The National Trust still doesn’t get it. It still doesn’t understand why so many of its members hate the politicisation and catastrophic dumbing-down of an institution they once revered.
Hilary McGrady, the Trust’s Director-General, has just defended the Trust’s report on colonialism and slavery. The report, released last September, looked into the colonial or slavery links of its properties, including Winston Churchill’s Chartwell home and William Wordsworth’s house. McGrady said the Trust should ‘make sure we tell all of the stories about all of our properties’.
That’s the problem. The Trust isn’t telling all of the stories these days. For the past ten years, it has been on a relentless, one-sided drive to politicise its properties. Every year, it has a new slanted angle to its buildings: whether it’s about women’s rights, LGBT or colonialism. Each of those angles are fine in their own right. But the National Trust now devotes itself just to one side of the coin: the ‘We are all guilty’ side.
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