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.

Certainly when I went to the Clive Museum at Powis Castle which contains lots of Indian heritage artworks & artefacts collected by Clive of India and which doesn't shy away from explaining who made them, who originally owned them and how they were collected, there were a lot of Indian heritage families visiting - many more than I've usually seen at NT properties.

I hadn’t read their proposals, @narniabusiness , that’s why I thanked you for providing that information. I wasn’t being snarky or sarcastic; it was genuine appreciation for you going to the trouble of sharing useful info. I’d asked another poster what the proposals were, but hadn’t received a reply.

Would the total reconstruction cost be contained within the £46m without needing to dip into member subscriptions though? I’d be very surprised if £46m came anywhere near covering the full costs. We were in Stratford a few years ago and the boarding / fencing outside where they were doing work on the Shakespeare theatre said something like £220m (iirc, I may be misremembering).

What’s the voting proposal? Paper ballots versus E-votes, something like that?

There's an Oscar Wilde story, 'The Young King', from 1891, that might be an interesting light or lens with which to look at angles like this - and hopefully a bona fide historical one now, as well. A great many of the aspects raised in this thread (especially about the painting and whether unrecorded people count as exploited) are in there. It's really striking.

The voting is online. There is a one click option to vote for the candidates and policies the NT recommends which seems to tip the balance in their favour. Restore Trust want that option removed so that anyone voting has to consider their response to each proposal separately.
WRT rebuilding cost obviously I don’t know the answer but RT would like the NT to restore the Marble Hall and as much of the rest as can be done for the money.

“Restore Trust want that option removed so that anyone voting has to consider their response to each proposal separately.”

That’s a proposal I’d support.

I can see the argument for recreating the most important “showpiece” room to give visitors an impression of what it used to be like, provided that it’s entirely affordable from the £46m insurance money. But I wouldn’t support other properties losing out on the maintenance budget in order to recreate a building lost to fire. But I can see that anyone local to that property might feel differently about that, if there aren’t any other NT attractions nearby for them to visit instead.

Clive of India and which doesn't shy away from explaining who made them, who originally owned them and how they were collected, there were a lot of Indian heritage families visiting - many more than I've usually seen at NT properties.

India, I can see your point. People enjoy seeing their own culture's treasures and having them acknowledged. I can't imagine many people feeling the same way about slavery though.

I am actually quite shocked by that voting arrangement - that is very biased and unfair. Regardless of what the NT preferred options are and whether I agree with them, I totally agree that every item should be considered separately.

If you own shares in a company or are a member of a building society you will be very familiar with this. Having a one-tick (or one-click) ‘vote for the candidates as recommended by the current board’ seems standard in many organisations.

Then I don’t agree with that either.

To me what you are describing is very interesting, and a valid type of interpretation. You have items brought from another place actually in the property. Talking about the items that are in front of the person which may be unusual to them, or unexpected, is likely to be of interest. Anyone with links to that place might very well be especially interested.

But "links to slavery and colonialism" often seem to be about the equivalent of looking at people's pension funds to see if they have stock in Apple, or telling the visitor stuff they are already aware of about the general economic context of the time. No one really needs a lesson every time they go out about how rich people get rich.

There are museums dedicated to dealing with the issue of slavery- that are free to visit. We don't need mentions of slavery shoehorned into every situation, though. This sort of re-branding was thoroughly irritating during a recent visit to the re-opening ( after refurbishment) of the medieval and rennaisance galleries at my local art gallery. Not only were slavery comments shoehorned in to the most innocuous paintings, but Mary Magdalene was referred to as a 'sex worker' in a medieval portrait. It has been given the LGBTQ+ re-working too.

OP, I've been pondering your actual query, and I think the solution is to check the candidates' twitter accounts. Adherents of gender philosophy aren't quiet about it. Look for pronouns in their bios, and read their recent tweets.

Thank you, that is interesting

This is exactly how I feel about it, and after discussing with friends who I visit NT properties with, we won't be voting for the RT candidates either.
I don't understand the attitude that any context about slavery detracts from any other experience- sometimes I might just want to wander around the grounds, other times I'd like to know more about the property and it's past owners.

It's because in most cases, it's shoehorned in.

There are thousands of links you could make with any topic. But in many cases, they aren't really all that relevant to look at in detail unless you have a very special interest.

I'll give you an example. It's all the range now for organizations that have been around for a long time to do "work" to explore part links to slavery and colonialism. My university did this a few years ago, and made a big deal about it.

