I noticed this tweet this tweet, published yesterday in response to a letter in The Times, which can be viewed by looking on the link within the tweet (which saves me from suggestion of infringing copyright):
Odd letter in @thetimes today from "non-affliated peer" (she was literally a Conservative minister btw), and chair of Charity Commission who has publicly suggested The National Trust should be investigated for researching colonial history. I.e. doing its actual job. #EmpireLand pic.twitter.com/3jVDcP0akS
— Sathnam Sanghera (@Sathnam) January 25, 2021
I have followed this issue ever since the Tories appointed a former Tory minister to uphold Tory values with regard to charities as chair of the Charity Commission. I have also followed the row about Prof Corrine Fowler and her team who did excellent work (in my opinion) in documenting the links between slavery, slave owning and National Trust properties.
I deeply resent the suggestion by Baroness Stowell that this work, and others of its type, is culture war. It isn't. This is history. And anyone who knows anything about history (and I have my own quite niche interests in history and so have some experience in reading developments in it over quite a number of decades) knows that history is not just about facts. It is about our best current understanding of available data (which always evolves) through the lens that society wishes to use to view it at points in time.
So the argument here is not about party politics (and party politics should always and appropriately kept out if charitable activity). It is instead about how facts develop, and how the view of society develops.
So, for example, now we know Black Lives Matter. It could, of course, be said that we always should have done, but because of developing understanding and events we have finally reached a point where we (I refer to those previously not doing so) seek to view the world through that lens, and ask questions as to why inequality still so very obviously exists, rather than pay lip service to equality in the present without seeking sufficient evidence as to its past cause.
What in any way makes that a culture war? The answer, of course, is nothing at all.
Nor is it non-historical. It is about determining data, as for example the team looking at the National Trust did, and using that to explain events that had not previously been revealed. This makes the approach academic, appropriate, informed and deeply relevant by providing insight into the nature and causes of inequality and its development, as well as perpetuation. Assuming we accept the rather basic maxim for human living that one should love ones neighbour as yourself, which requires that they be treated equally whomsoever they might be, then such work would have to be applauded.
But, apparently it is not. Acceptance of that maxim is apparently party political, which is a little surprising as a suggestion, whilst seeking to explore that causes of current inequality, of various forms, and the nature of the mechanisms of power that maintain it is apparently to pursue a culture war. But, again, it is not. It is about seeking to understand the mechanisms that create disadvantage in our society, and which maintain them through prejudice.
What is true, however, is that there is both party politics and culture war going on here. Both are being pursued by the conservative establishment. The call to respect the opinions of those who support charities provides the evidence of that. It could not be a clearer message. Honour the wealthy philanthropist it says.
And honour too the Sunday afternoon day tripper to the National Trust, it also says, and their right to enjoy a guilt free, unquestioning, cream tea without mentioning anything so sordid as the role of slavery in building the fabric of not just the tearoom but the very fabric of the society in which it is served.
This honouring is about party politics. It is about the politics of wealth, division, and indifference.
And it is culture war too. It is initially about a war on understanding, on inclusiveness and awareness. But it is about more than that. It is a war on changing the lens through which we view society so that the origins of privilege are not questioned. Most especially that is a war on the culture of questioning itself. It is a demand that we all know our place and do not question why it might be what it is.
In so doing this is a war on education.
And also a war on the process of change that good education must always give rise to, and which charities, by asking questions, promoting education, and seeking reform, have always played a critical role. In that sense this is a war on the very nature of charity.
And why? To perpetuate a power structure that oppresses for the benefit of those who have gained from it at cost to those who have paid the very real price. That is what culture war, and politics through the lens of charity really looks like. When the definition of charity becomes the maintenance of the status quo when it has always been to challenge it by asking the quite essential question as to why charity is ever needed, then a deep malaise is exposed. Baroness Stowell exposes that malaise. Bizarrely, it is of her creation.
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If we don’t understand our origins, our history, we cannot determine our own future. Lacking this knowledge leaves us open to manipulation by those who present a false narrative about our past, and they use that to determine the future for us.
