Charles Moore strikes an optimistic note in his Telegraph column today, arguing that the common sense verdict of the Consistory Court of the Diocese of Ely regarding Jesus College’s Rustat memorial will make it harder for woke fanatics to ‘cleanse’ Britain of any reminders of its colonial past.
A carefully argued judgment by Judge David Hodge forbade the removal of a 17th-century memorial from the chapel of Jesus College, Cambridge. It will help protect our heritage, expose weak leadership in our great institutions and help turn the tide of jiggery-wokery.
Before I explain why, please excuse some recent history.
Two years ago, as the world became infected by a plague which the Chinese regime had tried to hide, I came across the website of the China Centre at Jesus College. Its wording struck me. It made no pretence to academic detachment. Using Xi Jinping’s pet phrase “national rejuvenation”, it praised the “extraordinary transformation” wrought by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership.
Further inquiry showed a pervasive yet opaque college engagement with CCP-backed bodies. Professor Peter Nolan, who runs the centre, would not speak publicly about it. The college’s wider China engagement included a UK/China Global Issues Dialogue Centre, conferences (some not ostensibly China-related), receptions, prize-givings, oily speeches in Beijing etc, backed enthusiastically by Cambridge’s vice-chancellor. No forum criticised the Chinese regime – holding events, for example, about the suppression of Hong Kong or the enslavement of the Uyghurs. Only this month did Jesus finally print figures showing that the college has taken nearly £1.5 million from regime-controlled Chinese sources in the past five years. I think that will prove a conservative estimate.
Journalistically, I had hit a rich seam. Controversy rose. Distinguished alumni expressed unease.
At the same time, Jesus College, so reticent about China, turned on another source of its money. Tobias Rustat, a 17th-century supporter of King Charles II, rewarded for his loyalty in the long years of exile, could not hit back, being dead. Rustat’s donations still pay for college benefactions today.
Given extra impetus by the Black Lives Matter pile-on after the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, the college has a Legacy of Slavery Working Party (LSWP). In June 2020, I discovered that Rustat was being what George Orwell called “unpersoned” by the LSWP because of his links with the slave trade. In November 2020, the new Master, Sonita Alleyne, said his Grinling Gibbons memorial in the chapel should be removed. Because it is in a Grade 1-listed church, this required legal permission from the Diocese of Ely. The college would petition for this. “The Church is very supportive of our considerations,” added the Master, unwisely pre-empting any court case.
Moore then reminds us just how damning the Judge’s ruling was, even though it was couched in moderate, judicial language.
On Wednesday, Judge Hodge published his 108-page judgment. The removal of the Rustat memorial would indeed cause “notable” damage to the heritage of the chapel, he said. He did not accept the college’s view that the mission of the Church was harmed by Rustat continuing to stay in the chapel after 330 years there.
Although carefully moderate in tone, as good judges are, he was tough on the conduct of the college authorities. The chair of the LSWP, Dr Véronique Mottier, had been “an underwhelming witness’” who was “firmly wedded to her own entrenched opinions and unwilling to recognise any views other than her own”. In several answers, she had “not been frank”; in one, she had been “untruthful”.
The facts about Rustat did matter, the judge said. A student member of the LSWP had emailed all undergraduates saying that Rustat “amassed much of his wealth from the Royal African Company that captured and shipped more enslaved African women, men and children to the Americas than any other single institution during the entire period of the transatlantic slave trade”. This stirred up students to support the removal, but it was factually wrong in relation to Rustat. The LSWP never corrected this error, so the college put out “a false narrative” against its own benefactor and never corrected it.
In essence, the judge was saying to Jesus College: “You are wrong in law. You did not do your homework properly. You have not dealt fairly with critics.”
Let’s hope Moore is right about this being a turning point in the battle to preserve our heritage from the woke Taliban.
Worth reading in full.
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I really do think that people who consider slavery to have been perfectly acceptable in the British Empire should experience it for the rest of their lives. Their gilded lives at Harrow and wherever would be a marked contrast to experiencing human trafficking, being bonded slave labour to pay for your own transportation costs etc.
