MCC’S grand old man ‘not out’ in race review
Warner Stand keeps name after family links of ‘Plum’ to slavery are ruled not to override his status at Lord’s
THE MCC will not be removing paintings of its former president, Sir Pelham “Plum” Warner, or re-dedicating the Lord’s stand named in his honour, even though the “grand old man” of English cricket’s family made its fortune from slavery.
A review carried out by the club, the spiritual home of cricket, is understood to have concluded that Warner’s family history does not override his importance to the game.
Warner, who was born in 1873 in Trinidad, played 15 Test matches, regained the Ashes as captain and led Middlesex to the County Championship title before embarking on a career as an administrator that culminated in a knighthood. The MCC named a stand after him in 1958 and he is still revered at Lord’s 58 years after his death.
However, his grandfather, Colonel Edward Warner, was the owner of extensive tobacco and sugar plantations in Trinidad and Dominica, which were worked by slave labour.
The family claimed compensation from the British government following its ending of the slave trade in 1833.
The decision to retain the Warner Stand name and his portrait comes despite the MCC having concluded that paintings and artwork associated with the club’s first secretary, Ben Aislabie, a slave owner, should be removed from the Lord’s Long Room and Pavilion and relegated to its museum.
The MCC’S review, which was prompted by the Black Lives Matter movement and calls for a reappraisal of the history of club members closely associated with Caribbean slavery, adopted a grading system to determine who should stay and who should go.
It is understood that Aislabie was categorised as a particularly serious example because of his personal involvement in slavery, while Warner, who was born almost 70 years after the abolition of the slave trade across the British Empire, could not be held accountable for it.
Guy Lavender, the chief executive of the MCC, said: “Aislabie’s links to the slave trade were significant and therefore that [artwork] has got to be a museum piece. It has to be properly explained.
“Where we have got particular people who made an incredible contribution to the club, but take Ben Aislabie for example, the context of that is better explained in the museum. It is not about erasing history, it is about history in its right context.”
Confirming that the rebuilt Warner Stand would not be renamed, he said the museums’ curator had properly researched the former president.
“You read the history and take a view from there,” Mr Lavender said. “We have done a very considered piece of work to ensure we have put things in their historical context properly and think about spaces in the ground.
“We are doing different things in different parts of the building. We are going to make sure the historical facts are clear and we are sensitive to how people feel.”
Regarding the wider review, Mr Lavender said the club had to consider the works of art in its collection from the point of view of black members and staff whose own ancestors may have suffered from slavery. “They are part of the club and they belong so you have to get it right,” he said.
The MCC had faced calls for the Warner Stand to be renamed. Dr Richard Sargeant, an academic and former
‘We have done a very considered piece of work to ensure we have put things in their historical context’
cricketer, said before the review concluded: “I’d ask how a black person is meant to feel when they go to Lord’s – the so-called home of cricket – and there is a stand named after a man whose family wealth was built on slavery?”
Yesterday Dr Sargeant, a retired historian and sociologist who taught at Wolverhampton University, said: “This decision not to remove Warner or his name doesn’t surprise me in the least because the MCC is in part a child of colonialism and is embedded in colonialism. It reflects an awful kind of complacency.” However, Michael Holding, the former West Indies cricketer, who has written a book about sport and race, said Warner could not be blamed for what his family had done.
“I would not be crucifying family members for what happened 100 years ago. That aspect I don’t care about,” he said.