National Trust faces exodus of members over gay pride row

THE National Trust was last night facing a membership crisis over its policy to “out” a country squire and make volunteers at a Norfolk mansion wear the gay pride rainbow symbol.

The charity has been accused of being excessively politically correct over a high-profile campaign to mark 50 years since the decriminalisation of homosexuality.

Scores of trust members wrote to The Daily Telegraph yesterday saying they would either cancel or not renew their membership. One former supporter even said he had removed the charity as a beneficiary in his will.

According to the trust’s latest statistics, 240 members contacted them to cancel their membership over the furore. The National Trust’s Prejudice and Pride programme became embroiled in controversy last month when

‘They are free to step back from the volunteer role, or take a different role for the duration’

it “outed” Robert Wyndham Ketton-cremer, a country squire who bequeathed Felbrigg Hall, his ancestral home near Cromer, to the trust upon his death in 1969.

Godchildren of the poet and historian demanded to know why the organisation had decided to make a film, narrated by Stephen Fry, revealing that this “intensely private” man was gay.

It later emerged that volunteers at the Jacobean mansion had been told if they refused to wear the gay pride rainbow symbol they would not be allowed to meet and greet visitors to the estate. Around 10 volunteers were said to have refused to wear the flag motif in protest at the trust’s decision to “out” the late Mr Ketton-cremer.

However, Dame Helen Ghosh, the trust’s director general, wrote to the Telegraph to defend the organisation’s stance, insisting the film about Mr Ketton-cremer was “sensitive, respectful and celebratory”. She said that she hugely valued the trust’s 62,000 volunteers and that a “small proportion” of those at Felbrigg Hall had not felt “comfortable ”with the project.

“They are free to step back from the volunteer role, or take a different role for the duration,” she wrote.

A spokesman said 240 people had quit over the row, adding that it was offset by 5,000 who joined up “only in the last week” of July.