1547 days ago
My friend Bill Long and I attended a lecture a few years ago in New York, given by the historian Madge Dresser and organised by the American branch of the National Trust. Its theme was the links between slavery and National Trust properties. Although Madge and I disagreed a little on the history of the South Sea company, it was balanced, fair and very interesting indeed. But in the wake of BlackLivesMatter, the NT has decided that it has not acknowledged its sin fast enough or sufficiently enough and so has commissioned a major new report. Yes: that is the same NT that is firing 14% of its staff, 1200 folks, because it says, untruthfully, that it faces a cash crisis and there is no other way.
1626 days ago
I predicted earlier today that the purging of statues and street names associated with figures from the past with slaving links, however tenuous, would soon see the great Liberal leader William Ewart Gladstone in trouble. It did not take long for bedwetters at Liverpool University to decide that their Gladstone Hall needed renaming.