The loss of our history of money is a good case in point. It has permitted the narrative about money as a product of the evolution from barter systems, to dominate the discourse. This provides the basis for the neo liberal narratives giving rise to austerity, supposedly because “there isn’t enough money”. This narrative postulates that money arises spontaneously through private interactions and not through the role of a “stakeholder” (Desan’s terminology) or the state. History has been distorted and so we have lost our way and handed the future to neo liberal thought. The fact that there is a new enthusiasm for rediscovery of the history of money is a cause for hope.
A good allegory about the need to understand “where we came from” can be found in the essential skill of navigation when out on the hills in fog. If you haven’t closely tracked the route taken from the start point by using map and compass you are left to guess where you are. Not knowing where you are leaves you hopelessly lost and unable to work out the route to the intended destination — that might kill you.
The fact that humans can track their evolutionary origins back to the emergence of life from “non —life” in a primordial diverse chemical soup means we are deeply connected to everything else in nature. If we know and understand this it is apparent that our future also depends on respecting this inter-connectedness.
Agreed.
As I have always maintained here, I’m a big fan of Gillian Tett. An anthropologist and ethnographer by training, one of the themes she has always been consistent about is ‘controlling narratives’ in society that enable the world to be as it is – and this applies to financial sector, Neo-liberalism etc. Tett is an observer really, working in the system and will say what she sees, but leaves the activism to make changes to others.
Although we try to avoid ‘conspiracy’ theories here, I have always thought that the likes of von Hayek, Rand and others have tried to re-write human history by creating false narratives and also actively suppress the true facts so that everyone ‘conforms’ to their ‘rational man’ theory.
There are false narratives about the 1970’s (the West got into economic trouble because of its generous social security systems), the 1980’s (greed is good, and regulation is bad as it suppresses ‘innovation’), the 1990s (the age for me of ‘tax payers’ money) for example.
To me, this is what conservatives do – they conserve the status quo, rendering us incapable of questioning anything other than what is, they conserve the ‘lid’ on issues – keeping things hidden and unchallenged, denying us our right to know and ultimately social justice is deprived to the point where equality before the law is also threatened. And where conservatives insist on change, it will only ever benefit conservatives – especially if it is to do with money.
And yet it is concepts like socialism and communism that are portrayed as ‘controlling’ and a threat to the ‘individual’!!
Dominant narratives indeed.
Ditto re Gillian Tett, for the reasons you mention PSR
Just to flag that she was in conversation with Marianna Mazzucato yesterday evening courtesy of British Library. Hopefully they will post it online somewhere.
Having worked with a number of charities, large and small, mostly international development, Ive always been struck by the difference between those donors who essentially are alleviating a bit of their guilt, and those who want to change the system that causes the problems. The failure to recognise that at best charities can pick up some of the pieces and use what they see and learn to use as part of campaigning to change. Ultimately, only state institutions can really provide what is needed but those right wing donors do not want to fund the institutions to the scale that is needed.
Its the politicians that wear their ‘christian’ religion on their sleeves that especially offend me – Rees Mogg, Duncan Smith, May et al. Archbishop Camara’s comment sums it up perfectly
Much to agree with there
Why does it have to be a war? The language is self defeating. Why not as you allude to, an empirically based reinterpretation of history and appeal to reason? When the full facts are examined the removal of the Colston statue looks reasonable to me. Win through changing mindsets with disarming detail and good sense, not war.
They use the term war
I don’t
I think you are falling for exactly the politicization that certain people and groups are aiming for with your article. Not the one you think you are trying to attack.
The national trust is supposed to be a charity which maintains historic buildings and land for the benefit of the people of the UK.
It is not supposed to be making judgements on the history of those buildings, which seem to all be about the evils of the people who built and owned them, and are all of one particular race.
Which is exactly what the exponents of critical race theory want – creating division amongst people with different immutable characteristics, sowing resentment and creating a hierarchy of victimhood and oppressors.
You should notice that the investigation of historical slavery seems to only focus on rich people who benefitted from it in some way, and those people tend to be white and male. This really is only a very small part of the story of slavery, and ignores everything else.
The British owned, transported and bought african slaves, but didn’t capture them. The groups responsible for the capture and original sale of slaves were people’s such as Arabic north africans, the Aso, Ashanti, Dahomey and other Black african tribes and kingdoms, and had been going on for thousands of years.
