Intolerance that’s lost the trust of the nation
Earlier this year, i gave a public lecture entitled ‘Betrayal of Trust: how the National Trust is losing its Way’. i have been visiting National Trust properties across the UK for 40 years – yes, even as a toddler on family days out – and i weep for its decline.
an organisation that was once the pride of Britain has been hijacked by a lethal combination of catastrophic dumbing down, social engineering, rampant politicisation and intolerance of opposing views under its last two director generals, former civil servants Dame Fiona reynolds and Dame Helen Ghosh.
During their tenure, the Trust has sacrificed its original aims on the altar of political correctness and as a result we – and future generations – are all losers.
The latest furuore is over an attempt to force staff at Felbrigg Hall in Norfolk to wear ‘rainbow’ iD badges to mark 50 years since the decriminalisation of homosexuality. The Trust’s Prejudice and Pride campaign is yet one more example of the mindset at the top of the organisation that is alienating members and the volunteers who are the Trust’s lifeblood. When 50 of the hall’s 350 volunteers refused to wear the badges – not because they were homophobic but because they felt that being forced to wear badges which had nothing to do with their role infringed their rights – they were banished to backroom jobs, away from view. as one volunteer told the Mail, ‘visitors’ sexual preference has never been an issue’ among those who come to view the Hall and enjoy its grounds. Tory MP andrew Bridgen is spot on when he says it’s ‘virtue signalling’ gone mad. SO
thank God, common sense has prevailed and the Trust has backed down, saying that wearing the rainbow badge is now optional. But what damage has been done; not only have some 240 members apparently cancelled their subscriptions, but the headlines generated by the row have done nothing to help the Trust’s reputation for getting involved in areas it has no business to.
according to the National Trust act of 1937, the Trust’s twin duties are the preservation of buildings of national interest and of beautiful landscapes.
Under Dame Helen in particular, that laudable aim appears to have been abandoned. Forget beautiful buildings and landscapes; what now matters is imposing modern political claptrap on our greatest country houses. it is symptomatic of an organisation that no longer cares for history.
Dame Helen even removed furniture from the regency library at ickworth House in Suffolk, temporarily replacing it with beanbags.
She declared there was ‘ so much stuff’ in Trust houses it put everyone apart from the middle-classes off visiting, so exhibits needed to be ‘simplified’. She prefers instead to opine on ‘green’ issues, as an obsessive eco-warrior who claims ‘extreme weather is the single largest threat to our conservation work’.
Meanwhile, the obligation to take a serious, historical approach to the properties has been woefully neglected.
While researching my talk, i visited Trust properties up and down the country and i was appalled at what i saw. Houses and gardens plastered with error-strewn, patronising signs. at Hughenden Manor, isaac D’israeli, father of Benjamin Disraeli, the Victorian prime minister, was called ‘isaace’. Guidebooks were littered with spelling mistakes: society spelt ‘soceity’; closely spelt ‘closey’.
and while the Trust dumbs down its properties, it’s also ruthlessly commercialising them. Thus the row last easter, when some were plastered with purple posters saying ‘Join the Cadbury egg Hunt’. The religious festival of easter, was sacrificed to promote Daily Milk.
another infuriating thing is the decision by the Trust to expose robert Wyndham Ketton- Cremer, the writer who gave Felbrigg Hall to the Trust in 1969, as gay as part of its Prejudice and Pride initiative.
One of Ketton-Cremer’s godsons, Tristram Powell – who is, incidentally, my uncle – was upset. ‘His sexuality was incidental and scarcely headline material. The “outing” of him by the trust for its own commercial reasons feels mean-spirited.’
The Trust should beware: it is playing fast and loose with the affections of the thousands of volunteers, many of them retired, who keep its properties afloat. as people remain in work for longer, it is facing a timebomb. There will be fewer people available to work for free. This is not a time to be alienating its most loyal followers.
But all is not lost – just yet. in the eternal gravy-train of mutual back- scratching among the great and the good, Dame Helen is leaving the Trust to become Master of Balliol College, Oxford. (Here’s hoping she won’t dumb down Oxford’s most intellectual college.)
To replace her we need someone with a love of history and landscapes – someone , in fact, who likes ‘stuff’, who will save the Trust for the nation.
MUTINY AT THE NATIONAL TRUST From Saturday’s Mail