Acorn to SUV - Consume & Be Damned

by Chris Draper

THE NATIONAL TRUST proclaims itself “Europe’s Largest Conservation Charity” but its eco-credentials are as exaggerated and dishonest as its interpretation and presentation of Britain’s history.

Founded by Christian socialists in 1895 to protect threatened countryside and promote public access, NT has been re-engineered into a powerful corporation preserving Britain’s aristocratic legacy and promoting the vicarious enjoyment of an uncritical middle class. Whilst maintaining the myth that it’s a democratic organisation committed to ecological aims, in reality NT regards members as little more than cash cows buying into a “country house experience”, targets for as much ancillary marketing as it can muster. Some excellent environmental work remains but as NT has grown it’s become less radical, more Establishment, more Corporate and more Consumerist, and consumption is killing the planet.

LOGO?

The National Trust’s logo is no longer appropriate; my abiding memory of NT visits isn’t the ubiquity of “leafy oak branches dotted with acorns” but the depressing sight of seemingly endless acres of car parks that once were fields and meadows. 'Enter via the car park, exit via the gift shop.' Replace NT’s oak leaf logo with the more appropriate silhouette of an SUV, or possible a cash till. Although, to be fair, I learn from the website that, 'The National Trust has produced a car “badge” of some sort for 70 years and we know that many members love displaying their car sticker.'

Fair enough but don’t then claim to be, 'Europe’s largest conservation charity' whilst acting as, 'Europe’s largest Jeremy Clarkson appreciation society.' Even Clarkson’s rampant eco-vandalism is eclipsed by the Trust’s ability to annually generate fifty million environmentally destructive car journeys through visits to NT properties.

Carriage Trade not Charabancs

The National Trust has given no consideration to whether any of the grand country houses it eagerly acquired were accessible by public transport. Even where visitors were initially able to arrive on foot, by bicycle or via public transport NT closed off that option by sealing off minor entry points and channelling visitors down carriageways monopolised by motor vehicles. “Enter via the car park, exit via the gift shop.” I’ve often alighted from a bus and been forced to walk along a main road bordering NT land before turning into the sole permissible entry point and then walking another mile or so down NT’s drive as motorised visitors sped by. Adding insult to narrowly avoided injury, NT ticket offices, inevitably sited adjacent to the car park, frequently offer buggy transport to convey motorists those last few yards to the front door of the country house.

'Europe’s largest conservation charity' marginalises everyone who arrives on foot and does nothing to facilitate connections to bus stops or railway stations. Where buses do pass near National Trust properties the Trust doesn’t erect shelters or cooperate with local authorities to ensure that they do so. The Trust ensures signage directs motorists from far and wide but the un-motorised are ignored although 25% of households don’t own a motor vehicle.

Click on any National Trust website and see for yourself how little information, help or concern is shown for pedestrian. Now compare the Harewood House website – what a contrast! Harewood positively encourages public transport users who are offered live transport timetable links, half price entry and are even met by golf buggies at the entry gate and conveyed free of charge down to the house but then Harewood is run by an independent trust not the National Trust.

In Bed with BMW

As if the National Trust’s general promotion of private transport isn’t bad enough it’s now climbed into bed with car manufacturer BMW. The National Trust won’t disclose the terms of the deal and in response to my email requesting specific details the Trust sent me an uninformative press release. Curiously this didn’t mention that in February 2019 BMW was fined 8.5 million Euro for selling vehicles that breach EU permitted emission levels nor that two months later, after raids on the company’s headquarters, BMW was further charged with 'having colluded with other motor manufacturers to limit the introduction of clean emissions technology'.

The National Trust claims that its partnership is eco-friendly as BMW also makes electric cars but using tons of precious resources to move private motorists around in a vehicle that’s stationary for approximately 95% of its lifetime is inherently wasteful. Some studies suggest that over the complete cycle of such vehicles, from construction to disposal, electric cars cause even more environmental harm than petrol engine equivalents. The batteries are especially damaging as lithium is found in only a few arid countries and its extraction consumes vast amounts of water. Cobalt, another essential ingredient, generally comes from parts of central Africa where widespread “artisanal mining” operates with notoriously low standards of safety and pollution control. The disposal of batteries is also hazardous and potentially explosive but on the plus side, the Trust’s backing for BMW brings in the cash, helps 'greenwash' a powerful polluter and reassures self-deluding National Trust members that they can enjoy guilt-free motoring.

