Zewditu Gebreyohanes

This article first appeared in The Times on Wednesday May 25 2022

Earlier this month I became director of Restore Trust, an organisation set up to return the National Trust to its founding values and objectives. Readers will be familiar with the problems afflicting this once august national institution, including the closure of some of its properties, gimmicky displays in houses, the dismissive treatment of long-serving volunteers and the pursuit of controversial, politicised agendas.

At the root of these problems lies a lack of consultation with members, volunteers, local communities and conservation experts. Specialist curators have gradually been phased out to be replaced by curators who lack not just the expertise to preserve national heritage but also, it seems, an interest in doing so. Curatorial expertise has been replaced by a soulless managerialism, in which profit-making, and therefore brand-selling, is the paramount concern. Many of the Trust’s tenants tell us they are not treated as partners in the conservation effort but as a lucrative source of revenue to be exploited as much as possible.

The charitable objects of the Trust state that its duty is “the preservation for the benefit of the nation of lands and tenements of beauty or historic interest” and of “furniture, pictures and chattels having national and historic or artistic interest”. If the charity wishes to add to this being the nation’s historian, it needs to perform the role carefully, academically and without the bias or finger-wagging seen in both its Colonial Countryside project and its interim report on the links between slavery and Trust properties.

Many of those defending the Trust’s trajectory invoke the words of its founder, Octavia Hill — “for ever, for everyone” — with the patronising and false suggestion that “ethnic minority” visitors are unable to enjoy what is on offer without constant reminders that slavery is morally reprehensible. The Trust is and has long been open to all, and beautiful houses, furniture, artwork and gardens can be enjoyed by everyone equally, irrespective of ethnic background.

In a recent Times interview, the Trust’s director, Hilary McGrady, expressed astonishment at the backlash to the slavery report, pointing out that “Kew Gardens was doing it at the same time”. That is true: by the time the interim report was published in mid-2020, Kew Gardens had committed to an initiative to “decolonise” its plant collections. Yet what McGrady seems to forget is that Kew was forced to scrap this agenda after a Policy Exchange paper showed that its activities went beyond its statutory remit. The Trust should be held to the same standards as Kew.

Zewditu Gebreyohanes is the director of Restore Trust