End National Trust charity status, PM urged

BORIS JOHNSON should consider ending the charitable status of the National Trust after it launched a review of its properties’ links to colonialism, MPS have said.

The Common Sense Group, a new bloc of MPS formed to oppose the spread of the “woke agenda”, said the Charity Commission should withdraw the National Trust’s charitable status because it has committed to “attacking Britain’s heritage”.

In a letter to the Prime Minister signed by more than 25 MPS, the group also calls for the BBC licence fee to be decriminalised after it “censored” the lyrics of Fairytale of New York, a Christmas song, on Radio 1.

The group is calling for Mr Johnson to intervene after the National Trust published a review of the colonial links of some of its properties, including Chartwell, Winston Churchill’s former home in Kent.

In late September, the trust published a 115-page report on “Connect i ons between Colonialism and Properties now in the Care of the National Trust, Including Links with Historic Slavery”.

The MPS’ letter, which will be sent to Mr Johnson this week, reads: “For as long as the purpose of these charitable organisations is perverted by political posturing, signatories to this letter request that you ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport to review all outstanding funding applications from the aforementioned bodies and others that pursue political causes.”

Sir John Hayes, who leads the Common Sense Group, said: “The purpose of those who are custodians of our heritage is to protect and promote it, not to reinterpret or rewrite history. It may be that some of these people are artless and some are sinister, but assuming that most of it is a kind of senselessness, they have to understand that all we are now is a product of all that has gone before: good, bad and ugly.

“To attempt to sanitise history is to not only disown all the heroes and heritage it is their mission to guard implicitly, but it is also to deny the reality of what Britain is, and who Britons are.”

The Charity Commission is already investigating the National Trust over its colonialism review, which ministers described as “unfortunate”.

Tom Hunt, a Tory MP who signed the letter, said: “Why is it that sections of the Left are so obsessed with Winston Churchill? Why is it that they always seek to question his legacy and his role?

“You have to question the motives of people who seem to be obsessed with wanting to question his greatness.”

‘We request that you ask for a review of funding applications from bodies that pursue political causes’