Conserving Deference by Christopher Draper

“The rich man in his castle, The poor man at his gate, God made them, high or lowly, And ordered their estate.”

(C F Alexander 1848)

OR so the NATIONAL TRUST would have us believe for 'Europe’s largest conservation charity' above all conserves Britain’s class system. Whilst the National Trust's Country Houses celebrate wealth, power and aristocratic privilege, Chairman, Tim Parker, 'a private-equity asset stripper' with 'a record of brutality and heartlessness towards workers' is sacking 1,200 people, 13% of the Trust’s workforce.

A Strange Kind of Conservation

The gullible swallow the excuse of 'Covid-related income loss' but the National Trust has over a billion pounds of investments to tide it over, not to mention the two hundred million pound personal fortune Chairman Tim Parker made by closing Clark’s shoe factories, sacking workers and outsourcing to Vietnam and then asset-stripping the AA (4,000 sacked) and KwikFit (3,500 sacked).

Charity for the Over-Privileged

National Trust is indispensable to the aristocracy as a mechanism for maintaining social status whilst avoiding taxation. The State is complicit in this game, granting the National Trust a unique legal status (1937 National Trust Act) that facilitates aristocratic tax avoidance (1953 Finance Act). Off-loading liabilities onto National Trust the toffs who remain in residence, retaining title to valuable contents which they permit the Trust to display, maintain and insure then claim back and sell when financially opportune – all for merely allowing limited public access. Income-producing assets such as shops, farms, pubs, holiday cottages etc are also retained. It is a cynically perpetuated myth that there’s been any fundamental redistribution of landed wealth and power in Britain since the Victorian era.

Welcome to Dudmaston Hall

'I am Elfrida and I live here with Mark and our two children, Oscar and Rachel, plus a few family pets! We have followed in the footsteps of Mark’s parents, James and Alison Hamilton-Russell…The photographs we have spread around the Entrance Hall and family rooms belong to the Hamilton-Russell family – most of which have been taken somewhere here at Dudmaston – see if you can spot where! As a visitor to the house, not many people realise that your front door is our front door…' This drivel continues and comprises the introductory leaflet I was handed on arrival at Dudmaston, as volunteer room guides, with hushed deference, revealed that lady bountiful herself was arranging flowers in the hallway. The Trust fosters this reverential aura of enduring aristocracy, inviting visitors to share their jaundiced view of reality.

Thoughts of Chairman Tim

Tim approves of this nonsense and is so pleased with the “history” projected by the Trust’s country houses that he told the Daily Express, 'Immigrants should visit stately homes to feel more British…we all of us need to have a sense of how we arrive at where we are today' - although not all of us arrived in a Porsche, with £200m in the bank and owning expensive homes in Hampshire and Chelsea.

The British?

Managing mansions is NT’s core business and each embodies, promotes and celebrates an air-brushed version of aristocracy from which all reference to slavery, exploitation, racism, criminality and colonial oppression has been excised; a picture of the past in which the great mass of ordinary, working class people are invisible. When immigrants, on Tim’s recommendation, visit the grand houses over which he presides the only “British” they see represented, from Francis Drake to Robert Clive, were in large part rapacious racists and ruthless exploiters sufficiently deferential to monarchy to be 'ennobled'. 'Their story' never was 'Our story'.

Who Lives in a House Like This?

The Trust’s selection of whose story is told starts with its acquisition of properties – a portfolio stuffed with grand country houses but no mining villages, holiday camps, allotments or council flats. As Times correspondent Brian Hughes observed in 2007 'The National Trust has always been keener on conserving the houses of the rich and powerful than those of the riff-raff…' In recent years Trust made a token effort to acquire a few less than grand houses, usually because they’re associated with 'celebrity' but of all the hundreds of National Trust properties only one represents radical challenge to class privilege and that’s Rosedene an 1840’s Chartist cottage. Even then the Trust restricts visits and uses the cottage as a holiday let. 'English Heritage' criticises the National Trust’s misrepresentation of the property as 'visitors are presented with a slightly rosy interpretation of rural life rather than the revolutionary force that Chartism represented in the mid-nineteenth century.'