Three in a Bed

The National Trust’s bedsheets were already soiled by its long-running affair with junk-food giant Cadbury. Every year for more than a decade the Trust pocketed approximately £7 million to host and promote a “Cadbury Easter Egg Hunt” although in 2017 when Cadbury excised “Easter” from the billing the Archbishop of Canterbury, Teresa May and Jeremy Corbyn all joined the chorus of critics, with Corbyn observing that the Trust’s 'commercialism had gone too far'.

The claim that 'Cadbury’s Easter Egg Hunts are the perfect way to unleash your inner explorer and connect with nature' is absurd as junk food produces unnaturally fat kids with rotten teeth. Cadbury was reminded of this in 2018 by the Advertising Standards Authority who found the firm guilty of breaching junk food advertising regulations.

Internationally, Cadbury is widely recognised as an environmental vandal for the parent company’s role in deforestation, particularly in central Africa and in Indonesia, causing critical habitat loss, to chimpanzees and orangutans respectively.

Greed is Good

Unsatisfied with partnering eco-villains, the Trust also has millions of pounds invested in oil, gas, mining and similar industries whose core activities are environmentally devastating. Exposed by the Guardian in 2018 the Trust responded by promising to limit the extent of such investments in the future but insisted that the trustees of its pension fund must be left to operate as they wished. One might expect 'Europe’s largest conservation charity' to lead the way in such matters but the Trust does nothing until caught out, then there are grudging excuses followed by token improvements. NT should play an active role in managing its billion pound portfolio, directing fund managers to intervene, vote and report back on AGM’s of its invested companies instead, 'Investment managers are given the flexibility to achieve maximum returns on investments'” The Trust boasts of installing a few solar panels on toilet blocks but is morally derelict in permitting Black Rock and its other fund managers to invest its vast wealth in raping the planet.

Countryside to Command Centre

Ignoring protests from members, the local Parish Council and CND, in the 1980’s NT backed a NATO scheme to build a military command centre on eleven acres of Trust land in the Chilterns, along with a twenty acre spoil heap. Despite the Braddenham Estate having been donated as 'inalienable' the development went ahead and in the 1990’s this Command Centre functioned as Headquarters of the UK’s Gulf War operations, it also played a key role in directing the RAF’s bombing of Iraq and Kosovo.

At National Trust’s 1937 Annual General Meeting a member, Mr J L Cather, proposed the banning of hunting and shooting from Trust land but his resolution was vehemently opposed by NT bosses and the motion was lost. This pattern was sporadically repeated over the following half century – members proposed and bosses opposed, employing increasingly sophisticated measures to get their way. Even after the membership won the vote in 1993 it wasn’t implemented. When Parliament eventually legislated against fox hunting the Trust still went along with the farce of permitting 'trail hunting' where riders purport to follow an artificial scent as terriers rip to shreds foxes that 'just happen to break cover'. When members backed a ban in 2017 the Chairman employed the dubious device of proxy votes to “conserve” the killing.

Giant Eyesore

I saw the Giant’s Causeway for the first time in the 1970’s as I rambled along the spectacular Antrim coast. It wasn’t long after NT took over the site and ever since I’ve retained a powerful visual memory of an awesome array of hexagonal basalt columns set against a beautiful, simple, unadorned natural seascape. Returning in recent years I was shocked by the utter despoliation caused by NT’s commercial exploitation of the site. The Trust boasts that it now attracts more than a million visitors a year to its 'Causeway Car Park', shops and appalling 'visitor centre'. To anyone with respect and love for nature this is desecration. A place for quiet contemplation has been transformed into a theme park for the uniformed and little interested who clamber all over the stones, take selfies and then drive off to the next advertised attraction. Anyone sufficiently concerned to properly prepare themselves for a visit would at least consult a map and realise that it’s more appropriate to approach the site via the footpath which also offers free access. The Trust prefers to fleece the ignorant and channels tourists through its airport terminal-style building as they’re relieved of £13.00 each.

What do we Want – More Car Parks!

Ruskin inspired the National Trust’s founders and warned of the environmental threat to the Lake District posed by the coming of the railways – what would he think of what the magazine Private Eye recently described as 'The National Trust’s rampant enthusiasm for car park building.' As I write, residents of a tiny picturesque Oxfordshire village are campaigning to 'Save Buscot' from the National Trust. The National Trust’s money-making Buscot proposal is to transform one of the village’s buildings into eight business units and create a 24-space car park.

