Britain must celebrate its scientists, because if the voters do, then so will the politicians

National Science and Engineering Week – running now with 2,000-plus exhibitions, lectures, open days and debates for an expected audience of 1.5 million – began as a whistle in the dark. Back in 1994, the science minister, William Waldegrave, secured a derisory £100,000 for the first one, and it seemed like a gimmick.

The charge of cynicism was unfair: Waldegrave was that rare thing, a minister with a prior and genuine interest in science. But the gesture came near the end of a long period of devastation of an intellectual tradition that had delivered Newton, Faraday, Darwin, James Clerk Maxwell, Rutherford and one of the unsung giants of the 20th century, Paul Dirac. In 15 years of Conservative government, ambitious projects had been abandoned, long-established research teams broken up, laboratories closed, universities starved and institutions privatised. The asset-stripping continued for another three years and, by 1997, British science had a stagnant and impoverished culture, creaking equipment and demoralised personnel.

Paradoxically, it also had a lively national festival of science, engineering and technology, and a separate, slightly later funfair in Edinburgh, both of which attracted crowds of buzzing schoolchildren and delighted adults. The science community took Waldegrave's crust not as a sop but a challenge, and began to campaign for the re-election of reason and curiosity to the national debate. Thatcherite logic had argued that, if the economy really needed research, the market would provide it. No such thing happened. France, Germany, Japan and the US went on increasing investment in R&D while Britain became the place for merchant bankers and estate agents. But a freshly politicised community had by then understood that, in a democracy, science had to speak up, and so – at their successive jamborees – scientists did just that. They spelled out how information technology was forging a society in which knowledge was the real capital, and economic growth the interest that it accrued.

Here we go again. Last week the Royal Society reminded us that, while British science again faces cuts, France, Germany and the US are spending more than ever. Meanwhile, the inventor James Dyson urged the Tories not to cut the tax credits that support R&D. Peter Mandelson showed some sign of listening in an interview at the weekend, but that anyone should even need to make the argument shows how quickly forgotten have been the lessons of the past 30 years. Instead of paying university bosses the super-salaries we report on today, Britain must celebrate its scientists, because if the voters do, then so, eventually, will the politicians. We need our science festivals more than ever.