Slavery is one area of life I am very hot about.
Wokeness about black skin, sexuality, climate change and all that nonsense is based on lies and hypocrisy, not manifest truths.
It is a manifest truth that the UK’s major public buildings in several UK ports were built entirely on the funding of slave traders.
I do hope the moralists are not outraged about what goes on in Qatar right now.
It’s entirely equivalent to what the British, the French, the Spanish etc did centuries ago.
Have you read Thomas Sowell’s book Intellectuals and Race?
He places it all into rational context.
He was absolutely scathing in that book.
Yes – and Sowell was completely rational in his approach. He should be required reading at the BBC and Guardian!
That would be an act of masochism on their part. They are the group he labels as the anointed, concerned with cosmic justice rather than the normal worries of ordinary people.
You do know, I suppose, that the British led the way on abolition of the trade? You also know, perhaps, that virtually all empires and countries since the beginning of history used slaves and benefited from their trading?
“I really do think that people who consider slavery to have been perfectly acceptable in the British Empire should experience it for the rest of their lives.“
Are there such people? I don’t think I can recall anyone ever making that case.
There are people who dispute the suggestion that we should focus monomaniacally on the institution of slavery in and around the British Empire, to the exclusion of all the other horrors and evils that human life always was and always will be prey to, and to the exclusion of balancing factors such as the unusually robust hostility within the British culture towards slavery, reflecting its longstanding banning within Britain and later its unprecedentedly effective banning and eradication wherever the British writ ran.
That’s a long, long way from regarding it as “perfectly acceptable”.
What should imo be perfectly unacceptable today, and is sadly pretty commonplace, is people taking episodes such as this from history and using them cynically and manipulatively to push their own personal or political interests.
Who is making this argument? I don’t know of anyone doing so.
The main arguments in question are about the erasure or our past, some of which is represented by statuary and other monuments. The counterargument against the woke brigade is about being open about our entire history, warts and all.
It is also about the mindless urge to destroy heritage and the psychological flaws that underly this. Our history is ours, regardless of who is offended by it, including you.
So what? We all are. We live in the nation that abolished slavery when we were the defacto colossus running the world, in complete contrast to every other hegemon from history. We lost 1568 sailors when we sent the Royal Navy out to eradicate it. That is all the apology we will ever need.
And at great cost. Money was borrowed to accomplish it and I believe the debt was finally paid off in 2011.
2014
Let’s keep waging war on the past and just erase all the bits we don’t like. Do that and you’ll find that slavery never happened.
It didn’t happen in Britain, which is rarely mentioned. The only slaves we ever had were brought by the Romans.
Complaining the British endorsed slavery, a practice we haven’t tolerated here since the fifth century, is like saying you favour child labour because it is discovered your pension fund inadvertently invested a tiny amount in a fund that has a holding in a company in the Far East that may have questionable employment practices.
We British have always been anti-slavery, which is why we abolished it.
I know and agree. You can also choose to be offended by the past, as I pointed out to rtj1211.
In the seventh century enterprising Irishmen would row across the Irish sea and steal women from the west coast. Tragic for the women, but it was long ago.
Perhaps the tactic should be to point out their pessimism. Always focusing on the negative. We are an amazing culture that has given the world a great deal.
Actually chattel slavery was abolished by William after the Norman Conquest, so hasn’t been here for 1 000 years. Serfdom was finally abolished in the reign of the first Elizabeth as you say.
🤣🤣
‘I really do think that people who consider slavery to have been perfectly acceptable in the British Empire…’
Straw Man Alert!
Few consider that, what they do consider is events hundreds of years ago carried out by people long dead whose victims are long dead have no pertinence today and cannot be retrospectively changed by punishing people now living, or trashing our heritage and distorting history.
‘Slavery is one area of life I am very hot about.’
Glad to hear it. What are you doing to get the Roman Colosseum demolished together with hundreds of other Roman buildings and bridges throughout Europe? Then will you be having a word with the Greeks for their slavery days?