At Devon’s, Woolacombe Down, the National Trust's planned to turn a redundant sheep pen into a 30-space car park together with signage and a pay-and-display ticket machine. Rather than come clean on yet another act of commercialism, NT bizarrely claim 'a purpose which will allow the public to enjoy the biodiversity improved wider landscape.' Savaged by local critics, NT have apparently backed down and withdrawn the planning application – at least for the present.

At Trelissick House & Gardens in Cornwall, the Parish Council are pushing the Trust to improve access for walkers and cyclists arriving via the King Harry Ferry but the Trust is only interested in creating a new 266-space car park. NT outlined their proposal for the Council who recently expressed its concern at 'the visual impact of the car parking areas on the landscape character of the AONB and the setting of the historic parkland and buildings'.

Meanwhile, 'Hidden away in a secluded Kent valley is this perfectly preserved medieval moated manor house. Created in the natural landscape almost 700 years ago, Igham Mote is built from Kentish ragstone…' (NT Handbook) except NT is determined to end the seclusion by creating an enormous gravel car park for more than 300 vehicles. Situated in a designated Area of Natural Beauty (AONB) the local planning authority recently rejected the scheme but the Trust are undeterred and ominously assured the local press they don’t regard this as defeat but merely “feedback” from which they will 'learn'.

Unfit for Purpose

The National Trust’s original aims have been irretrievably corrupted and its power structure is beyond repair. In the next and final instalment of this 4-part polemic I’ll analyse how the hierarchy maintains its control, how members are effectively disenfranchised and along the way I’ll reveal some more inconvenient truths.

(CMD August 2020 – part 3 of a 4-part NT series)

Don’t You Know There’s A War On? by Les May

I LIVE in Rochdale which is included in the Greater Manchester ‘Local Lockdown’. Last Friday a friend of mine, who like me is in the ‘vulnerable’ age group, met up for a chat with three friends in a Rochdale town centre pub. When I asked him next morning if people from four households meeting up fell within the recommendations; he said he did not know. I couldn’t be of any help because, like him, I am confused, though common sense says no. The day after another friend in the same age group visited Clitheroe with her daughter. Does it fall within the guidelines? No idea! And it’s not just individuals like me who are confused. Two weeks ago another friend in the same age group had to briefly visit the Rochdale Council offices at ‘The Fashion Corner’. Prominently displayed was a notice about ‘Track and Trace’. That didn’t mean whoever was behind the desk knew what to do. She was heard to ask whether my friend’s contact details should be recorded.

A few nights ago an Oldham cafe owner was interviewed for a local news programme after further restrictions were announced. He pleaded for some clarity about exactly what these further restrictions were. A couple of days later the Labour leader of Pendle Council said in an interview that he would have to apply further restrictions, but that neither he nor the police who would have to enforce them, had been informed by the government what they were.

Nor is it clear that all supermarkets are being proactive in insisting upon masks being worn in store thought this is supposedly mandatory in areas with a local lockdown. It’s a similar picture on buses and trains. The excuse being given at one large supermarket is that staff do not have the power to refuse entry, only the police have that power. I suggest the real reason is that supermarkets and transport providers fear confronting people who insist upon behaving in an anti-social manner by not wearing a mask. Again lack of clarity about what is mandatory is at the root of the problem.

Today it was announced that following WHO guidelines children in secondary schools in areas subject to a local lockdown would have to wear masks. It was also announced that the the government would NOT be following WHO guidelines which recommend that all teachers over 60, that’s about 2% of all teachers, and teachers who are pregnant should wear ‘medical grade’ masks. Outside these areas headteachers can decide on whether masks should be used. This is a decision ripe for conflict as many teachers may decide they are being told to work under unsafe conditions. Tomorrow of course the rules may change. Boris hasn’t yet learned you cannot please everyone all the time.

Since 3 July the average number of new cases of Covid19 has risen from 631 in the first half to 833 from mid July to early August and now to 1077 mid to late August. Since 2 July there have been nearly 42,000 new cases reported to 23 August. The explanation offered for this rise is that it is because more tests are being carried out; a.k.a ‘The Trump Excuse’. This is plausible in the case of the change in average new infections between the first and second period, 28% more tests against 32% increase in the average daily rate, but it is not plausible as an explanation for a rise between the second and third periods of 0.15% rise in the number of tests, averaged over a seven day period, being accompanied by a 29% rise in the average daily rate of infection.

