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It may be behind a paywall but click and see. I'll quote three paragraphs to give you the flavour.
'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.
'...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 National Trust, of course, should not propagandise for the left. It exists for preserving and celebrating beauty, history and tradition, not tendentious theorising.
'...One of the report’s editors is Professor Corinne Fowler, director of the Colonial Countryside project at Leicester university, and author of Green Unpleasant Land: Creative Responses to Rural Britain’s Colonial Histories. She retweets things like ‘Rural racism means POC [People of Colour] don’t feel safe in there. The countryside is one of the last bastions of Empire’ and ‘Amid a global reckoning over the history of slavery one institution has remained silent: the British monarchy’. So we know what she wants the report to ‘find’. It contains no dissent.'
Slavery is part of our island story. The reason it is suddenly newsworthy has nothing to do with history and everything to do with a cultural power grab by the left. It is nothing to do with slavery either but colour. The left wants slavery to be treated like the German murder of the Jews. National Trust properties that are very old may be linked to serfdom or even thrallage but no-one cares about these things.
I am fully in agreement with your last paragraph above.
ReplyDeleteBut as I am sure that you are fully aware ALL countries have a history of slavery including the African countries that willingly participated in the Atlantic slave trade by capturing and selling the slaves.
For example, between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by North African pirates and sold as slaves between the 16th and 19th century:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_slave_trade
However, as you write, the Left/Progressives are not interested in the evils of slavery per se, they are only interested in British and American participation in the Atlantic slave trade in order to undermine long-held cultural values.
These hypocrites are absolutely silent about the modern slavery that is being practised in many countries today:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century
Yes, the UK like ALL other countries has a history of slavery but unlike the vast majority of countries its history also includes the abolition of slavery, the liberation of slaves and the active suppression of slave trading.
f you go back far enough you don't necessarily find fiortunes based on crimes. Actually even the oldest families are not necessarily descended from the men in fur - the name Howard means hogherd so even the Fitzalan-Howard family themselves were once lowly. But why go back and then cast aspersions or as a friend of mine used to say nasturtiums? By all means uncover the truth but no use moralising or drawing contemporary political lessons from usually distorted history? And why copy a specifically American nervous breakdown? No black man came to our shores as slaves - they or their parents came willingly as economic migrants and usually profited thereby.
ReplyDeleteSlavery is part of our island story. The reason it is suddenly newsworthy has nothing to do with history and everything to do with a cultural power grab by the left.
ReplyDeleteI think it has at least as much to do with the Americanisation of Britain. The modern obsessions with race and slavery are entirely American obsessions which they're imposing on the rest of the globe (just as the LGBT agenda is an entirely American obsession which they're imposing on the rest of the world).
The real problem is what the Left used to call (quite accurately) American cultural imperialism - the American attempt to impose its cultural values on everyone else.
It's not really a leftist thing. The Trump Administration actively and aggressively promotes the LGBT agenda worldwide.
It's an American thing.
National Trust properties that are very old may be linked to serfdom or even thrallage but no-one cares about these things.
True. But nobody cares about serfdom because that's not an American obsession.
Yes I very much agree - the Civil Rights movement in the USA, which began with laudable goals, quickly morphed into something that has changed the world in very many bad ways.
DeleteYes I very much agree - the Civil Rights movement in the USA, which began with laudable goals, quickly morphed into something that has changed the world in very many bad ways
DeleteAnd even at the time when the Civil Rights movement had worthwhile goals those goals were pretty much irrelevant to the rest of the world.
I agree.
DeleteIt is true that the National Trust, and most other institutions, have been taken over by Frankfurt School Marxism. But they do not control all of England - as a general rule of thumb a place is free of "Wokeness" (Frankfurt School Marxism) if it is still owned by a private family, not a corporation or an institution.
ReplyDeleteThe language is, of course, inverted - "decolonise" means "colonise" (take over areas - in this case rural areas), and "people of colour do not feel safe" actually means "white people feel safe in this area - and we, the "Woke", do not wish them to be safe in this area or anywhere else". It is all very depressing for people, such as myself, who do NOT believe that skin tone should be morally important. If a large, and powerful, group of people insist that skin tone is of vital importance then it becomes important - although in-its-self it is of no moral importance at all.