Yet that part of the history is always omitted from the modern history of slavery. As is the history of all other slavery barring the Atlantic slave trade.
This strikes me as odd. If people are interested in the history of such a terrible thing, surely you would think they would be interested in the whole of the history, not selective parts of it.
Yet all we are ever told about is the historic evils of oppressive white men, and how reparations should be made for their behavior hundreds of years ago, both in terms of the structure of our society and often even financially. The end result being that a person’s skin color is the determining factor of who they are rather than any other value.
It creates a ladder of victimhood, which plays out politically for certain people and groups. The problem is, that this neat picture doesn’t bear closer inspection historically. It wasn’t just white males involved in slavery.
It also astounds me that we hear near endless talk about the evils of slavery from certain people, tearing down statues hundreds of years old to “protest” the evils of things that nobody alive today can attest to. Yet very little is said about the slavery which is going on as we speak. It is estimated that 40 million Africans are currently enslaved. But it does not seem to fit the political narrative to mention these poor people, as they are enslaved by other Africans.
So maybe people rightly feel aggrieved when history is partially reviewed, with a political motive to attack people of their ethnic background, based on a combination of critical race theory and virtue signalling. Especially when the vast majority of those people had nothing to do with slavery historically, and none today. Critical race theory implicitly means that two babies born today will immediately stand as oppressor and aggrieved party simply due to the nature of their skin. Which is something that truly is evil.
I knew I would have to post one such comment.
It is yours, despite the many tropes within it.
I will get to some of them but first re The National Trust and charity in general, please read this https://andrewpurkis.wordpress.com/2020/12/01/charities-and-culture-wars/ and then this. https://andrewpurkis.wordpress.com/2020/10/25/the-purposes-of-the-national-trust/
The purpose of the NT is:
“The preservation for the benefit of the nation of lands and tenements (including buildings) of beauty or historic interest….Also the preservation of furniture, pictures and chattels of any description having national and historic or artistic interest”
It is not as you claim. The determination of wat is of historic interest is, of course, always subjective. You are suggesting there is only one subjectivity in this issue. That means you are absolutely wrong. What the NT is doing is absolutely right.
So your facts are wrong.
Then you use the standard far-right defence of ‘you can’t blame us because others did it. I am sorry, but that is not the way justice is delivered. A murderer is still a murderer even if others have murdered.
Worse, you use that as the basis for a blatantly racist claim. Of course there were black people in Africa involved in slavery and it is important to understand that. But you seek to suggest they created the trade. No, we did that with our capital, our ships, our navy and our colonial policy. Your suggestion is just blatant racism.
And no, none one ignores modern slavery. A former colleague of mine, Emily Kenway, has a new book out on that this week. Your claim is utterly groundless.
Al, you are seeking to do is maintain a racist society based on the financial power of exploitation. It was necessary to post one comment to show that. No one else will get a chance.
And for the final record, no baby knows about racism. It is taught. Critical race theory challenges that teaching of racism. And you want to stop that so that racism may be perpetuated. Why? How do you live with your conscience?.
The origins and development of the slave trade are matters of legitimate historical analysis and debate. Slavery was endemic in the ancient world, as was serfdom in the medieval period. Slavery continued in parts of Europe before and after 1600, African slaves were imported into the US by the Spanish as early as 1526, Columbus observed slavery among the indigenous population in the Americas. Slavery also existed in Africa too, although most cases slavery was not the brutal economic relationship that the slave trade and chattel slavery created in the Americas. Yes, slavery still exists today in modern forms.
None of this whataboutery impinges on the questions “who built and owned properties held by the National Trust, and how did they get their money”.
This sort of visceral negative reaction to the very simple process of researching their holdings and providing additional historical context Рone of the core functions of the National Trust Рmakes it crystal clear quite how far there is to go before there is a proper understanding of how endemic the slave trade was in the late 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries Рthe very point when Britain was moving from a small European coastal trading nation mainly selling wool and fish (plus ̤a change) into a world Empire Рand quite how much of our national wealth ultimately derives from the exploitation of enslaved black people.