The data upon which I based my calculations can be found at: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/testing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_the_United_Kingdom

I’ve not yet spoken to any of the people I know who can tell me what they are aware that Rochdale Council has done during this period of ‘local lockdown’ to play its part in breaking transmission of the virus. Since 30 July when this period began the only thing I have been aware of is a TV interview with council leader Brett and an A5 leaflet from RMBC which popped through my door. This is against a background of a seemingly ever changing and vague set of rules/guidelines/recommendations from Boris et al.

When I was a child polio was the disease that parents dreaded which is why it was called ‘Infantile Paralysis’. A safe and effective vaccine has reduced the number of cases reported annually to less than 100 throughout the world. The virus which causes Covid 19 disease is going to be with us for the foreseeable future. We will only beat it when we have an effective vaccine and/or an effective cure. Until then the only thing we can do is adjust our behaviour to minimise the risk of transmission. Adjusting our behaviour means being in contact with as few people as possible, physically distancing ourselves from those we do meet, wearing a mask that covers our mouth and nose to prevent passing on the virus by coughing or via spittle when talking, and being scrupulously careful to wash or sanitise our hands after touching surfaces which might be carrying to virus.

These are irksome things to do for most of us. We’ve a devil dancing on our shoulder telling us to just get on with our lives. We need constant reminders as to why these things are important. It’s got to be Education, Education, Education! And this is where I think Rochdale Council has failed miserably because it is ‘just going through the motions’. Where are the large notices on every lamp post and every shop window and every billboard, reminding people of what they need to do to beat the virus? Non-existent so far as I can tell. Is anyone visiting local supermarkets and shops to remind them of their responsibility? My local corner shop certainly needs a visit. Is anyone liaising with the police to make sure the local rules are being followed?

There’s an old saying that ‘the best manure is the farmers boot’: Are you listening Mr Brett?

The Curse Of Selective Outrage by Les May

THE news channel I mostly watch, AlJazeera, regularly has little snippets pointing out how easily our emotions can be manipulated by ‘fake news’ on social media.

This morning I watched the 8am news on AlJazeera. One of the items, which I knew was NOT fake news, was video of a man getting into his car and behind him stood a Wisconsin policeman firing seven bullet into the man’s back.

Yes I was outraged, but then I asked myself what was it about the scene that brought on that emotion. Was it that it was a black man who I saw being shot or was it that it was another human being who was being treated in this way? Would my sense of outrage have been the same if the victim had not been black? Would it have been the same if it had been say Chinese police shooting an unarmed man in the back?

The answer is

‘Yes it would!’

Any country which makes any pretensions to be civilised does not allow this to happen. The colour of someone’s skin does not come into the equation.

THE ORWELL SOCIETY

EARLIER this week, we celebrated the 75th anniversary of the publication of Animal Farm, Orwell's allegory of the Russian Revolution and universal parable on the corrupting influence of power. Usually, we'd be celebrating with a series of events and finishing the day off with a game of cards, but sadly we were unable to have Mr Pilkington round this year. However, we were fortunate enough to be joined by Orwell’s biographer DJ Taylor and George Orwell’s son, Richard Blair, for an exclusive new short film that explores the professional and personal struggles Orwell faced in his battle to get the novel which transformed his career and reputation published. Whilst all Animal Farm celebrations are equal, some Animal Farm celebrations are more equal than others. Keep scrolling to watch the film and we are certain you will agree.

Elsewhere in the news, The Orwell Foundation has been following the story of Orwell Youth Prize winner Jessica Johnson, whose piece ‘A Band Apart’, about a dystopian future where an algorithm splits students into bands based on their background, has been widely praised as prescient following the fiasco surrounding this year’s A-level results. Interviewed by BBC Breakfast and Channel 4 News on Wednesday 19 August, Jessica, who wrote the story and won the prize last year, has described how she then discovered she had ‘fallen into her own story’ after her own results were downgraded, leading her to potentially miss out on a place at St Andrews to study English Literature and a scholarship, which was awarded in part on the strength of her extra-curricular achievements. We are pleased to confirm that her place at St Andrews and scholarship have now been confirmed, following the government’s recent change of policy. You can see a summary of the way Jessica’s remarkable story unfolded on our website.

