National Trust makes history
THE National Trust deserves to be commended for publishing a 115-page report, Addressing our histories of colonialism and historic slavery, last year.
It revealed that nearly 100 of the stately homes that it looks after were built with the proceeds of either the slave trade or colonial loot from India. To be sure, people on the right were upset. They accused the trust of going “woke”, forgetting the opposite of woke is racist.
I don’t see any conflict in telling the story of these historic houses, while at the same time visiting them to take in their physical beauty and perhaps even enjoying a cream tea on the premises.
The trust is under pressure to hush up the history of the houses, but now that the report has been published, what’s done cannot be undone. Nor should it be.
The trust has just appointed an American, René Olivieri, to be its new chairman to succeed Tim Parker, who stepped down in May 2021 after seven years in that position. The right appears relieved that Olivieri is a “safe pair of hands”, implying he will put a stop to the trust revealing any more past history.
Olivieri said the 126-yearold charity is “uniquely placed to recognise the debt to the generations that have gone before and its responsibility to those which follow”.
“I believe the National Trust is the body that makes essential connections in our world, between the past and future, nature and heritage and between people from all parts of society,” he said.
Hilary McGrady, the trust’s director general, said she was “delighted” at the appointment, adding: “We have the same ambition: to give as many people as possible access to the incredible collections, houses, land and coastline that we care for on behalf of England, Wales and Northern Ireland.”
British Asians should certainly join the trust since its many beautiful houses reflect the shared history of Britain and India.
By way of background reading, I would suggest Prof Corinne Fowler’s Green Unpleasant Land: Creative Responses to Rural England’s Colonial Connections, published by Peepal Tree Press.
She gave as an example Basildon Park near Reading, “which was owned by Sir Francis Sykes, who was a bit of a right-hand man of Clive of India. You have Powis Castle in Wales which has ... the Clive collection, which belongs to the descendants of Clive of India. And they have things belonging to Tipu Sultan ... and many other Indian objects which are extremely valuable and interesting to Indians.”