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.

Or you could just present the collection in context with information about how it was acquired (i.e. the slave trade).

Radical I know.

Why not? Enslaved people paid for them.

Have you just cherry picked the posts you can be bothered to read? Because it has been discussed, quite extensively, that wherever there is great wealth and opulence someone somewhere has paid for it with their blood, sweat and tears; that includes indigenous populations; working class populations; immigrant populations; women; children.......not just enslaved people.

And slavery/bonded labour/trafficking continues to exist all around the world

In the bid to shoehorn the historical Atlantic Slave Trade slavery in to every situation - many of the other historical injustices or oppressive working and living conditions that people have endured throughout time are over-looked or ignored.

In general I'd say that Britain's has done a good job of acknowledging many of these various situations - but this new push arises entirely from Critical Social justice and other American political agendas.

Not just enslaved Africans

So because other people have been exploited and continue to be so, you don't want any mention of the labour that paid for some English country houses, in those houses?

There's no point in engaging with you any further. You reduce everything to. a one liner - typical of social justice activists with narrow agendas.

Read the thread and come back with actual responses to what has been written at length, and with some significant effort.

I sum things up and you don't like it.

And lacking any proper response, you head for insults 😁

What, all of them?!

Well I’m back home sooner than anticipated folks. Would you believe the manager of my local CarpetRight had the nerve to chuck me out and impose a lifetime ban? Unbelievable! All I did was ask about the history of the warehouse because, would you credit it, there wasn’t a single sign I could check to see if they had a problem with colonialism 😤

When the manager had calmed himself down at the end of my spirited line of questioning I thought I’d engage him in a chat about my ideas for new carpet designs. Apparently, they don’t sell a single pink, white and blue striped carpet anywhere in the store. Incredible I know! Sensing I was getting nowhere with the silly, uneducated man (who was 45 if he was a day I should add 🙄) I gamely suggested that he should listen to my opinions on stair runners emblazoned with progress pride emblems. He said that he’d heard quite enough for one day and threatened to call the police if I didn’t leave quietly. As you can imagine this was like a rainbow coloured rag to a bull and leave quietly I certainly didn’t. I think the staff in adjoining business could all hear me bellowing at the man about being on the wrong side of history.

Aah, another day well spent. Although I’m sure where to go for carpet now …

Have you ever heard of this word -“Disagreement”? Happy to educate you 🤣

I think there are several potential connection points between country houses and slavery. I don’t think anyone would suggest though, that all of them are equally relevant to every house though:

Where the money came from to fund the house
The occupations of those who lived in it
The presence of black servants
Representations of black people in portraits (often as servants as was fashionable in the 18th c) and on objects in the house
Support from people who lived there for the abolition of slavery

I can’t say I’ve seen an exhibition of anything to do with slavery in a house where the house had none of these connections.

Really interesting discussion, which I've not read all of it yet but suspect you'll all find William Dalrymple and Anita Anand's podcast 'Empire' really interesting.

Have to admit I'm rather partial to a bit of modern interpretation of history and the focus on aspects of history that the Victorians would have glossed over. Just like we now enjoy different performances of Shakespeare to those the Victorians watched. Surely part of history is the constant reinterpretation of our past in our own reflection.

Your argument has several fundamental weaknesses:

I don’t see that other stories are being excluded or slavery being “shoehorned” into “every situation” the last time I went to an NT property where a link with slavery was mentioned there weee also materials about servants, local miners on land owned by the estate etc.

It makes no sense to argue that because modern slavery exists we should not highlight it in the past.

If you don’t understand slavery (and the colonialism, and economic activity it helped facilitate) and its ongoing legacy today you don’t understand modern history.

Yes, transatlantic slavery does get more attention than some other topics you mention, because a) the huge numbers involved b) the profound impact on large chunks of the world - the Americas, Africa, Europe c) the ongoing injustice experienced by black people as a consequence of the ideas, ideologies, behaviours and representations that were borne from the trade and continue to influence many white peoples perception of and treatment of black people today.

You seem to have a real problem with your perception “all this slavery stuff” is an import from America. When you consider Britain shipped 3.1 million people across the Atlantic, why on earth wouldn’t it be an important topic in our history?

Absolutely.

There are several reasons Britains slave trading past has been played down:

Shame for some, especially descendants of slave owning families.

A naive sense that cos Britain was involved in abolition, we can just forget about the nasty stuff before.

A naive belief Britain has no ongoing racial injustice that is a legacy of the slave trade. Ie “we’re not like America”.

An expedient need in the Cold War to keep Commonwealth countries on our side.

Avoidance of reparations.

Avoidance of reparations
which brings me back to the question I asked which neither Goddess or Datum have found the inclination to answer.

Which was?

Has anyone on the thread visited a location where slaves actually lived? I've been to Monticello a couple of times, which was Thomas Jefferson's house. He's a fascinating man, and the last time I visited Monticello was doing a delicate balancing act of presenting both the lives of Jefferson and his family and his slaves.

It was deemed relatively controversial/a balancing act when I visited because many white US visitors who visit plantations do so out of some kind of romantic Scarlet O'Hara world view and do not want slavery "shoved in their face". Which as a (white) Brit I found a bit mind boggling because surely one place where the story of slavery should be front and centre is the plantations. And of course, black US visitors have a wide range of complex feelings about such places from "burn it all to the ground" to "make everyone come and see what happened".

Anyway, I have to say I found Monticello's presentations quite lightly done compared to how the NT or English Heritage would do it, although you could see they were trying to be honest while being sensitive. It didn't take a lot of imagination to see exactly how grim the slaves' lives were, and then going on to consider that Jefferson was relatively enlightened by the standards of his time, so his slaves were actually treated better than in other places. On the other hand, it was perfectly possible to just see the upper house and gardens and ignore the cellars and Mulberry Row where the slaves lived and worked if that was your inclination.

TL;DR version - context and culture of your visitors matter.

For @GodessOfThunder

It's not a faulty argument, I'm telling you what I experienced at a recent exhibition which had been social justice washed, at my local art gallery.

And I've also explained umpteen times how the exerted push to woke wash everything is experienced not as an education, but as an irritant - because the wider intention behind it is registered very clearly. -0and that intention comes from the U.S originated social justice movemnt with its demands for equity and reparations- both of which are contentious.

Have you been to the international slavery museum in Liverpool?

So "white shame" and "white guilt?"

That's what lies behind the re-education attempts - which is why people are rejecting of the forceful imposition. it. It is part of a wider set of social theories with a very particular intention.

Have you read 'Woke Racism' by John MCWhorter?

Also, I'm descended from slave traders and a plantation bore our name.

DatumTarum are you going to pay reparations?

If a collection was purchased using the proceeds of slave trading or slave labour, then, as with the house itself, this should be included in the text explaining the origin of the property.

So, what we do with the information is make it part of the objects “biography”. It’s part of the story of how it came to be.

It shouldn’t be destroyed. That would be silly. It does more good telling its story. There are plenty of “dark tourism” sites around the world and dark components within historic sites.

Reparations are whole other subject. Personally, philosophically I see the case for them, but I have yet to see a fair and practical way of implementing them so not something I advocate for at the mo.

Could you domain how you think my post relates to “white guilt” as that wasn’t a term I used.

“Explain” that should be