What they found is exactally what you would expect. Some of the original governors had investments in areas that touched on slavery. One owned a ship that transported products to and from the West Indies, which undoubtedly involved slave labour. One had lived in the US for a time and had a servant who had been purchased as a slave. Some of the money donated to the university during this period had undoubtedly come from businesses that in some way involved slavery.

All of this was pretty much inevitable, because the institution existed at a time when that was what the economy looked like, and people who were part of the institution operated in the larger economy.

It's a bit as if today we decided to explore the relation of a universities relationship to Big Business, or the pharmaceutical industry, or even the Apple Company, because those things are morally problematic. Well, of course a university, and the people who are part of it, are all going to have ties to all of these things.

The economy of earlier times, the links of the UK to various nations that were part of the Empire, can be really interesting things. For people interested in history it's good to have a general sense too of how the economics of the period worked. But every painting, or person, or object, or place, does not need to be attached explicitly to whatever the topic of the moment is when it is presented to the public.

Or to put it another way, we don't generally Roman sites or Viking sites in this kind of reductive way, even though they had plenty of slavery within their economic systems.

Two points- I don't find that when I visit NT properties, most objects or even most properties are linked to slavery or LGB. What I have seen, I thought was reasonably well done. The impression I get of Restore Trust is that they are opposed to any exploration of these issues and they've blown the issue out of proportion in an attempt to wind people up and make sure they're not discussed at all.

Secondly, I don't necessarily disagree with your points but I think the reason that so many institutions are having their links to slavery and colonialism exposed at the same time is because they've refused to reckon with those links for such a long time and in some cases actively denigrated anyone who pointed it out.
The results of this are mixed- I saw a thoughtful exhibition about slavery links in my local Cathedral, but other efforts will be as banal as you point out.

It's a shame because some of the other stuff RT stand for I would probably agree with, not least on the curator issue.

I think the reason that so many institutions are having their links to slavery and colonialism exposed at the same time is because they've refused to reckon with those links for such a long time

I don’t think this is true. What format did they need to ‘reckon with those links’? The previous ‘reckoning’ was not sufficient so it is considered again. It is more like a scab that keeps getting picked.

I think I would choose what to vote for based on their information and then check they’re not affiliated with anyone I disagree with.

Personally, I would vote for someone who wanted to go back to having the food in National Trust restaurants made in-house. The food is terrible now and it used to be so good with ingredients taken from the gardens.

I also feel like the national trust is deliberately running some of the places down e.g. everything run by volunteers, no shop, only two pre-booked guided tours a day. Lots of the gardens aren’t as good as pre-covid too.

Added to that, I find there is barely any history or context at national trust properties. You look around and can’t find any information about who built it or when. This makes it especially jarring when the only information available is about how one owner was suspected of being LGBT+ or connected to slavery. If that information was given as part of a larger context it would make sense.

“Personally, I would vote for someone who wanted to go back to having the food in National Trust restaurants made in-house.”

Ooh, great idea. You used to be able to get basics like egg on toast late morning in some properties. Now it’s basically the same pasties / sausage rolls / sandwiches you get in every NT cafe.

“I also feel like the national trust is deliberately running some of the places down…. Lots of the gardens aren’t as good as pre-covid too.”

That’s an issue with the property local to us. They strategically neglect certain sections of the garden so that it can be their next “project”. So you get panels like: “this [previously stunning herbaceous border] area has become overrun by weeds [cough because we purposefully neglected it cough], we are ripping out all the plants, leaving it bare / covered in a barrier fabric for two/three years, and then will be making a big song and dance about how hard our [more generous than NT deserves] volunteers are working to restore it back to what it was before we got our hands on it”.

The problem with both of those is that NT would need to spend money on employing staff to do the cooking and the gardening. And of course catering staff are in short supply across the economy.

Added to that, I find there is barely any history or context at national trust properties. You look around and can’t find any information about who built it or when
This.

Yes I’d highlighted this to quote

I’m often like ‘what a fascinating item, I wonder what it is / where it’s from / how it got here. Oh well, guess I’ll never know’

As I've said earlier in the thread, if you want decent interpretation, go to English Heritage, which has a very different approach.
As a side issue, we've just visited the V&A at Dundee, which is the apogee of Woke and, on tripadvisor, is one of the least appreciated attractions.

I visited there and my first thought was ‘they have set themselves up to do an awful lot of dusting’

In national trust for Scotland properties they have some very enthusiastic volunteers. If you ask them about an item you would be lucky to escape before closing, and possibly not even then! 😆

I agree, on both posts!
Falkland Palace today