National Trust AGM

[PRAMtran]

I’ve received an email from the National Trust inviting me and all other members to vote in their AGM. Does anyone know if there are any things a woman’s rights advocate should vote for or against. Eg TWAW by stealth.

Bizarre comment.

@GodessOfThunder maryrose.org/blog/collections/the-collections-team/queering-the-mary-rose-s-collection/

Yes!

this is something I’d like to see (see I don’t think all funds should be diverted to propping up the buildings!)

The fact of the matter is at least 90 NT properties are significantly connected to slavery and colonialism. This was the source of the wealth that allowed them to be built and maintained. For instance, if you are unaware look up homes built by the “nabobs” returning from India

If a property was built in the 18 or 19c then the chances of it NOT being built on the proceeds of slavery ot colonialism are slim to none. a fact I'm pretty sure most people are aware of. Ditto

As for LGBT+ stories, reading the posts here one gets the impression commenters think homosexuality was invented in the ‘60s. There is a rich history of same-sex sexual behaviour going back centuries. Again, telling it is just surfacing a fuller perspective on the past, not fashionable “shoehorning”

It becomes shoehorning when assumptions are made and presented about Lord Flossy remaining unmarried as if they're fact to suit the current agenda, instead of saying he may have been gay, he may have been asexual, he might never have met a woman who wanted to marry him or he wanted to marry, we just don't know.

I wonder if a couple of posters obvious contempt for NT visitors and their assumed level of knowledge is a general NT attitude. Would explain a lot.

Me too.

I find it odd that people seem so riled up by anything seen to undermine the “reputation” of aristocrats in the past. These peoples’ fortunes were built on oppression, whether that be of British agricultural or industrial workers, the enslaved or colonial subjects.

Why the need to doff their caps?

Most of the big houses have 'downstairs' tours and guides to the lives of the servants whose presence was implicit in the running of the house.

Who are ‘these people’ to whom you refer? I’ve not seen any on this thread.
The important thing the NT are preserving are these wonderful houses, their associated land and contents. Once their attention switched to making the owners stories the focus about 20 years ago, it was inevitable that they would run into difficulties because it would become obvious that their history was ‘problematic’.
I can separate the collections from their owners and want to focus on the former rather than the later.

People are well aware of the reputations and behaviours of aristocrats. Just like we know Russian oligarchs didn’t come across their wealth by purely legitimate means. That doesn’t mean people aren’t fascinated by programs about the super wealthy. Reality TV programs like “Below Decks” run for several series following life ‘below stairs’. Then there are programs about six star hotels and their suites that cost as much for a night as people’s houses cost. Travel to exotic places no one else can afford. About personal shoppers with unlimited budgets, auction houses selling off Banksys, ‘Made in Chelsea’, ‘Rich housewife’s of x, y, and z’. People watch these programs to indulge in a spot of escapism. If they lectured on how the people made their money viewers would turn off. That isn’t why they are watching.

My local art gallery has recently had some rooms re-furbed. On re-opening all of the information plaques had been given a slavery/LGBTQ+ re-working. Many paintings or artefacts had what was essentially superflous information about often vague or tangential connections to slavery - instead of giving a more well rounded exposoition of a certain local characters' contribution to the life of the city. All was made to be about slavery.

Anyone unfamiliar with the city would come away with the impression that the city was an actual slave port in which slaves would be bought and sold - rather than a port city in which some shipowners had ships that were involved in the atlantic slave trade.

At any time in history ( including now) great wealth and opulence is predicated on some form of exploitation of someone, somewhere. If you live in a society it is virtually impossible for someone to be separate from the running or workings of its economy. How many of us buy cheap or fashionable products made on the backs of bonded labourers somewhere in the world? How many of us work for big corporations which have vested interests in activities or products which now elicit social disapproval?

We already know about the transatlantic slave trade. We've been learning about it for decades. But manipulating and forcing the issue down people's throats at every possible turn arises from the state of American politics and from critical social justice movements there. It is polarising and highly contested - not becaue it relays some truthful facts about the past - but because it makes those facts central to absolutely everything and in doing so engineers a reverse form of prejudice - in the name of equity.

Thanks, @RebelliousCow You've pretty much summed it up with that post. Have a thanks.

I disagree. What this reaction says to me is not that the visitors who come away feeling like this are ignorant or stupid, it’s that the people attempting to communicate diverse histories are doing it badly. Which doesn’t surprise me when the starting point appears to be an absolute lack of respect for the audience.

Absolutely this. And as you point out, this isn’t about ‘our ‘ history, this is about more recent American history and culture today being imposed on UK history.

I’m currently wading my way through the candidate blurb in the voting booklet There’s around 30 of them

The RT candidates are quite easy to spot, their contributions are pretty frothy. They sound like people who would be a nightmare to serve on a committee with

Having trouble spotting who the NT quick vote candidates are

it’s interesting how few years many of the candidates have been a member for. For some of them this is clearly being pursued as a prestigious committee membership that would look good on their CV rather then arising from any sincere interest in the Trust

I’m looking for people who demonstrate genuine understanding of the Trust and it’s statutory aims, who aren’t looking to take it off in some interesting new direction, and who know how to get things done

it’s interesting how few years many of the candidates have been a member for.