Kedleston Hall

In contrast, the National Trust is keen that you 'Experience the ambitious grandeur of this lavishly decorated 1760’s show palace, lived in over the centuries by the Curzon family. Discover the treasures of the Eastern Museum, a collection amassed by Lord Curzon while he travelled through Asia and during his service as the Viceroy of India...” There’s no hint from NT that Curzon imposed divide and rule, setting Hindu against Muslim, - an arrogant Imperialist, even Balliol, his old college has hidden away his portrait out of post-colonial embarrassment. Nor does the Trust care to mention that Kedleston’s current incumbent, the Hon. Richard Francis Nathaniel Curzon was in 2016 jailed for serial convictions of driving whilst banned. His older brother, the Rt Hon. Peter Ghislaine Nathaniel Curzon, the 4th Viscount Scarsdale is the rightful occupant of Kedleston’s 23-roomed Georgian Wing and two servants’ flats granted rent free in perpetuity by the Trust but he was imprisoned for refusing to pay his divorce settlement and never returned. Perhaps fear rather than prejudice prevents the National Trust/i> from including such unsavoury aristocratic history for Peter Curzon warned a Daily Mail reporter who tracked him down, 'Be careful what you write because people like us are very powerful – how do think Earls can do away with their nannies and disappear?'

Conserving Privilege

It’s difficult to unearth the range of privileges NT concedes to 'donors' as it refuses to publish these 'gentleman’s agreements'. They’re often arrived at informally, 'between friends', only for this imprecision to cause rifts when subsequent generations claim title to valuable contents. This occurred, for example, at Chirk Castle where descendants reclaimed and sold several valuable items before NT formalised contracts.

At Penrhyn Castle, Richard Charles Harper Douglas-Pennant retains title to a mansion in the grounds as well as 75% of the castle’s contents. NT’s Castle guidebook originally featured Jan Steen’s painting of the 'Burgomeister of Delft', until in 2004 it was withdrawn from exhibition on Douglas-Pennant’s instruction and sold for £8.1m. The current edition of the guidebook features Rembrandt’s portrait of 'Catrina Hoogsaet – the masterpiece of the collection', unfortunately Douglas-Pennant reclaimed and sold that in 2015 for £35m. In lieu of paying inheritance tax on that sale the government accepted title of 34 minor paintings already on show in the castle, including six eighteenth century watercolours of Jamaica where the family owned sugar plantations until 1943.

Skeletons

Bodnant Gardens is unusual amongst NT properties, as it wasn’t financed from profits of the slave trade but here, as elsewhere, NT assists in hiding aristocratic skeletons. There’s a deafening silence over the curious disinheritance of John Pochin, the only son of the garden’s founder (hence the estate passed from the “Pochins” down the female line to the “McLarens”). Then there’s Charles Melville McLaren’s guilty secret - until three years before he died, Lord Aberconway, father of the present incumbent, concealed the fact that he was amongst a group of seven British businessmen who secretly met Goering and other leading Nazis on an island off the German coast, just three weeks before war was declared in a last ditch appeasement attempt to offer Hitler a 'second Munich agreement'. The tragic effect of this meeting was to encourage the Nazis to invade Poland in the belief that Britain would not fight.

At Bodnant the Trust maintains the accessible 82 acre gardens but the family retain ownership of the 5,000 acre estate which includes farms, forestry, holiday cottages and retail outlets that the National Trust obligingly channels 260,000 visitors through each year. Michael Duncan McLaren forbids access to Bodnant Hall even though he works in London as a highly successful commercial barrister owning multi-million pound houses in Kensington and Tuscany.

Venite Adoremus

Plas Newydd was given to the Trust by the Marquis of Anglesey in 1976 but the family retain ownership of Parys Mountain which supplied invaluable copper to the African slave trade. You wouldn’t learn this from the National Trust’s presentation of the property nor would you discover much about the extraordinary life of the flamboyantly camp fifth Marquis of Anglesey as the family don’t want this publicised. The Marchioness does wish that her late husband’s study remains on view, unchanged and maintained as a shrine to his memory and NT duly complies. The Trust’s site manager, Jane Richardson, did clash with the Marchioness over her insistence on limiting public access to the gardens but was forced to concede after she was 'given a very, very clear steer' by the Trust’s Director General 'That I have a responsibility to work with the donor family and to keep them happy'!