Jessica’s story was chosen in 2019 by judge Caitlin Moran. The Orwell Youth Prize calls on a wide network of expert volunteers to read and sift young people’s entries (all of which are entitled to individual feedback before their final submission). We have been astonished by the number of exceptional entries this year, as over 1200 young people entered the prize during lockdown. Over the last month, we were delighted to announce this year’s winners, chosen by judges Kayo Chingonyi and Kerry Hudson. These are also available to read online. Stay tuned to the Orwell Youth Prize twitter channel as we release comments from ours judges on this year's winning pieces.

There is more to come, too. For those who have been looking to take up a hobby during lockdown, you will pleased to know that an indie adventure video game of Animal Farm will be released in the autumn in celebration of the 75th anniversary of Animal Farm's publication. You can follow the game's development through their Twitter channel: we have had a sneak peak and it is looking doubleplusgood. In the meantime, here is your monthly update of all things Orwell.

Jordan and the Foundation team

Oliver Cromwell statue defaced in Manchester

THE IRISH POST BY: Jack Beresford June 24, 2020

A STATUE of Oliver Cromwell has been graffitied in Manchester with the words “Cromwell is a cockroach” and “Irish invasion”.

The words “BLM” and “f*** racist” were also spray painted on the monument of the English Civil War Figure which stands in the city’s Wythenshawe Park.

Its defacing comes two weeks after protestors in Bristol toppled a statue of 17th century slave trader Edward Colston before throwing the bust into the nearby harbour.

The incident sparked renewed calls in Ireland for a statue of Cromwell that sits outside the UK Houses of Parliament in London to be taken down.

Cromwell served Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland during the 1600s.

He infamously enacted a series of brutal military dictates that led to the deaths of countless innocent Irish civilians including at least 2,000 people in Wexford.

The Grade II listed bronze statue of Cromwell, which dates back to 1875 is one of several set to be reviewed under plans announced by Manchester City Council in the wake of the George Floyd protests.

Labour Councillor Glynn Evans, who represents the Brooklands ward where the statue is based, branded the act ‘just mindless graffiti’

He said: “(Cromwell) did some things wrong, like with the Irish people.

“The pyramids were built by slave labourers – would we pull them down?”

The Labour politician continued: ‘It’s history. People haven’t found that statue offensive for many years. It’s just because of what has happened in America and all over.”

“It’s somebody jumping on the bandwagon,” he continued.

“If the council decides to move it then fine, but (the vandalism) is making the park look a mess.”

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Wythenshawe Park, Oliver Cromwell Statue

The Cromwell statue was controversially* erected by local Liberal politicians in 1875. It was originally sited at the junction of Deansgate and Victoria Street in Manchester, where it stood until the 1970s when it was moved from outside Manchester Cathedral to make way for a traffic scheme. After being in storage for a number of years it was installed at Wythenshawe Park, about 100metres to the east of SJ8189 : Wythenshawe Hall, although it is very unlikely that Oliver Cromwell ever visited Wythenshawe.

There have been suggestions that the statue may be moved back to its original home near the Cathedral as part of the re-development of the city centre (LinkExternal link (Archive LinkExternal link ) Manchester Evening News 19 July 2011)

The statue is a Grade II listed structure. SJ8189 : Cromwell Statue, Inscription shows a close-up of the inscription on the base.

*The erection of a statue to Cromwell annoyed the city’s large Irish immigrant population as Cromwell had ruthlessly put down Irish uprisings. And when Queen Victoria was asked to open Manchester’s town hall she allegedly insisted that the statue of Cromwell should be removed. (LinkExternal link (Archive LinkExternal link ) Manchester Evening News)

© Copyright David Dixon and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Posh Lives Matter!

    by Christopher Draper

 

IF Germany preserved the mansions of the men who organised the Nazi slave camp system and published accompanying guidebooks detailing architectural features and the aesthetics of looted art works whilst concealing the source of their former owners’ wealth we’d be appalled, yet Britain’s NATIONAL TRUST lovingly maintains the heritage of Britain’s aristocratic slave traders with scarce a mention of their iniquities.

