Pride and intolerance

What on earth does the National Trust think it is doing? An institution supported by millions who love to visit the properties and land bequeathed to it has taken it upon itself to enter the world of emblematic gesture politics.

To coincide with the 50th anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality, the Trust has been running a themed season for visitors called Prejudice and Pride. Among other events, this has involved “outing” Robert Wyndham Ketton-cremer, the squire of Felbrigg Hall in Norfolk, who died in 1969 and considered his sexuality to be a private matter.

Now volunteers at Felbrigg Hall are being required to wear identity lanyards or badges with rainbow patterns to demonstrate their support for “inclusivity”. Those who decline to do so will not be allowed to interact with visitors. Some are now staying away. The National Trust maintains that it is celebrating diversity as part of its “core ambition”, though its members might question whether that is its proper function. Visitors can always find out for themselves about the backgrounds of past owners should they choose to.

But it is pernicious to insist that volunteers who give freely of their time to help preserve the nation’s heritage should participate in this campaign or be banished to backroom tasks, and thereby implicitly branded homophobic. It seems not to have occurred to the National Trust that people might be upset by their approach to this matter, not least the relatives of Mr Ketton-cremer and the Felbrigg volunteers. It is deeply ironic that in celebrating the 50th anniversary of the homosexual law reform Act, they are merely replacing one form of intolerance with another.