Conserving Control

The National Trust’s Constitution provides for the restraint rather than representation of members’ views. It is a centralised and hierarchical organisation with a Chairman heading a ruling Council while the executive wing is controlled by a 'Director-General' and 'Executive Team'. Although NT comprises 14,000 staff, 65,000 volunteers and 5.6 million members they have little opportunity to influence policy.

In 2013 the National Trust bosses commissioned Leicester Business School to investigate disaffection amongst volunteers. In 2015 it concluded, 'Volunteers often felt a sense of marginalisation with respect to decision making, property developments, skills utilisation and creative input.' A staff member reported, 'I agree with the volunteers. The volunteers’ complaints are being dismissed as 'bad behaviour' by management. 'As paid staff we cannot express our opinions or feelings, we just have to toe the line.' 'Kim' articulated management’s response, 'We need them to buy into what we are ultimately trying to achieve!'

Sheep and Goats

Trust bosses claim “Our pay policy recognises that our staff are not motivated or attracted solely by pay…” and reflecting the organisation’s charitable status most of the workforce are indeed modestly remunerated although the bosses employ a different yardstick in calculating their own pay and, conveniently, “The pay arrangements for senior managers are not covered by the Partnership Agreement”. The National Trust’s top 15 bosses pocket two million pounds a year between them while Director-General Hilary McGrady “earns” £190,000 plus perks. Perks for top managers include accommodation in properties donated to the Trust but not open to the public. Thomas Hardy’s home, “Max Gate”, for instance was quietly acquired by the Trust in 1940 but kept under wraps and only opened to visitors 54 years later. Scotney Castle was donated to the Trust in 1970 but wasn’t opened to the public until 2007. For most of the 1970’s and 1980’s Margaret Thatcher occupied a three-bedroomed apartment at Scotney but despite the determined efforts of M.P.Dennis Skinner, National Trust bosses refused to disclose details of this cosy arrangement.

Manipulating the Membership

National Trust members can stand for a position on the ruling Council or submit a motion for debate at the AGM, where nominations and resolutions are decided by members’ votes, but there’s an important proviso. Members not attending routinely authorise the Chairman to vote on their behalf. Most people assume this provides a casting vote in the event of a stalemate but this isn’t the practice at the Trust. The National Trust chairmen, past and present, employ thousands of these 'proxy votes' to systematically vote down motions otherwise endorsed by the majority of members. The anti-democratic effect of this procedure has been denounced at AGM’s for more than fifty years, prompting one unsuccessful nominee, Nicholas Fry a trustee of Chester Cathedral, to describe the Council as a 'a self-perpetuating oligarchy'

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In 2000 two Q.C.’s, who were also Trust members, successfully proposed a resolution banning the use of the Chair’s 'block vote' only for it to be overturned by the Chairman’s 'block vote'! Facing a membership increasingly angry at the Trust continuing to allow fox hunting on its land, in 2002 the Chairman made free use of the 100,000 'proxies' in his pocket to pack the Council with blood-sports enthusiasts including Clarissa Dickson Wright and Nicholas Soames MP. With a curious irony the National Trust’s 'democratic deficit' was denounced by the House of Lords! Forced to reform, the Trust’s Chair was compelled to reveal to members, for the first time, exactly how many proxy votes he cast at AGM’s and proxy voting for Council membership was abolished. Members were then directed which candidates to vote for and these names were printed in bold-type on ballot papers! In a rare victory, at the 2015 AGM, members finally voted out this disgraceful practice despite the chairman casting 4,065 proxy votes against. Of the total of 18 members’ resolutions submitted to the last 7 AGM’s the Chair opposed every single one including motions on ending trail hunting, on banning barbed wire and even on serving Fairtrade tea in the Trust's cafes.

At the 2017 AGM members would have finally banned trail hunts (which are a ruse to continue fox hunting with terrier men convicted for releasing foxes to be ripped to pieces by trail hounds) but the Chair cast 3,460 proxy votes to 'keep on killing'. Seventy or so trail hunts operate on National Trust land but with the 3-year exclusion rule (for resubmitting resolutions) expiring in 2020 the ban was due to be voted on again at this year’s AGM and members were confident of victory. Curiously the National Trust bosses decided to cancel the meeting. Meanwhile the Scottish National Trust responded to Covid by moving its 2020 AGM online. the National Trust adamantly rejects its members’ calls to follow suit.

