Archive for the ‘Culture Wars’ Category

Cream teas at dawn: inside the war for the National Trust – The Guardian

One by one, they tackle the steeply winding path to Penrhyn Castle, pausing halfway to admire the view over a sparkling blue sea. Extended families grapple with pushchairs and picnic cool boxes; there are dapper older gentlemen in panama hats, and panting labradors. A blackboard at the entrance advertises traditional games every Thursday, while the gift shop is a soothing vision of gardening tools, tea towels and jars of chutney. As Eleanor Harding, the National Trusts thoughtful young assistant curator for Wales, enters the castles ornate library, a volunteer guide says brightly: No negative comments today!

Over the past year, the trust has attracted its fair share of those. An institution best known for stately homes, scones and bracing walks has found itself plunged into an unlikely culture war over how the history it is charged with preserving for the nation should be interpreted.

Years of minor grumbling about its efforts to move with the times or, as a leaked internal document last summer put it, improve on an outdated mansion experience erupted into a full-blown row in September last year over a report tracing its properties connections to colonialism and slavery. Published in the aftermath of a summer of Black Lives Matter protests, which saw the statue of a slaver pushed into Bristol harbour and Winston Churchills statue on Whitehall boarded up for its protection, it brought together three years work exploring the histories of 93 estates. Some were built on the proceeds of slavery Penrhyns original owners made their fortune from sugar plantations in Jamaica while others had been home to abolitionists. Powis Castle on the English-Welsh border made the list for holding spoils of war brought back by the military commander Clive of India, while Rudyard Kiplings former Sussex home earned its entry for his writings on empire. But it was the inclusion of Churchills home at Chartwell, Kent, on grounds including his early opposition to independence for India, that really put the cat among the pigeons.

A clique of powerful, privileged liberals must not be allowed to rewrite our history in their image, thundered 28 members of the Common Sense Group of Tory backbenchers, a rightwing grouping founded to counter what it regards as woke thinking, in a letter to the Daily Telegraph accusing the trust of having tarnished one of Britains greatest sons. The then chair of the Charity Commission, former Conservative cabinet minister Tina Stowell, promised to investigate whether the trust had strayed from its charitable purpose (the commission later cleared it of doing so). Even Oliver Dowden, then culture secretary, declared that roping in Churchill would surprise and disappoint people. Claims that the trust was haemorrhaging members and purging dissenting staff followed, many under the byline of the influential Spectator columnist Charles Moore. A group called Restore Trust a rebel alliance of disgruntled members seeking to oust senior National Trust leaders has now tabled a series of resolutions for the charitys annual general meeting later this month, including one demanding the trust consult its army of volunteers before changing the way a property is presented.

The trust has weathered public controversies before, over everything from demands to ban foxhunting on its land in the 1990s to lowering the sugar in its flapjack recipes three years ago. But this feels uglier, and more intense. The trusts director general, Hilary McGrady, received at least one death threat following the report. Corinne Fowler, a professor of postcolonial literature at the University of Leicester, who co-authored it with the trusts head curator, Sally-Anne Huxtable, and others, was advised for her own safety not to go out walking alone. The charity seems to have become a lightning rod for the boiling emotions of a nation in flux, racked by arguments over national identity, social justice, pride and guilt.

Yet presiding over it all is McGrady, whose manner is as calm and soothing as a stroll round a herbaceous border. Having grown up on a smallholding not far from Belfast during the Troubles, she is perhaps more used to navigating conflicting histories than most.

Its been the perfect storm in many respects, hasnt it? she says resignedly down a phone line from rural Somerset. People have had to get used to whats going on with Brexit, people having to get used to Covid, the political agenda, levelling up there are so many things in the mix that are creating this febrile atmosphere. I think we did fall foul of a period of time in the last year when the world was going slightly bonkers.

But why should the trust be a target? I think its one of the steadying reminders of whats good about life people like the consistency, she says. And then they were reading this stuff, going: Oh my goodness, theyre changing this thing that I absolutely love. Thats what frustrated me, because actually Im not changing anything. What Im trying to do is improve and constantly build take nothing away but just add more interest.

A year on, the trust still has more than 5.4 million members, numbers that no political party can dream of matching. During the pandemic, many drew comfort from walking its peaks and fells, holding outdoor family reunions in its parklands, or holidaying in its beauty spots. But the row hasnt gone away. At its heart lies a tug of war between people who dont want politics intruding on a nice day out, and those arguing that politics were there all along, for those who cared to look.

The vast dining table at Penrhyn Castle is set for a banquet, groaning with crystal and family silver. Gazing down from the wall, as if surveying his bounty, is an enormous oil painting of Richard Pennant, the first Baron Penrhyn and an 18th-century MP for Liverpool.

But something is amiss. The middle of the table is bare, apart from a battered box labelled Jamaica papers. And just below the painting stands a bouquet of white chrysanthemums, whose handwritten card dedicates them to the enslaved people whose blood and sweat and tears contributed to the wealth that built this castle. The effect is as if someone has burst into a dinner party and thrown down a bloody gauntlet to the hosts.

This is the heart of the What a World! exhibition, Eleanor Hardings attempt to foreground a history unusually well preserved in the family archive that Richard Pennants descendants gave to Bangor University in the 1930s, including records of prices paid for slaves on its six plantations. Built in 1820, the castle sits in what the heritage consultant Dr Marian Gwyn (who has researched the archive for the trust) calls a slave landscape. The familys plantation wealth, plus compensation received when slavery was abolished, was ploughed into a vast estate stretching from Bangor on the north Wales coast into Snowdonia.

