The National Trust has brought out its ‘Interim Report’, with the clumsy title ‘Addressing our histories of colonialism and historic slavery’. Such use of the word ‘histories’, as opposed to ‘history’, is an alert that a woke view is coming your way. Like ‘diversity’ and ‘multiple narratives’ (also deployed in the report), it suggests plurality but imposes uniformity.
The aim is to be ‘historically accurate and academically robust’. According to John Orna-Ornstein, the Trust’s director of culture and engagement, ‘We’re not here to pass judgment on the past’. It is not true, as the BBC reported, that the Trust has ‘revealed’ that 93 of its properties are linked to slavery and colonialism. The report uncovers few new facts. But it is, in principle, a good thing to assemble information about the properties of a great heritage charity. Although bitty and hasty, the report is interesting about the various houses’ intricate connections in chapters called things like ‘Banking and Bankers’ or ‘Industrialisation and the Import of Cotton’. It ends with a ‘Gazetteer’ of the houses which ‘meet key criteria relating to slavery and colonialism’. These are incoherent. They range from ‘wealth connected to the proceeds of slavery’, through ‘expansion and settlement into countries resulting in the displacement or injury of people, or the creation of unequal economic benefits’, to ‘objects seized in battle’ in colonial territories. The first would usually be possible to ascertain. The second is tendentious and undoubtedly passes judgment on the past. The third — well, should the NT blush if it has a Zulu spear from Rorke’s Drift?
The report is heavily footnoted, but citing academics is not the same as being ‘academically robust’. In one chapter, the Trust’s head curator, Dr Sally-Anne Huxtable, says that the Capitalism and Slavery by Eric Williams is the ‘foundational text’ on the subject.
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