Beyond Reform

As I’ve illustrated in this series of articles, the National Trust is fundamentally class-biased, racist, uninterested in ending animal cruelty or supporting environmentally friendly transport and the bosses are antipathetic to the views of volunteers, workers and members. It is an undemocratic corporation that’s proved itself incapable of internal reform and must be broken up to create numerous smaller, localised, perhaps county-sized, independent Trusts more willing and better able to reflect the many and varied histories of the people of England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Christopher Draper (Part 4 of 4-part NT series)

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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)

National Trust 'Somewhat Stuffy & Middle-Class'

 by
JEFFERY GREEN

"Yes the NT [National Trust] is a somewhat stuffy and middle-class group, which recently found that there was much public interest in the kitchens and servant quarters of the grand houses that it owns.  I think so much is due to that arch-snob Lees-Milne* who negotiated with the financially straightened owners - in Pulborough's Petworth House NT enabling the family to stay in the front portion of the grand house whilst the NT kept up the deer park and permitted visitors to the rear.  They finally allow access to the kitchens.  But they did purchase that Chartist cottage near Bromsgrove and the workhouse at Southwell so slowly the NT became slightly socially aware. 

"Apart from the tracts of land, these grand houses suggest to me the creation of a history that would, say in the case of France, be as valid as one based on the Loire chateaux."

 *  (George) James Henry Lees-Milne (6 August 1908 – 28 December 1997) was an English writer and expert on country houses, who worked for the National Trust from 1936 to 1973. He was an architectural historian, novelist and biographer. His extensive diaries remain in print.

                                                                                                  

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Forget Slavery – Have a Scone!

by  Christopher Draper

THE downfall of Edward Colston sent shock waves through the massed ranks of NATIONAL TRUST top brass.  Founded in 1895 primarily to protect threatened landscapes, over succeeding decades NT has increasingly focussed on acquiring, conserving and celebrating the legacy of the genocidal colonial adventurers, aristocratic land grabbers and grubby financiers that created Britain’s despicable slave trade. These blood money palaces, stately homes and grand gardens were designed to flaunt their patron’s social standing and aesthetic good taste and camouflage the barbaric reality.  It was myth-making on a grand scale and it’s a tradition the NATIONAL TRUST has assiduously maintained and enhanced.

Rattling the Tea Cups

Suddenly the hierarchy feel exposed and vulnerable – Colston’s statue was pulled down on the 7^th June 2020 and within four days NT bosses had spirited away and hidden the “Kneeling Slave” statue that formerly greeted visitors to Dunham Massey Hall, Altrincham.  Visitors had long questioned the Trust’s failure to explain and justify the prominent exhibition of this racially demeaning icon and in response NT bosses defended the racist imagery with an outrageous lie…

Whitewash

NT management refuse to admit any failure of moral or historical judgement and instead claim they belatedly acted solely out of concern for visitors’ emotions;

“The statue has caused upset and distress because of the way it depicts a black person and because of its prominence at the front of the house”

Typical NT weasel words, in truth it acted to pre-empt the embarrassment of a public toppling in a Black-Lives-Matter related incident.  This is evident from NT’s application to the planning authorities for retroactive “listed structure” consent for the statue’s removal.  A spokesman for Trafford Council confirms that,

“The NATIONAL TRUST have written to the council’s planning service to advise that the statue was removed in order to preserve the structure”!

NT continue to claim,

“We don’t want to censor or deny the way colonial histories are woven into the fabric of our buildings…”

But this is precisely the reverse of the truth…

The BIG LIE!

In response to visitors’ critical enquiries, a decade ago NT erected an “interpretive” plaque alongside the Dunham Massey statue,

“This sundial is in the style of one commissioned by King William III. It represents Africa, one of four continents known at the time.  The figure depicts a Moor, not a slave…”!

