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.

Would you take the same approach with slavery?

If he was considered a danger to young male staff?

Do you want history or personal propaganda?

Someone’s cage has been rattled it seems!! Blimey.

I've joined just to vote the current lot out. I couldn't give a shit what you ascribe my motivations to. Screaming bigot long ceased to have any meaning.

Truthfully? No I don’t want history primarily. I want architecture, gardens, art, sculpture,fine furnishings. I want to know about who made or designed them. I’m reasonably well aware of the historical exploitation of people at home and overseas and if I want to know more I would read a book.

A theme park.

Well yes, this is my profession being hikacked for a bullshit culture war; specifically designed as part of the Tory party election campaign.

RT tried this before, we fought them off then and we'll do it again.

Who’s “we”? The NT’s senior management team? The NT’s current board of trustees?

😂😂
This thread has taken a somewhat unhinged turn

It's not really surprising. Restore Trust is about as 'grass roots' as its fellow travellers the Taxpayers' Alliance (other opaquely-funded lobby groups are available). Tufton Street is a genuinely malign influence that's succeeded in poisoning the national discourse over the past couple of decades – its unfettered free market/small state/climate science denial given a false legitimacy by the print and broadcast media, much of which should really know better. There may well be legitimate issues with the way the National Trust is run, but trotting along behind some Tufton Street pied piper is not the solution.

Cant imagine there was any NT property that wasnt built from exploiting the poor and powerless. Of course no-one should be hiding that slavery contributed to that but I'd like to see proper balance about their exploitation of people in general. Does it really matter if the head of the household was gay? I wouldnt expect anyone to hide it but why make a meal of it now?

Most NT visitors want to look at some nice old building and decor and a slice of Victoria sponge and a cup of tea!

I think these lobby groups work find support because there are genuine concerns that people have. National Trust need to acknowledge that. Datums posts are very dismissive I feel and designed to make me more supportive of Restore Trust, not less.

I think that your profession has already done this. BTW, what is your profession and why should it have special rights to decide how the lands, buildings and chattels held in trust on behalf of the nation should be presented to the nation?

“Join the National Trust. Pain and suffering, with a nice cream tea at the end.”

Lovely day out.

But it's chicken and egg – the lobby groups set the agenda in the first place, so there might never even have been 'genuine concerns' without yet another Daily Express 'Fury at… (fill in conflated outrage du jour here)' front-page headline, under which will inevitably be a quote from the Institute of Economic Affairs' Head of Shit-Stirring. There never was any fury until the press release plopped into the news editor's inbox on a slow news day.

It’s visiting beautiful places preserved for the nation - with a nice cream tea at the end...

The nice day out element is what enables the National Trust to use the monies for its useful preservation work and providing the public with something cultural to walk round and evidence of our heritage and all its rights and wrongs. Wtf is wrong with that?

Let’s get real - nobody is Lording over servants and enslaved labour in these places any more. Do we just scorch earth the whole of Britain? Would that suit you?

This is literally, wilful ignorance.

I'm an archaeologist and the vast majority of the heritage industry (from curators to academics to field workers) despise RT.

We know what they actually stand for. They really do want to erase people from history, a helluva lot of those to be erased being women.

Personally, I'd like at least a vaguely accurate interpretation of my countries history to be presented at its historic sites.

It matters.

I love a NT day out. Just don’t want the pain and suffering putting me off my scone.

A few questions, if I may….

You refer to the majority of those in the heritage ‘industry’? So you view the heritage sector as a commercial enterprise?

You said previously that ‘we’ defeated the Restore Trust campaigners before. Who is ‘we’? The National Trust senior management team? The National Trust board of trustees? A group of NT employees? A cross-sector group of ‘heritage industry’ campaigners not employed by NT? What was your personal contribution to securing that defeat?

You expressed an objection to the NT being associated with ‘personal propaganda’. Hardwicke Hall a couple of years back had a really interesting exhibition about Bess of Hardwicke. In it there was a section on women of influence / high profile women, it was in the portrait gallery area. The portraits of significant contemporary women included a male person who self describes as a woman. That was propaganda on the part of NT. Is that propaganda which you support or propaganda which you object to?

Are you a member of NT or an employee of NT?

In your experience/ opinion which part of the ‘heritage industry’ is most successful and which is least successful at being genuinely accessible to working class people and socio-economically disadvantaged communities?

I already had the ‘outrage’ and I don’t read the Daily Express btw. My concern was with the dumbing down of the art historical information available in the guide books for example. My black and white guidebooks dating from the 1980s give me details of every painting on the walls. Nowadays I have to ask the room steward if they have the info in their folder and sometimes they don’t. The guidebooks themselves contain very little other than biographies of the family. The information on line is even more limited and seems reluctant to even tell me when a house was built let alone the architect.

Not sure how you think there is much scope for comparison there.

Not saying someone was LGBTQ when we know for sure that said person would never have thought in those terms is hardly denying history. Nor is the the fact that many people who come to visit a historic property might not be particularly looking for information about the sex life, or even the finances, of the person who lived there.

In the same way people who might go to a gallery probably aren't looking for information about the painter's finances and sex life to be right there next to the painting. It's not like those who are interested can't ask more questions, and go to more in depth sources. There are all kinds of things people can get into if that's what they want to do, not just information on the popular social justice categories of the moment. Why should your personal interests dictate what everyone else is supposed to be learning about on their day out?

And frankly, a huge part of what has turned people off about this kind of thing is not history being accurately recorded, it's about it being inaccurately and anachronistically presented by people who want to wrap everything up in a personal agenda. It's as if people with a mania for religion brought every museum piece, artwork, and historic property down to religious and theological issues, no matter how peripheral, and expected everyone to think that is the most important element these items and places

@rudderneck interesting that you mention religion. It's role in history is generally presented as entirely evil, ignoring it's impact on people like William Wilberforce. And the erasure of women - who remembers the women involved in ending slavery? https://fee.org/articles/the-heroines-of-british-abolition/#:~:text=The%20most%20prominent%20of%20these,their%20work%20and%20their%20boldness.

<ducks flying scones>

<swerves in coming jam>

Thank you OP for posting - I had literally just received my email about the AGM. I will need to read the thread in more detail.

I suspect most NT visitors are hoping for a nice day out looking at beautiful things and lovely gardens they don’t have at home. Is that so bad DT and if so, why? Should they stop watching beautiful movies too or is that lowbrow enough to you to be acceptable? Are we Puritans now who object to people getting pleasure from things?
You show beautiful and interesting things to visitors and they pay their NT fees that support the fabric of the buildings and grounds in question. Shower them with queer nit combs etc and they’ll stop coming in my view. There may be the odd masochist hoping to be harangued by fashionable theories imported from the US but I would think these are in the minority. Know your audience and stop patronising them.