Simon Heffer: What society needs to be happy

Guitars?!

Sitting down the other day with the rock star, poet, constitutional reformer, Englishman and patriot Billy Bragg, I learnt a striking fact. The Bard of Barking was en route to a women's prison where he was delivering, as rock stars do, six guitars. As part of the rehabilitative process, these women are being encouraged to make music. It is a brilliant idea.

Some of us may struggle to comprehend popular music, but there is a qualitative difference between having the wireless on as wallpaper and imbibing one song after another, and actually seeking to acquire the skills to make music. To do it anything like properly requires not just skill, but commitment. It is creative, and it stimulates further creativity. And creativity is central to the civilising process. It is easy to become idealistic about such things, but I imagine there might be fewer of those women in prison if, some years ago, they had had their creativity stimulated in a cultural fashion rather than in a criminal one.

Ah, if only these women had spent their youth learning the recorder, their lives could have turned out so very different.