No-one, apart from the NATIONAL TRUST, has ever made such an absurdly dishonest claim. Academics routinely refer to this and similar statues as “Kneeling Slaves”, sometimes as “Blackamoors”, never a Moor and always acknowledging the servile pose and colonial context.  A 1725 inventory details the figure as, “A negro Slave kneeling on one knee and bearing a Sun Dyall on his head” (sic).   The slave’s bent, kneeling posture bearing the full weight of a stone sundial for the benefit of aristocratic observers (and latterly modern visitors) offends everyone but the NATIONAL TRUST for as Madge Dresser emphasises, “The Blackamoor’s humanity is subsumed by his utilitarian function”.

The NT is structurally and philosophically wedded to a White Supremacist version of history.  It polishes, maintains and reproduces the reactionary views of a politico-cultural elite and denies the life histories of the exploited.  Despite being a mass membership organisation the NT is essentially a rich, powerful corporation that makes only occasional, spasmodic efforts to portray the lives of the lower orders.  The organisation eschews vital historical analysis preferring to retail romanticism, infotainment, refreshments and pseudo-historical nick-knackery – enter through the car-park and exit through the gift shop.

I’ll tackle more aspects of NT racism, greenwash and assorted flummery in future posts but focus here on the iconography of the “Kneeling Slave” and there’s another one on the other side of the Pennines…

A Telling Alternative

Wentworth Castle near Barnsley was built by a notorious slave trading family whose “Blackamoor” statue is now housed in the conservatory, which, along with extensive parklands is administered by the NATIONAL TRUST.  It’s a similar “Kneeling Slave” bearing a stone sundial, although it’s slightly earlier c.1720 rather than Dunham’s c.1735, it’s in much better condition.  This is not simply because it’s now kept indoors but because it was sensitively restored in 2011 by conservators who took great care to create a realistic black skin tone. When installed in the conservatory further scrupulous work was undertaken to research the context and historical significance of the figure most notably by Patrick Eyres.  Eyres subsequently led public walks around the grounds explaining the politico-historical context of the house and gardens and the particular significance of the “Blackamoor”.  These researches culminated in publication of his (highly recommended) book “Blackamoors in the Georgian Garden” (New Arcadian Press) and the erection of accurate and insightful interpretive signage at Wentworth, eg;

“Sir Thomas Wentworth helped to negotiate the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. This international treaty confirmed Britain as the most important commercial power in Europe. It included a lucrative monopoly over the Atlantic slave trade. Wentworth represented this in his house and gardens, including a statue of a kneeling African man supporting a sundial that now stands in the conservatory. Like many of his contemporaries, Wentworth made a great deal of money from the sale and labour of enslaved Africans. This human misery helped pay for the house and gardens he built.”

Exception Proves the Rule

Wentworth’s enlightened admissions contrast sharply with Dunham Massey’s denial and the explanation isn’t hard to find for NT only gained control of Wentworth Castle Gardens a year ago.  Wentworth’s admirable research and restoration had already been completed by volunteers who formed a community “Heritage Trust” that administered the gardens for two decades until shortage of funds forced them to hand over to NT in 2019.  The community trust recognised the Blackamoor as an icon of colonial exploitation that if exhibited unexplained would embody and perpetuate a racist world-view but when sensitively restored and contextualised offered enormous potential for critical re-evaluation of imperial history.  It’s imperative that the local trust’s interpretation endures and that visitors monitor the possible “re-interpretation” of the “Kneeling Slave” under NT stewardship.

“Not Another One!”

“Kneeling Slaves” were the eighteenth century’s best selling lead garden statues after William III, who owned both house and plantation slaves, commissioned a couple from Van Nost in 1701 for his Hampton Court Garden.  Supply and demand collapsed with the demise of the last London manufacturer, John Cheere in 1787, the year the Committee for the Abolition of the African Slave Trade was formed. Rather than boast of personal involvement in the slave trade, stately home owners grew embarrassed by the origins of their wealth and “Blackamoors” disappeared from grand gardens to be sold on, hidden away or melted down. Now only eight “Kneeling Slaves” continue to occupy their original garden, including our two NT examples but if the celebrated “Brenda of Bristol” were to visit her local NT property, she might well utter her famous catchphrase, “Oh no, not another one!”

