Giles Udy

Anti-colonialism and the distortion of history

HMS Victory, which was sheathed with copper (Image: iStock)

In 2020, the National Trust released its ‘interim report’ on the connections between its properties and colonialism and slavery. It quickly became obvious that the report had not been commissioned in the spirit of free historical inquiry, but as a way to tarnish the National Trust and Britain’s history.

The report found that 93 properties or places owned by the Trust had a ‘link’ to colonialism and slavery, a fact that was widely reported in the news at the time.

According to the report, a ‘link’ could be anything from having wealth ‘connected’ to slavery, involvement in a colonial administration in a senior capacity, or even having a business with significant interests in a British colony. Using these criteria, even Winston Churchill’s family home of Chartwell was included.

Unsurprisingly, there was a significant backlash to the National Trust’s denigration of its own properties in this way.

Now, one of the main editors of the report, Corinne Fowler, a University of Leicester academic and the author of Green Unpleasant Land: Creative Responses to Rural England’s Colonial Connections, has written in the Telegraph to defend the history in the report, which she says wasn’t ‘new or controversial to experts in the field.

Written by
Giles Udy

Giles Udy is a writer and historian of the Soviet Gulag system. He is the author of Labour and the Gulag: Russia and the Seduction of the British Left.

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