Are you as hot about Black Africans keeping other Black Africans as slaves throughout history even to the present day?
Indeed. All nonsense. History is what it is.
What’s really at play is the same urges that animate communism, a deep sense of inadequacy driving a destructive mindset. Those who can’t build up can only tear down.
Slavery going on right now in the fields of East Anglia and Lincolnshire.
“Det Ch Insp Louisa Glynn, from Bedfordshire Police, said: “Sadly, we know that modern slavery and exploitation is going on all around us.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-53227061
Wrong on every single level. If you are so concerned about slavery then study Africa, India under the caste system, Arabia and the Barbary coast. The UK had the least involvement in slavery and the UK was the very first country that expended men, ships and money to abolish it.
Wrong on every single level.
Like crime in multi-story car-parks. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
You’re right, but ‘one man’s property in another’ wasn’t limited to white on black. Serfdom was not abolished in Prussia till 1811, in Russia 1863, the same year as Lincoln’s proclamation. And, if there’s to be recrimination, it must not exempt blacks. Rowing in from the offing in a longboat to surprise odd victims on a beach, a la ‘Roots’, is a weak business model. Much better to march them en masse to a Gold Coast assembly fortress and sell them, pre-fettered, in bulk to the white traders from there. And who did the marching? Fellow blacks, trading rival tribes-folk, the standard African practice of the time. So let’s have some guilt and remorse, and reparation, from their descendants too.
Manifest truth or not, actions today cannot change history, be it good or bad, and thus these actions are no more than virtue signaling.
I have never heard a single person state that they consider slavery in the British empire was perfectly acceptable. On the contrary in fact. The fact however, of it being constantly used to prop up claims of victimhood in people alive today who have prosperous, safe and free lives and the pandering to this stuff, is I think what people object to.
“I really do think that people who consider slavery to have been perfectly acceptable in the British Empire”
NAME ONE.
Fourth paragraph of the article: “Two years ago, as the world became infected by a plague which the Chinese regime had tried to hide…”
PLAGUE? REALLY? Sorry, Charles, I refuse to read the rest of your article.
Quite right, Charles has some good sides, but he is, primarily, an establishment stooge.
“PLAGUE? REALLY?”
That was my reaction as well. Propagandist lies remain untrue however good the cause they are deployed in.
Well… Plague of deception and lies certainly – perhaps he meant that?
While all this was going on, the vast majority of the British population were the white slaves of England to the 50,000 or so landed gentry families.
Shh – we can’t mention that! Don’t you realise that all those serfs had white privilege?
Because many Brits with British ancestry are white skinned it does NOT mean they are societally, culturally (or even genetically) the same as the elite classes who are also white skinned.
The convenient (itself racist) yardstick of skin colour is utter BS, and deliberately fails to recognise the misery, poverty and suffering inflicted on the lower (white-skinned-but-different-from-the-knobs) echelons – including the habitual use of the white plebs as cannon fodder in Imperialist wars. This, of course, doesn’t even scratch the surface of the hypocrisy – and the same argument applies for elite and non elite black skinned people. The disturbing skin colour politics favoured by (Democrat funded and run) BLM is elitist, corporate subterfuge. A white miner in the late 19th century worked in appalling conditions could look forward only to serious workplace injury or long term Silicosis. That worker had far more in common with black slaves, not least in that they both shared the same elite political masters.
None of this is about facts, including skin pigmentation. It is about the inadequates seeking power. Spend enough time with our darker skinned cousins and you’ll soon learn they feel inferior. The statues, the monuments and the other paraphernalia of a spectacularly successful nation of indigenous northern Europeans who are from a limited genetic stock, despite your comments, remind them of that. But that is their problem.
BLM founder is a WEF young global leader alumnus….
Agreed, they are now and have been for a long time. Just because there’s a piece of legislation with the word ‘rights’ in it, doesn’t mean you’re not a slave.
When are Cornwall and Devon going to receive reparations for the Barbary slave trade?
Asking for a friend.
