National Trust to reveal slave links

THE National Trust has failed to tell its millions of visitors about properties with links to slavery, its director general admitted.

Hilary McGrady said some 95 of 300 venues had ties to historical trafficking, including collections funded by the trade.

And she claimed the Black Lives Matter protest moved has helped give “additional focus” to the charity’s plans to rethink how it puts over information.

The statute of a kneeling black man was removed last week from the Trust’s Dunham Massey house in Cheshire because it caused “upset and distress”.

Ms McGrady said: “The trust has not done enough in the past but we will be doing it with more pace in the coming months.”

The trust published last week a study into links between slavery and its properties, many of which were built from fortunes amassed from plantations. Ms McGrady said: “This work was commissioned last September and was intended to identify in more detail which of our properties had direct or indirect links with colonialism broadly and slavery more specifically.”

Most properties in the trust’s possession were built during the days of the British Empire, which means links with colonialism are hard to avoid.

Ms McGrady said the research was intended to help the trust tell its 5.8 million members the true story of the properties.

She added: “Our houses are the jewel in our crown. We are incredibly proud of them.

“We want to take this opportunity to broaden the story that we can tell and give a multi-layered view of how they came to be there.”