I think that would have a significant impact on my choices.

I find the idea that the inclusion of more information as "lecturing" or "forcing down our throats" bizarre. If you don't want to read the in-depth interpretation panels then don't. Just have a scan, enjoy the room / building / furniture / painting, and move on

The problem I can see with that is that a lot of people who DO want to read the information on the panels will accept it as fact because they don't have the knowledge about (say) the person in the portrait and they trust the NT as a professional body to be giving them the unbiased historical background not one based on whatever the NT's stance is on LGBT or gay history.

@DatumTarum Well yes, that's how history work.
Yeah, oddly enough I know this. Though I do wonder how some of the howlers make it into print. Argument-invalidating howlers, some of them.

What bugs me is when the current trendy and not as-yet fully tested theory is presented as the prism through which the clueless and benighted public must be shown everything. It just pisses people off and convinces them that historians are a waste of space, which is perhaps not the desired result.

I always wonder why the British don't celebrate that they ended the transatlantic slave trade. Slavery had been going on for thousands of years but we were the frist to oppose it. They ended it at the point of a gun and the loss of 1500 Royal Navy personnel over a half century. The fact that we could face down threats of war from other nations was because at the time we were the largest sea power. It wasn't just letters of protest and words of support, it was brute force. Brazil was blockaded until it gave in. Even the Americans were forced to concede. Celebrate that.

Do you have any actual examples of these “howlers”?

In my city, historically, there was a very prominent family of Quakers and Unitarians who were very active and influential during the period of the atlantic slave trade ( as well as for other important events of social history). They were responsible for, among other things, the setting up of public wash houses and also the world's first formal school of nursing, as well as the creation of teams of district nurses.

These nurses would tend to the many poor and destitute of the city - and were actve during many years of famine and epidemic; exacerbated by the potato famine in Ireland, and the subsequent arrival in the city of thousands of poor, desperate migrants.

A generation or two later a Rathbone daughter ( a liberal politician) went on to successfully campaign for the introduction of the 'Family Allowance' - which was to be paid direct to women - independent of their husband. Men were paid a 'family wage' which took into account the fact they had a family to support, but many men saw this money as their alone - and didn't hand over their pay packet to their wife ( some men did), who was then reduced to having to ask for money from an often unwilling husband. This led to great hardship and suffering for many women and children.

To have such a family reduced only, or primarily, to its connection to slavery on account of being shipowners ( at a time when Britain was a seafaring nation - before railways and canals) is to undermine a more rounded history and contribution.

“Rule Britannia’ was also written to celebrate the end of a slave trade due to the Royal Navy - the slaves in question were British being taken by North African pirates and sold in the African slave markets.

Patriotism is unfashionable innit?

It is in Britain...but many countries, America included, thrive on it. Raising the flag each morning and proudly singing some national anthem or other.

If a property was built in the 18 or 19c then the chances of it NOT being built on the proceeds of slavery ot colonialism are slim to none. a fact I'm pretty sure most people are aware of. Ditto

In my extensive professional experience in this field I would say “most people” are not aware of the sources of wealth that some NT homes were built with. And even if your statement were to be true, it doesn’t negate the validity of mentioning in a guidebook or on an information board, what the specific source of wealth was for the specific family that built the specific house. First time visitors are unlikely to know whether it was from, say, being a director of the East India Company, the North American fur trade, being a plantation owner etc (often alongside other economic activity). These properties were the product of exceptional wealth. To not mention the source of it would not be an especially useful historical explanation.

It becomes shoehorning when assumptions are made and presented about Lord Flossy remaining unmarried as if they're fact to suit the current agenda, instead of saying he may have been gay, he may have been asexual, he might never have met a woman who wanted to marry him or he wanted to marry, we just don't know.

I’m not familiar with “Lord Flossy” (was he invented upthread?). Historians have been writing about the history of sexuality for decades. There are established practices for seeking to understand and describe the sexual behaviours and identities of people in the past without resorting to anachronism. If you have any actual real world examples of where you think anachronism has occurred I can give you a POV.

No, just made nonsense history.

People don't become historians, curators or archaeologists because they dislike the country they're studying, quite the opposite in fact!

Yes. But my research is in a pretty specialised field and I have no desire to out myself. But I can give you a couple of examples.

One example: paper in a reputable journal, bloke given the wrong ethnic background (you can find him on Google with the correct details, and he is fairly well-known anyway). This incorrect ethnicity served to negate an entire line of argument in said paper.

Another example, in a book: claim that the British had betrayed members of a political grouping in what was then a British possession by going back on promises made earlier. The relevant documents (which I have read I forensic detail) showed rather that no such promises had been made, that Britons lower down the chain had nagged the Colonial Office for permission to make such promises and had been told they must not, and there was zero evidence that they had disobeyed these orders, and quite a lot that they had done as they were instructed.

There are plenty more. Some are annoying but don't have much impact on the interpretation of events, but some completely change how the reader sees things.

So yep, I am qualified to comment here.