For Example…

Buckland Abbey – home of Francis Drake, who with his cousin John Hawkins started Britain’s slave trade in 1562, owned by Drake’s descendants until NT took over in 1946

Chirk Castle – acquired in 1593 by Thomas Myddleton, a founder of the rapaciously racist East India Co. Managed since 1981 by NT, the Myddleton family remain in residence

Tyntesfield – owned by the Gibbs family whose African slave trade profits were re-invested in the exploitation and virtual enslavement of Chinese labourers in their Peruvian guano pits

Powis Castle- lavishly displayed Indian artefacts plundered by Robert Clive

Newark Park – owned from the 18^th century until 1946 by the Clutterbuck family, in 1837 Sarah Clutterbuck “of Newark Park” claimed compensation for 110 Jamaican slaves

Quarry Bank Mill– erected by Samuel Greg who jointly owned, with his brother, a Dominican plantation with 139 slaves

Speke Hall – purchased in 1795 by Richard Watts an immensely rich slave trader based in Liverpool and Jamaica, owned by Watts family until 1943

Dyrham Park– according to NT, William Blathwayt was a “Hard working civil servant” and Dyrham Park -“An early example of how a fortune made from empire was invested in a landed estate.” According to history he was a tireless advocate for the slave trade who readily accepted bribes from its practitioners.

Convenient Lies

There’s no objectivity to NT guidebooks which feature aristocratic family trees, portraits, pottery and fine furniture but rarely mention slavery. As air-brushed exploits of the gentry are extolled at length, the histories of the enslaved blacks and poor whites they exploited are ignored. To visit an NT property is to worship at the altar of aristocracy and with twenty million paying visitors a year, NT is a powerful advocate of reactionary worldviews.

As we perambulate NT’s pastoral palaces we gaze up at portraits of generations of be-knighted toffs who richly deserve to be pulled from their pedestals and consigned to the dustbin of history. Whilst acquiring country houses and arranging exhibits, NT bosses may not fully comprehend their complicity in concealing the gentry’s genocidal role but as Hannah Arendt observed, such is the banality of evil.

Rewarding the Guilty

Britain’s slave traders were never held to account for their murderous record. On the contrary, when their slaves were “emancipated” in 1833 Parliament rewarded the traders with £20 billion (2020 equivalent) “compensation”. In the following century, when food imports undermined agricultural land values, Parliament again intervened to sustain aristocratic privilege. Whilst some toffs auctioned off the family silver, pulled down crumbling piles, sold off estates and reinvested in liquid assets, traditionalists fought to maintain their God-given social and political pre-eminence and discovered a surprising ally.

Polite Subversion

Although NT’s founders were Christian Socialists who opposed privilege and campaigned for workers’ access to the countryside, from the late 1930’s onwards, the Trust and the toffs became affectionate bedfellows. This ideological volt-face was engineered by James Lees-Milne, who in 1936, was appointed as Secretary of NT’s newly created “Country House Committee”. Lees-Milne was an arch-snob infatuated with “aristocracy” who’d spent the previous five years as Private Secretary to Baron Lloyd. Together with his posh chums and their Parliamentary lackeys, Lees-Milne devised a plan granting tax relief all round for NT to bail out aristocrats who wished to remain in residence. NT shouldered the burden of running and renovating their mansions on condition that the public was granted limited access. The deal was sealed by an act of Parliament passed in 1940 as “The Country Houses Scheme”. Lees-Milne was in his element socialising with the toffs, encouraging a succession of Lords, Ladies, Dukes, Earls and other assorted gentry to take up influential positions within NT.

Rebel in the Ranks

NT was soon stuffed full with both grand Country Houses and Country House grandees and these came to characterise NT. A campaign to return the Trust to its original principles was in 1967 led by an employee, Conrad Rawnsley, the grandson of one of its founders. He claimed NT’s original aim to provide “open air sitting rooms for the poor” had been subverted to offer “aristocratic drawing rooms for the middle classes.” Headlined as, “Rawnsley versus the Reactionaries”, NT’s reactionary Chairman, Randal McDonnell, 8^th Earl of Antrim (ed Eton & Oxford) responded by sacking him but was forced by Harold Wilson’s government to commission an internal enquiry. Lord Antrim appointed Henry Benson CBE, a senior partner of accountants “Coopers & Lybrand” and member of a shooting syndicate that leased NT Land, to head that enquiry. Benson suggested bureaucratic reforms but did little to restore NT’s founding principles.