As a long time member of the National Trust (about which more generally there are good things and bad things that could be said) I am very happy they they have done this work and see it as entirely within their core mission to preserve assets of historical interest for the nation. I would go so far as to say that ignoring this issue puts their assets and even the long term survival of the National Trust itself at risk.
Andrew Purkis is bang on the money.
Ezekiel
If you just want to forget the proven and factual exploitation of nations and peoples – go ahead – that’s your choice if it doesn’t mean anything to you. Yes – those ethnic North American tribe realised how backward they were and let pale face have America – it was the natural order of things after all wasn’t it!!?
But it’s about choice Ezekiel and that choice is not enabled if we do not look back and present the facts.
My view: People will and people won’t. But I believe that people know right from wrong and I honestly believe that on these matters – because we’re all bound together by our humanity (being men, women, fathers, mothers etc.,) many more will conclude that there was a rampant unfairness and that what happened was barbaric really, about which they will have empathy with those enslaved (I think such empathy led to slavery’s eventual abolition – so empathy Ezekiel, works).
And that is what scares people (perhaps people like you?) who have agendas – eh? Empathy. Because empathy between groups in a society is what can stop huge vested interests not getting what they want. Better to get them squabbling instead eh? Yeah…………………..
The other thing you seem to ignore is the disparity of power element of all this. The slave trade for example was highly organised and capitalised – just like the illegal immigration networks that led to those people dying in the back of truck recently. Both slave trades and immigration trades prey on desperate or ill defended people in a way that makes money for others. It’s disgusting.
And remember Ezekiel, if you ignore history, you’re maybe fated to repeat it. Now depending on your status in society – where do you stand if that were to happen? If you are well off – you might be less concerned about such matters. You might be king of the castle in such world. But many more more won’t be and they have a right to know.
Again my view is that we need to know the truth – otherwise we have some form of ‘naïve consciousness’ about how we got where we are today which leads us to thinking certain things like – say – white people are superior to Afro-Caribbean’s or Africa is incapable of ruling itself properly (you cannot say that in my view since it is white men who left in such mess and still even now pillage it for its resources).
This is not about setting people against each other like the Tory Government has done about immigrants, the European Union, unions, teachers and now overweight and old people whose fault it is apparently that Covid infections and deaths are so high.
Who is being manipulated Ezekiel? Who is doing the manipulating and why? Cui bono Ezekiel? Eh? You perhaps? Because if it’s not you, how can you be so misled?
I’ll leave you with two quotes from one of my favourite writers – Milan Kundera – to ponder (just a little – don’t take on too much now!):
‘The struggle of man against power, is the struggle of memory against forgetting’.
‘The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past’.
This is very well worthwhile reading
https://andrewpurkis.wordpress.com/2021/01/26/the-charity-commission-and-populist-attacks-on-british-institutions/
It is interesting that only 4 people are being charged with criminal damage to the Colston statue in Bristol that was torn down by what appears from the videos by many more people than this. The hundreds of people surrounding the statue would be implicated by law as complicit and would probably have pulled on some ropes etc if they had the chance. To scapegoat 4 individuals is really pathetic when many people have been protesting about this statue for for years. Oxford University have had the sense to agree to remove the statue of the ruthless colonialist Cecil Rhodes which shows that not all our rulers/establishment hold such reactionary views as Baroness Stowell does.
I expect the police were looking for ringleaders and those actively involved in pulling the statue down and throwing it into the water. I doubt they have identified everyone who was there, and most of the crowd did not actively participate and it would be a struggle to convict them as accessories.
People who break the law as an act of civil disobedience (no matter how justified) should expect to be prosecuted. As I understand it, ten were arrested, six accepted cautions (implicitly acknowledging guilt) and four have plead not guilty. No doubt there will be pretty clear video evidence of the facts, so it will be interesting to see what defence they run and how a jury of their peers judges the case.
I suspect there will be a lot of game playing when selecting a jury
Avon and Somerset Police could get into a spot of bother if they have done mass facial recognition tests on the hundreds of mainly extremely peaceful people just watching. South Wales police were found to have contravened their legal powers over use of face recognition technology.
