Staffordshire MPs are at the centre of an ongoing campaign to protect one of the country’s foremost ceramics collections. In the coming months, we will see if pension policy enacted in 2005 and 2008, designed with important goal of protecting pension funds from fraudulent transfers and mismanagement by corporations, bizarrely results in the dissolution of this historic collection.

 

Following the insolvency of Waterford Wedgwood Ltd in 2009, itself a sad day for the story of British Design, £134 million of pension debt was transferred to the Museum, according to the principle of ‘last man standing’. The Museum Trust itself has become the ‘last man’: five members of the museum staff are in the Wedgwood company’s pension plan, sparking the transfer of £134 million of pension debt to a small, charitable trust, and placing its assets – principally one of the UK’s greatest ceramics collections – at risk.

 

There is obviously a point here about better design of pension policy (‘Design as set of tools that enables a better way of doing things’), but the convoluted legal wrangling mustn’t distract from the real and long-term sadness at the heart of this sorry tale. In his debate, Dr Hunt positioned the significance of this Collection within a much greater cultural and historical context. 

 

Founder Josiah Wedgwood was not only a pioneer of British innovation, a key figure in the beginnings of industrialisation and product design and one of our first great exporters, he remains the archetype for a philanthropic industrialist, committed to social responsibility and the great enriching power of art. 

 

More than a national asset, the collection is an important local reminder of regional history and identity, that it should stay in the region is crucial to aspirations for a regeneration of Stoke’s traditional industries and architectures (a movement evidenced in this beautiful book, ‘The Lost City of Stoke on Trent’ by Matthew Rice).

 

A court decision on the fate of the collection is due in January. The result will have a profound impact on the status of heritage collections as permanent endowments. 

 

At a time when political discourse is finally shifting towards actively promoting the Productive Sectors, with Ministers speaking of an ‘export-driven’ economy, the need to support our manufacturing base, and calling for a resurgence of craft, a negative outcome in the Wedgwood case would be an unfortunately counter-productive message. 

 

During the Westminster Hall debate, Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, Ed Vaizey MP, admitted that whilst this totally un-intended consequence of pension legislation was indeed more at home in a Dickens novel, he did not have the power to circumvent the law. The Charities Commission is in a similar position, and concluded that the Collection can, indeed, be deemed an ‘asset’.

 

So the future of the Collection is in the hands of the Great British Justice System, and a hope that the presiding Judge has the insight to understand the wider implications of losing this important body of work.