Or the Catholic Church for the “dissolution” of the monasteries and the C of E’s appropriation of Catholic cathedrals, parish churches, and colleges, and the destruction of holy images and liturgical objects?
Just joking, sort of.
I presume you mean the Roman Catholic Church. Since when did the Church of Rome really own them? It was a legal fiction – the monks weren’t allowed to own property and so it was vested with Rome as a technicality. Rome did not pay for these assets any more than the National Trust pays for its assets that it ‘acquires’ because folk cannot afford to pay death duties, or the Crown or the state acquires from buried treasure or intestate estates.
These organizations that acquire legal ownership because they have coerced lawmakers to arrange it such should have no right to reparations when others arrange otherwise.
Abolishing slavery and abolishing the unwarranted control of Rome over English assets and the English church were both to be welcomed.
They were C of E buildings.
When are the French going to cough up for 1066?
Was George Floyd’s death “murder?” He died from cardiac arrhythmia and drug overdose. Police employed the usual restraining methods taught in police academies and military training programs. The trial’s jury members were intimidated. Long before the court trial commenced, the defendant had been convicted by the court of public opinion.
Indeed, no shades of grey are allowed in the MSM.
If Floyd had been white I don’t believe for a moment the jury would have found the police officer guilty of murder. Though in truth, you could argue that that more reflects a disinclination to hold policemen accountable other than in cases involving specially privileged minorities.
Look at the story of Tony Timpa and your beliefs will be confirmed. This has been covered and mentioned a fair bit but not by the MSM:
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/white-privilege-a-tale-of-two-murders/
was that the same case where the family dismissed the first autopsy and paid for a second one in order to get the answer they wanted.
Indeed. I believed at the time that it was impossible for Derek Chauvin to receive a fair trial, and I still believe that; it was in fact a ‘show trial’.
Brett Weinstein subsequently wrote one of the most balanced articles about this on UnHerd.
There is a great deal I could quote from that article:
And so the conviction of Derek Chauvin sets a disturbing precedent. Today, when people are angry enough to demand something — when they are willing to march and burn and disrupt and intimidate — their understanding of events becomes gospel, and a trial is just one more tool at their disposal. The right to a fair trial is suddenly turned into a mere privilege — something that is only guaranteed so long as the mob isn’t against you.
The article can be found here:
https://unherd.com/2021/05/the-day-american-justice-died/
No not really. You only have to look at the next article regarding wearing of masks. They have learned nothing. As long as we are governed by a ruling class and it’s wife who decide on a new set of policies once they are elected, we will continue to suffer and pay for the insane hyper woke, net zero, covid authoritarianism of our government and their handler consorts.
I suspect the statue demolishing is not driven by a ruling class. Too visible.
I think, rather, it is an example of their lack of wisdom and foresight. Setting up and funding destructive causes to help you remain in power seems like a good idea until your minions have ideas of their own. That’s what we are seeing. The original architects of wokery have long since lost control of it. Every movement can be Stalinized as they say.
The statue-haters are just Britain-haters. But it is hard for non-whites to condemn the very country that took them in and gave them access to the first world. Throw in a degree of inferiority complex and you have a toxic mix of anger, shame and hostility.
Yes, the maximum penalty for damaging a statue is being increased from 3 months to 10 years in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill.
That is news to me. Fantastic if true.
They clearly didn’t consider my own suggestion that anyone caught toppling a statue gets hanged from that very statue as a polite reminder of what’s what in Blighty 😉
Bit over the top.
No point even trying to save money making your own bread – it’ll end up costing £30 to put the oven on for an hour.
should not be tearing down statues and erasing history, ISIS also destroyed statues that they did not like in the middle east a while ago.
The care home scandal is as big as the New York hospitals scandals. We are covering up the cruelty and murder to save political careers. This scandal is not so much bad decision making as the wanton destruction of the older generation. Why??? Because they are the generation who know the history and they are the generation who are seen as useless eaters.
This is the correct judgement. However, I bet you the activists havn’t given up yet.
This crap has a long way to run.