Baroness O’cathain
Businesswoman who improved finances at the Barbican but was criticised for her autocratic style
BARONESS O’CATHAIN, who has died aged 83, was a forthright businesswoman who endured a torrid time as managing director of the Barbican arts and conference centre from January 1990 to March 1995. When in the early 1960s the City of London made a “gift to the nation” of the £150 million arts complex, it was assumed that the Barbican would pay for itself, with the rent from exhibitions and conferences covering the costs of the concert hall, cinema, two theatres and art gallery. By 1990, however, the centre was costing the Corporation £21.4 million a year – 27 per cent of its income from rates.
It was against this background that Detta O’cathain (pronounced, approximately, O-ca-hawn) was headhunted to replace the previous director, Henry Wrong. She had experience of the bottom line in businesses from airlines to the Milk Marketing Board, of which she was managing director and where her most notable achievement was to persuade farmers to sell skimmed and semiskimmed milk. It was hoped that she would bring a dose of Thatcherite good housekeeping into the world of the arts.
Soon after she arrived she made staff members write their own job descriptions. There was duplication. Redundancies followed. She introduced a dress code, making it known that she did not like women to wear trousers or large earrings.
Within months staff morale was said to be at an all-time low and, by the time she left five years later, more than 50 people, nearly a quarter of the staff, had gone, either compulsorily or voluntarily.
Penelope Easton, the former publicity and marketing manager, resigned in 1992 because she could take what she called “the terror” no more: “I was frightened by her. It felt like the French Revolution. You did not know who was for the tumbrels next.” In September 1994 an article in The Times drew attention to a survey of staff revealing that a large majority had no confidence in her.
Yet Detta O’cathain could point to many successes. She won enhanced funding for both resident companies, the London Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Shakespeare Company (which she persuaded not to desert to Stratford), and presided over an increase in attendances. Exhibitions and conferences brought in extra revenue.
She authorised an upgrade of acoustics in the Barbican Hall, provided new rehearsal rooms and backstage facilities and won from the City a much-needed £9.7 million for refurbishments, with better signposting and lighting. She dramatically improved the catering, with two companies competing within the building, while a new Dillons book franchise made more in a month than the old Barbican-run bookshops made in a whole year.
Detta O’cathain could be likeable, enthusiastic and sympathetic and had her admirers. Antony Lewis-crosby, the former head of arts and planning, found her “tremendously supportive”: “In 14 years at the Barbican I saw all sides. I feel the changes she implemented were right for the organisation.” More importantly she had the support of the City of London Corporation, which in March 1994 gave her a new four-year contract, starting in December.
Even before she was appointed, however, she also had the reputation of being undiplomatic. Gentle persuasion was not her style and her apparent contempt for the “whinges” of people she referred to as “arty-farty types” was bound to raise hackles. “I would hate it to be said on my CV that ‘she suffers fools gladly’,” she once said. Nobody would have suggested such a thing.
In January 1994, during a debate in the House of Lords, to which she had been appointed by John Major, she even dared question public funding for the arts, observing: “One man’s pile of bricks in the Tate is another man’s kidney dialysis machine … Taxpayers will always be somewhat uneasy with unfettered expenditure by creative people.”
In the same debate she claimed that many projects were “put on by the arts sector for … those who work in the sector. Not too often do you hear the question asked, ‘Will the man or woman in the street benefit from this?’ ”
Her confidence in the support of her employers meant that she felt able to be dismissive of attacks on her, telling The Independent in October 1994: “There’s an arts centre grapevine; people here see colleagues from other centres taking three-hour lunches or swanning off to New York and they know it’s very different here. I set myself tough targets and I set other people tough targets … I know that I’m doing a good job and if the City of London decide that I am not, then I will walk away without a penny.”
At the end of the month, after press reports of an imminent revolt against her autocratic style of management, she met with leading members of the Corporation and asked them to ring around for proof of support from the Barbican’s main tenants.
But not one defended her. Instead, Adrian Noble, head of the RSC, Clive Gillinson, head of the LSO, and Raymond Gubbay, concert promoter at the centre, all declared that they had no confidence in her.
In early November the Corporation announced that “Baroness O’cathain is to take fully-paid leave of absence from her duties at the Barbican.”
“Of course it means she’s gone for good,” a Barbican insider was quoted as saying.
Detta O’cathain was bitter about the way she had been treated. “It’s a complete turnaround by the Corporation, who felt it didn’t matter if Detta was vilified,” she said. “But once the Corporation was being vilified there was a volte-face. It has just been so appalling, I asked for help and no help has been forthcoming.”
When she finally resigned in March 1995 with a reported settlement of about £250,000, Susannah Herbert in Thedaily Telegraph observed that: “The tragedy of Baroness O’cathain stems from her passionate self-belief and her inability to persuade others to share it.”
Detta O’cathain was born in Cork on February 2 1938 the daughter of Caoimhghin and Margaret O’cathain. Her father was a tax inspector.
Educated at Laurel Hill Convent, Limerick, she took a degree in Economics from University College Dublin. Her first job was as an accounts clerk with Aer Lingus in Dublin, where she met her future husband William Bishop, a former RAF pilot. They married in 1968.
Moving to England, she was group economist with Tarmac (1966-69); economics adviser to Rootes Motors (1969-72); senior economist with Carrington Vyella (1972-73); economics adviser and subsequently director of market planning with British Leyland (1973-76); and corporate planning executive at Unigate (1976-81).
She also served, from 1979 to 1983, as adviser to Peter Walker, the then agriculture minister. In 1981 she became head of strategic planning at the Milk Marketing Board, rising to managing director in 1985.
In addition she was the first female (non-executive) director of Midland Bank (1984-93). Other directorships included Tesco, British Airways, Sears, Bnp/paribas (UK) and Allders.
Photogenic, articulate and opinionated, during the 1980s Detta O’cathain became known as a frequent
‘One man’s pile of bricks in the Tate is another man’s kidney dialysis machine,’ she said of arts funding
panellist on BBC TV’S Question Time. Appointed OBE in 1983 and made a life peer in June 1991, as a local authority employee she initially sat on the cross benches in the House of Lords before joining the Conservative benches after resigning from the Barbican.
A staunch evangelical Christian, after the death of her Conservative colleague Lady Young in 2002, she took over the leadership of the opposition to provisions in the new Adoption and Children Bill lifting the restriction on adoptions by unmarried and homosexual couples, which had been approved by the Commons. MPS, she said, had been “got at by the gay rights lobby”.
In 2004 she successfully tabled an amendment to the Civil Partnership Bill to extend eligibility for civil partnership to blood relatives who had lived together, prompting gay rights campaigners to denounce it as a “wrecking amendment” and to announce a boycott of British Airways while she was still a director.
When she announced she was intending to retire from the airline’s board by the end of the year, she said that her decision was unrelated to the campaign.
In 2011 she led attempts by Conservative peers to scupper plans to allow same-sex couples to hold civil partnerships in churches.
Detta O’cathain experienced great tragedy in her personal life. In 1989 her husband William, 20 years her senior, had a massive stroke which left him paralysed, speechless and in need of 24-hour care. They had no children and he died in 2001.