Vulnerable

Confronted by Black Lives Matter NT bosses feel suddenly vulnerable and have hidden away incriminating items of slave imagery (see previous post). Dr Tarnya Cooper, NT’s “Curatorial and Collections Director”, insists NT has the matter in hand, “The National Trust has just completed the first phase of a ten-year internal inquiry into links between its properties and slavery, during which it found that almost a third of its world-famous 300 houses and gardens are tied to wealth from slaving practices…and the number could well rise”. The implicit message is, “Trust us, we’ve got everything under control and with a few more years research we’ll eventually correct our minor errors and oversights”, but NT cannot be trusted.

I emailed Dr Cooper requesting details of the properties NT had identified as linked to the slave trade but received no reply. I searched the web in vain for further details of NT’s “ten-year internal inquiry into links between its properties and slavery”. I wonder - When did this inquiry commence? When will it conclude? Who are the members of the inquiry? Does it accept external submissions? Does it even exist?

Curious Case of the Disappearing Display

NT exploited the 2007 bicentenary of Britain’s “abolition of the slave trade” to claim the moral high ground and made great play of a special exhibition it mounted at Penrhyn Castle. A Trust property built by the Douglas-Pennant family who made a fortune from their Jamaican slave plantations which they re-invested in exploiting Welsh slate quarrymen, provoking what remains Britain’s longest ever industrial dispute. On 11.12.2006 the National Trust obtained £45,700 from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) to mount a permanent exhibition at the Castle entitled, “Sugar and Slate – The Penrhyn Connection”. Tipped off that NT had duplicitously ditched the exhibition, in 2016 I investigated and emailed Martin Buckridge of HLF who confirmed that permanence was a condition of that grant and, “It is clear that at the time of your enquiry and for a period beforehand, the permanent exhibition was not on public display”. All sorts of feeble excuses followed and ultimately only a fragment of the original exhibition was remounted in an out-building but this was sufficient to satisfy both NT and HLF. Tokenism at its most cynical!

NT doesn’t like exhibiting inconvenient truths, they upset resident aristocrats and spoil the aesthetics of the Country House experience. As Andrew Loukes, an NT “House & Collection Manager”, told the Financial Times, “The more alien paraphernalia that you introduce into these spaces, the more you take away from their power to impress as historic interiors.” What a give away! - NT is concerned only to present the aristocratic perspective. Playing cat and mouse with critics, NT makes token concessions when forced but retrenches when no-one’s looking.

Inconvenient Truths

Clevedon Court is a grand north Somerset country pile and the NT handbook explains, “The house was bought by Abraham Elton in 1709 and is still the well-loved family home of the Eltons today”. Abraham Elton was a slave trading Mayor of Bristol and all three of his sons invested in slave ships. Throughout the eighteenth century the Elton’s received money from their Jamaican plantations and the refining of slave produced sugar. At their peak the family owned a quarter of the land around Bristol. They handed Clevedon Court over to the NT in the 1960’s in lieu of death duties but were permitted to remain in residence. In the 1980’s the Trust published a short guide to Clevedon Court which briefly referred to its slave trade connections but this was excised from the 2003 edition that was co-written by Julia Elton (sister of the current Baronet, Sir Charles Abraham Grierson Elton). Asked about her family’s involvement in the slave trade by Andy Beckett of the Guardian, Julia Elton insisted, “They were fighting for Bristol, you could argue that they were giving an economic opportunity to the local peasantry...”

After listening to an NT guide who, “Eagerly describes the Eltons’ successes as 18^th-century industrialists, property dealers and shipping magnates” Becket asked,

“Were they slave traders as well?” “We don’t know that they were,” - “the guide says tersely” - “There’s no proof”.

In reality, there’s ample proof and when NT again revised and reprinted its Clevedon Guidebook there remained no mention of slavery.

Time for a Change

Black Lives Matter achieved more in one afternoon by toppling Colston’s statue than many years of Bristol Council reviews and committee meetings. A child visiting Charlecote Hall recently suggested an Indian sword’s label should be changed from, “Taken During the Indian Mutiny” to “Stolen during the First War of Indian Independence”. The National Trust’s perverse misrepresentation of history demands immediate action not nebulous promises of internal review and future reform.

Christopher Draper

(no. 2 in a 4-part NT series, August 2020)

 

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