The Black Lives Matter-inspired ‘Colonial Countryside’ project from the National Trust, which published a shame list of heritage properties with supposed links to colonialism, received some £160,000 in taxpayer funding and lottery money.
The project, which has been headed by left-wing Professor Corinne Fowler from the University of Leicester, targeted 93 National Trust properties linked to the slave trade and British colonialism, including the home of British wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill, Chartwell House.
The project received a grant of £99,600 from the National Lottery’s Heritage Lottery Fund and an additional £60,000 from the taxpayer-funded Arts Council, according to The Express.
The Common Sense group of Conservative MPs has written a letter to Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden, calling on the government to investigate why Heritage Lottery funds were handed out to what they claim is a “political project”, which is prohibited under law, and to prevent the money from being spent.
The group, led by former children’s minister Sir John Hayes, described the Colonial Countryside project as an “ideologically motivated endeavour, designed to revalue Britain’s heritage and rewrite our history”.
“We implore you to use the powers available to you as Secretary of State to immediately investigate the provision of taxpayer’s money to support ideological, political causes. Powerful left-wing interests have demonstrated ruthless effectiveness in the suppression of even nominally conservative cultural initiatives.
“Surely now it is time to end any and all public funding provided to radical projects which disparage our nation and despise the history of its people. It is abhorrent that hard-working patriots are funding the enormously damaging, unpatriotic pet-projects of well-heeled academics,” the group of Tory MPs wrote.
Delingpole: Churchill’s Home Put on BLM-Style List of ‘Colonialism and Slavery’ Shame https://t.co/R9xbGMjHIg
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) September 23, 2020
The Common Sense group went on to lambast the National Trust for “the project’s sinister attempt to use ‘child advisory boards’ comprising primary school pupils to ‘reverse-mentor’ staff and volunteers” which it called “particularly unwise and, arguable [sic], unethical too”.
The letter from the MPs said that the National Trust project has “caused such offence” it led to a swath of resignations and that the former owners of the properties bequeathed to the Trust “have been smeared by accusations and insults”.
Last month, Breitbart London reported that the Professor of Post-Colonial Literature at the University of Leicester and one of the leading figures in the Colonial Countryside project, Corinne Fowler, claimed in her recently released book that gardening is steeped in “racial injustice”.
In the book, entitled the Green Unpleasant Land, Prof Fowler claimed that many stately homes in Britain benefitted from colonialism and slavery. Therefore, “knowledge about gardens and plants, in particular botany, has had deep colonial resonances”.
Other estates targeted by the National Trust BLM shame list include Bateman’s, the home of British novelist and poet Rudyard Kipling, as well as Powis Castle which was owned by Robert Clive of India.
A spokesman for the National Lottery Heritage Fund defended the decision to fund the woke project, saying: “This three-year education programme for young people was designed to help them explore country houses’ Caribbean and East India Company connections, from trade in Caribbean rum, tea and salt to slave ownership.
“As part of this project, school pupils visited National Trust properties to work with historians and writers on a variety of activities, including public speaking, examining archives, co-producing exhibitions and leading tours. Hands-on education such as this helps to inspire the next generation of archivists, curators, historians and writers.”
Delingpole: Woke National Trust Chairman Comes Out for Black Lives Matter https://t.co/PnjYNeA377
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) November 7, 2020
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka
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