Unbelievably a bedroom on show at the NATIONAL TRUST’s Dyrham Park “boasts” not just one but two “Kneeling Slaves”!  As house rather than garden slave, they’re borne down by the weight of huge exotic seashells rather than stone sundials but the pose is identical and leaving absolutely no scope for denial their servility is emphasised by their shackling with slave collar and chains.

Wilful Ignorance or Worse?

Wentworth’s sensitive restoration, display and interpretation exemplifies how these figures can be properly exhibited but distortion, denial and obfuscation more typically characterises NT’s approach.  Although NT received a copy of Eyres’ research it continued to exhibit the Dunham and Dyrham “Blackamoors” in the de-contextualised aesthetic fashion favoured by their original aristocratic owners.  In February 2018 a visitor was so shocked by Dyrham’s “Blackamoors” display that they complained on TRIPADVISOR;

“I was deeply disturbed during my visit to Dyrham Hall when I witnessed chained depictions of enslaved human beings in subservient positions casually being displayed as ornamental features…there was no explanation of these artefacts in the room or in the interpretation leaflets (there was only information about paintings and pottery)…”

Another post registered “revulsion” at the racist display.  Six months later Dyrham Park’s “Public Relations Manager” responded by insisting there are,“information leaflets on display next to the stands which put them into context”. However, no leaflets or info boards are apparent in extant photographs and although NT did recently supply me with an undated copy of a leaflet contextualising the “Blackamoor Stands” its value is academic as NT have now removed both Dyrham’s “Chained Slaves” from public view.

As I write, visitors can still gain sight of Wentworth’s “Blackamoor” through the windows of a locked conservatory but the Dunham and Dyrham “slaves” have been hidden away and their images removed from the NT website.  In future posts I’ll explain further how black lives don’t matter much to NT, and neither do white working class lives, nor internal democracy but in the meantime Northern Voices would appreciate readers’ feedback on your opinions and experiences of the NATIONAL TRUST.

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The National Trust in Totalitarians Times

VOLUNTEERS at Felbrigg Hall, a Norfolk property owned by the National Trust, were being dragooned last week into wearing gay pride type badges.  It has been reported that dozens of unpaid guides have either refused to do so or quit the job.

The disgruntled volunteers are protesting against the requirement they wear the gay rainbow badges as part of the Felbrigg Hall commemorative season entitled 'Pride & Prejudice' to mark 50 years since homosexuality was decriminalised in 1967. 

Annabel Smith, head of volunteering and participation development at the Trust, has said volunteers sign up to the organisation's 'founding principles' of promoting equality of opportunity and inclusion.
However, she added:  'We do recognise that some volunteers may have conflicting, personal opinions,'.

Dame Helen Ghosh, the well-paid director general of the National Trust, has said the National Trust was marking the anniversary of the law change at 'a dozen or so of our properties of the people who lived there and whose personal lives were outside the social norms of their time'.

Dame Helen has been adept at climbing the greasy pole in the national bureaucratic hierarchies.  She did alternate stints at the Department of Pensions, the Cabinet Office, the Department for the Environment and HM Revenue and Customs under Tony Blair's New Labour regime.  She was made a Dame in 2008 when Gordon Brown was Prime Minister, and became Permanent secretary of the Home Office in 2011.

She was appointed to the National Trust, which has an income of £500 million a year.  Last year, Melvyn Bragg accused the National Trust of 'mafia tactics' when it used it's deep pockets to buy Lake District farmland at inflated prices, and in doing so outbidding local sheep farmers who had hoped to work the land.

In the real world the National Trust operates a funny kind of equality of opportunity and inclusion.

Charities that use Benefits Claimants as Free Labour, named and shamed!

The names of hundreds of major companies and leading British charities who used a benefits scheme to employ people without paying them have been revealed after the government lost a four-year legal battle to protect their identities. The list, includes firms such as Tesco, Nando's, Boots, Superdrug, Morrisons, Asda, Co-op, WHSmith, Poundstretcher, Cash Converter, DHL and a host of other major corporations. And it also includes charities such as the British Red Cross, Age UK, Cancer Research, Marie Curie, the National Trust, Oxfam, the RSPB, the Salvation Army and Shelter.

Read more: Independent, http://tinyurl.com/hbu2ahs