As usual the Irish lead the way in terms of how historical statues should be treated.
Dublin, 1960s, Nelsons Column. Certain gentlemen acting whlst Dublin City Council dithered.
For those that would a muscial version of what happened:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZeWW0DTOHs&list=RDZZeWW0DTOHs&start_radio=1
It is unfortunate that the same treatment is not dished out to a large number of other statues in the Uk.
My own preference being to start with the old fat fraud Churchil.
Instead we’re to get status of 2,000 VC holders, 99% male
To me, the problem seems to be that most rich people in the UK (and most of the developed world) have inherited their wealth from their parents, who inherited it from their parents going back several generations. At some stage the wealth usually derives from exploitation of others.
The problem they see with the National Trust disclosing the source of their wealth, is that it shows that it came, predominantly, from the exploitation of the workers, whether they were African slaves, or farm and factory workers in Britain and Ireland. The story they want to be told, is that they are rich and powerful because they are inherently better than ‘normal’ people. Having it revealed that their wealth comes from exploitation rather undermines their story.
In the recent BBC TV series ‘Enslaved’ with Samuel L Jackson, Jackson highlighted the fact that slaves in West Africa were generally used for domestic duties as a sign of their power and wealth. It was not a means to become rich and powerful as it was for Europeans. The exploitation of slaves moved to a new level when first the Portuguese and then other European countries (including Britain) started to ship slaves across the Atlantic.
On the plus side for Britain, we were the first to stop slavery and eventually used the Royal Navy to intercept and stop the shipments from Africa.
Your second para is key here
Richard,
I see Ezekiel brought up critical race theory.
I was just wondreing if this theory is something you think is valid and correct?
Broadly speaking, yes I do
But that is not the issue I was raising so I will not be entering into a long discussion of it – because thatis not necessary to make my point
I am aware that the government does not accept it
But then they do not also accept Black Lives Matter
I would not suggest coming back on the issue – you will be wasting your time
So do you then accept that you have white privilege?
And then if you accept critical race theory, being white, that makes you racist as the social construct we use in the western world is used by white people to further their economic and political interests at the expense of people of colour?
Yes of course I accept that bI have white privilege
Of course I do
And I accept that demands that I learn how to address that
And then act as if I am an anti racist
Not say I am, but act on it
And I accept all the challenges in that because I am a flawed human being and I do not always get things right
How have you addressed your white privilege?
How do you act as if you are anti-racist?
Does this mean you accept that you are racist?
Andrew – google it if you need it to be explained to you.
I have acknowledged the issues
I am not accountable to you for what I do to address the resulting issues
But one of those things I will do is to have the courage to stand up to racists, many of whom have tried to comment here today
And Andrew gut the issues
You don’t
Please don’t call again. Your abusive approach is not welcome
What do you mean by “critical race theory”, Maarek? The idea that, at least at certain times and in certain spheres, white people of European descent established a superior position over other peoples, not least in terms of economy and power, and took steps to maintain that position through social, legal and other structures? And that there remains a legacy of that past that can and must be addressed? What are the counterarguments?
Like much of history, it is not black and white yes/no, but a greyish “yes but”. Things are always more complicated, and simple answers are usually simplistic too.
Agreed
Like all theories CRT has issues within it, of course
But as I said, it addresses a long-held bias
And apparently that makes it flawed in itself
A few years ago there was a radio 4 program about charities which were being used to deliver part of the government’s social agenda. I was doing some work for MIND then, so I listened carefully. The charities were told that they should not ask the bigger questions or campaign for social change or the money would stop.
It reminded me of Archbishop Camara : when I feed the poor they call me a Saint. When I ask why they are poor they cal know me a Communist.
This measure has been crippling for the campaigning of many charities
Remember that one about Archbishop Hélder Câmara who said ‘When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist’? That’s the Tory attitude to charity: ask and you’re a communist
Spot on.
I was trying to think of something new to say on the subject – and of course where the money came from to build and run these properties now owned by the National Trust is an obvious bit of information that should be in the write ups associated with them.
