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.

I agree. I would be interested in learning more about the history of agriculture. These great estates were funded by farming and how they developed farming to be as productive and profitable as possible is interesting. Also the impact of the late 19thC collapse in farm rents and how that impoverished some of these estates. The Corn Laws, impact of cheap overseas food imports.

Yes, exactly.

I think I'm getting more of an idea of what the attitudes are of the experts at the NT and others, based on the contributions of some of the self-proclaimed experts on this thread. The disdain for the paying customers of the NT and similar organisations is clear.

Yes.

Well, yes. They've succeeded in confirming what some of us had suspected.

Oh give over. Haven’t you reached your quota of patronising the rest of us for today? You’ve put so much effort into it that it’s high time nanny took you upstairs for a little lie down 🤣

Theres zero interest in the History of Art isn’t there?

I agree. I would be interested in learning more about the history of agriculture. These great estates were funded by farming and how they developed farming to be as productive and profitable as possible is interesting. Also the impact of the late 19thC collapse in farm rents and how that impoverished some of these estates. The Corn Laws, impact of cheap overseas food imports.

Perhaps use a better example of a topic more interesting for you to discover than the history of agriculture if you want to avoid hearing more about slavery. Or do you feel there should be an effort to avoid mention of slavery as you already know about that part and want to find out about the other stuff?

I really don’t feel that anyone should decide what is ‘enough’ in relation to a historical exhibition highlighting atrocities that someone else would have experienced directly had they been alive at time. The degree of emotion that this part of history can trigger in people is intensely palpable when you seek to listen. It doesn’t matter whether the example is slavery, the holocaust, the Somme or the treatment of women pregnant outside marriage before the 1960s.

It would be more cost effective to build easy to maintain replica.

Eh? So a ‘replica’ of Hardwick would be built. Where? What would happen to the original house?
If it’s a replica then presumably all the elaborate plaster work, windows etc would have to be copied so why would that be easier to maintain?
If this is what the NTs state of mind is at the moment then I fear for the institution.

Oh good lord, is that what NT want us to know when we visit their properties? "atrocities that they would have experienced directly had they been alive at time." ?!

I think there has been plenty of positive examples on this thread of what people DO want to hear about. The history of the property, the family, the estate. The provenance of the furniture, art, clothing, jewellery and other objects. The lives of the people who lived and worked there, both above and below stairs in the house, and on the estates. The impact of historical events on the house and people, and how they coped (or not) with them. Just not making those historical events the focus of everything. If I want to learn about slavery in depth I'll be off to the Wilberforce Museum or the International Slavery Museum etc.

What do they “want” to hear about though?

And to what extend should that be catered to as it stands vs immersing visitors in something they didn’t know about already. These are legitimate questions.

As Henry Ford said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

Many visitors want to know something of the history of the property and its inhabitants. If parts of this story involve slavery and colonialism why wouldn’t you tell it?

I do think a lot of the “complaints” about the of slavery “crowding out” other histories associated with a property are simply straw men. No one has provided a single named example on an NT property where content relating to slavery has over any sustained period of time pushed out stories of servants etc. The issue seems to be more an allergic reaction on the part of conservatives to anything with a vague whiff of difference, rather than any empirical observation.

I went to a NT property at the weekend with a strong suffragette connection that I didn’t know about previously and read about a very interesting person connected to the pre-suffragette votes for women campaign who was divorced and disowned by her family died of malnutrition whilst on hunger strike.

This should have been left out then @MyLadyDisdainlsYetLiving ?

I think it might be a mistake to think DT and GOT are parroting the NT’s position (although they may be) rather than just enjoying re-educating the resistant.

" Conservatives"? Are you American So very predictable.

100% agree.

" Conservatives"? Are you American So very predictable.

I think they are just mired in the CRT/QT mindset which is very American, and parroting the usual talking points.

It’s misery porn now isn’t it

Yes, that and discussions about 'white feminism' no doubt.

Whatever happened to actually thinking for oneself instead of regurgitating a bonkers theory over and over and over and …well, you get the point, which is more than the theory spouters do! How anyone can be so sure that their unoriginal, illogical point of view should dominate is puzzling me. It’s almost like some people are in the grip of a religious cult 🤔

I've heard tons of American voices on radio recently ( BBC Radio 4) - often spouting about de-colonisation or queering stuff ( how the ocean is a queer space). It is getting very tiresome, and I usually end up turning it off.

As pp have pointed out there are plenty of houses open to the public which are privately owned so it’s up to the owners to decide what information is given about the property and family.
I wonder if there are many complaints from visitors that the owners give too rosy a view of their history?

I'm so bored of it. I'm so bored of the creeping Americanisation of our culture.

I posted this on the white feminism thread but I've just finished This is Not America - why black lives in Britain matter by Tomiwa Owolade and it's a great critique and explains very clearly why we can't just transpose US ideology to the U.K. because it simply doesn't fit.

Well I've been told several times on this thread that it's not the history. So why do they need to be old?

Most of this is true of other forms of slavery and social class structures as well.Slavery was a completely ubiquitous part of human social structures throughout all human history.

The particular essentiallist, scientific racism that came out of the American slave trade was eventually superseded by other ideas and human nature that emerged in the West through the early modern and into the modern period, which is why Britain and other European countries embarked on the first large scale attempts to squash slavery legally and through military action.

Race essentialism is seeing something of a comeback, particularly within the identarian movement, that again posits that social hierarchies need to be legally and morally constructed around race. Personally I think this is bad, but YYMV.

Economic social hierarchy is a fact in every time period, and you would be hard pressed to find any person in the modern west who is unaware of this. The existence of have and have nots, right down to the lowliest, is, despite the patronizing attitudes of some on this thread, pretty universally accepted.

@TheHoover it seems you and other contributors in the thread can't tell the difference between "tell us about this house/the family in the context of this historical event" and "tell us about this historical event". Many of us want more of the former, and not the latter.

I’m keen to understand why there is so much mention of American CRT on this thread. It’s a very, very British issue about our particular, unique past.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/travel/article/national-trust-colonialism-slavery/index.html