But it reminds me of Henry Fords famous comment ‘History is Bunk’ because he could not find out about the lives of ordinary people in the past, and it seems to me that it isn’t now at least simply because they were not represented in the records and harder to find than Kings and Queens but because now some are choosing to suppress it for fear of what we might find.
Quite so
Well, according to this – https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/182100.html and https://www.hemmings.com/stories/2018/01/14/fact-check-what-henry-ford-meant-when-he-said-history-is-bunk – Henry Ford said in 1916: “History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history that we make today.”
Meaning, more or less, that we should just forget about the past because it isn’t important. At the time, this was apparently meant to support his argument that the US should not intervene in the First World War (just sell military materials to both sides, like he did at before the US joined the Second World War). And to perhaps to conceal his own ignorance about the past.
He later glossed it as meaning industrial history was not given enough attention, although as the second link above says, “that smacks of rationalization rather than rationale”, referring back to an earlier comment that Ford hadn’t very much use for history. “I didn’t need it very bad.” (Echoes of Trump there.) But he did found the Henry Ford Museum, so all is well.
It was also shortly before Henry Ford started publishing his own antisemitic ideas in the Dearborn Independent, later printed together as The International Jew, and also republishing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. No friend of the unions either. Yes, Henry Ford was very popular in certain circles in Germany in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
(“History is bunk” did at least inspire some early pop art works by Eduardo Paolozzi, but that is another story.)
I was unaware of that
Warning: I am in BBC bashing mode again!
Yesterday I had to bear Nick Robinson telling an EU representative that they’d messed up their Covid vaccine acquisition as if it was something like ‘Na na na na na – we’ve got more vaccine than yooooooooooooou’ .
Then there’s Justin wotisface this morning telling a WHO rep that the vaccine in use at the moment in the UK was made in the UK in Oxford in response to the Norwegian’s international caring and sharing of their vaccine allocation – as if it was ours and we should keep it for ourselves and no one had any right to it.
To top it all, even C4 News got in on the act until a rather posh but very rational professor got involved and reminded everyone that vaccines take time and that it was perfectly possible for a vaccine maker to over-estimate its production since it was a new product.
God! How I hate the BBC. And the rest of the media fools who kowtow to this sort of shit.
We are passing a 100,000 deaths through incompetence and willful negligence – a Tory party riven with greedy capitalists who just want the money to keep rolling in never mind the death rate and what do we get?
Mass distraction with a feel good ‘We’re better than you’ bollocks about who has bought the most vaccine and a false war on who should get OUR vaccine – OURS!
I’d love to see how much we spent on buying the vaccine and if we did indeed pay well over the odds.
Culture wars indeed.
This is a deliberate attempt to shut down funding and research of the types of history which the establishment don’t want to see or hear about. The National Trust report looks at the factual links between NT stately homes, slavery and empire. The amount of untruths being written about it can only be because people have not actually read it, or because they are deliberately misleading people about its contents. The press such as the Daily Mail have completely wrongly suggested that the report links Churchill to slavery – completely incorrect, as anyone who reads the report will know.
It’s fascinating that those who talk about the National Trust’s charity status never seem to get upset about the fact that the Institute for Economic Affairs is a registered charity, when it is in fact a nakedly obvious lobby group which doesn’t disclose its funders, classified as highly opaque by Transparify.
And it is absolutely within the remit of the National Trust to explore all of its history. The NT report and history of slavery isn’t ‘judgemental’, that’s not what this historical research is about at all, it is merely covering what hasn’t yet been covered and acknowledged by the National Trust. It is adding to our collective historical knowledge, not taking anything away from it.
And the ‘what about-ery’ point made by Ezekiel earlier, the NT report is about their stately homes, which, yes, were built by and owned by white men. Therefore, the extent to which people of colour profited from slavery or not isn’t within the scope of a report on stately homes in Britain. However, if you have new historical evidence to add to the report I’m sure they’d be interested to look at it. In the meantime I think it shouldn’t be controversial to condemn all slavery, past and present and all those who profited from it, while acknowledging that the biggest beneficiaries by far were not Africans or African countries.
Thank you
[…] already noted this technique being used against Prof Corrine Fowler this week. Here it is in use  again. The aim is identical, and is to discredit and then silence an opponent […]