That money bought fine art and furniture for the castle. But it also built houses and pubs, roads and railways, chapels and schools; it drained farmland and industrialised the familys slate quarry near Bethesda, bringing jobs and prosperity but leaving a new legacy of bitterness.

The Great Penrhyn Quarry Strike of 1900-3, called after the Pennant family rejected workers demands for better pay and conditions, became the longest-running industrial dispute in British history. Strike-breakers, known as bradwyr or traitors, were ostracised for years afterwards by their neighbours; families were torn apart or driven away. Some local people still refuse to enter the castle, which was seen as symbolising oppression. Six years ago, the trust began devising a strategy to entice them back and introduce tourists to this richly complex story.

The Jamaica box was always part of the exhibition, which features local childrens poems responding to objects found in the house. But the flowers arrived unexpectedly this summer via a young black academic named April-Louise Pennant, seeking answers about her family history.

Pennant remains a common surname in Jamaica, although, as Harding explains, its unclear why. Is it that after emancipation the British said, You need surnames and the slaves were either given or picked the surnames of the people they worked for? Of course, another possibility is rape.

Pennant, a newly graduated PhD student whose research has focused on black feminist ideology and critical race theory, says going to the castle was both a professional and a personal journey. Her grandparents came to Britain from Jamaica with the Windrush migration, and she remembers being told their name was Welsh in origin. But it wasnt until she moved to Wales recently, to work for the devolved government, that she made the connection with Penrhyn. Where once only one line of Pennants was represented in the dining room, now there are two. She laid the flowers because, to her, Penrhyn is a monument: There would be no castle without slavery, there would be no quarry without slavery. I just thought that my ancestors had not been honoured.

The estate was given to the trust in lieu of inheritance tax in 1953, but the family retained some of the land, and visiting it evoked raw emotions that Pennant is still struggling to process. The trust promised that her card would remain displayed when the flowers died, but she wonders if that is enough. Id like to see more scrutiny of why these places were given to the National Trust and the fact that theres this huge reparations movement its not just about money, its about justice. How is it that the slave owners got compensation whereas someone like myself didnt get anything, and we cant even get acknowledgment? Several of her friends, she says, are now keen to trace their own roots; ultimately, she wants to know which part of Africa her own ancestors were taken from.

Most visitors have welcomed the exhibition, Harding says, and some have been deeply moved. But she estimates every castle volunteer has fielded at least one angry outburst. We have people who are frustrated at the way the world is going and changes to the status quo, who are coming to Penrhyn, knowing what theyre going to see and almost needing it as a place to vent their anger, she says. Others let rip anonymously on TripAdvisor, where Shropshire Lad from Shrewsbury complains of an amazing building, gardens and history ruined by an unremitting display of wokeness, while Alan M compares the narrow (and oh so fashionable) angle taken to present a complex subject to communist rewritings of history. Mike from Tonbridge rages: Give us what we visited for and paid for History! But whose history, exactly?

Corinne Fowler, co-author of the colonialism and slavery report, first began collaborating with the trust five years ago on her Colonial Countryside project, which saw children producing creative writing reflecting on properties linked to empire. She is evidently scarred by last Septembers backlash, but agrees to answer questions by email. Her report argues that grand country houses are innately political, thanks to a 1711 law limiting House of Commons membership to men with a significant income from the land, which made estate ownership key to legislative power for more than a century. Have we had an overly cosy view of these properties in the past?

Country houses have become places where you go to switch off, walk your dog and admire designed landscapes, Fowler says. Nobodys going to worry about learning familiar facts on their visit that the house belonged to an MP. But being confronted with history you didnt learn at school can, she argues, feel threatening. Its not surprising it feels alien, because we know more about 1066, the Great Fire and steam engines than we know about four centuries of British colonial activity. But just because our education system didnt really prepare us for this, that doesnt mean that British history is under attack.

Fowler anticipated some hostility towards her report but was nonetheless shocked by the press coverage and the ensuing waves of bile (one online comment below a newspaper article discussed how she should be murdered). What most angers her, however, is the charge that historians were stoking a culture war simply by discussing the evidence-based research that the National Trust exists in part to do.

The charity was founded in 1895 by Octavia Hill, a Christian socialist who was evangelical about giving the urban working classes fresh air and green space, working with two like-minded colleagues. She used to walk children out of London into Epping Forest because she believed that if you gave them Gods nature, it would inject magic into their lives, says Ivo Dawnay, the trusts former director for London (and Boris Johnsons brother-in-law), who tweeted this summer appealing for critics to stop treating it like a political football. Alongside Hill, there was Hardwicke Rawnsley, a radical vicar in the Lake District who was fighting the railways your Swampy type. The final one was Robert Hunter, a campaigner for common land. Funded by wealthy establishment figures, their mission of acquiring land for free public access was nonetheless radical from the start, Dawnay argues: Im sure in 1895 there must have been a lot of people thinking it was outrageous. Their first acquisition was four and a half acres of gorse-covered hillside at Dinas Oleu on the western Welsh coast, donated by a wealthy philanthropist friend of Hills named Fanny Talbot in hopes that it would go to some society that will never vulgarise it, or prevent wild nature having its way. The stately homes the trust is famous for, however, were a surprisingly late addition.

After the first world war, the aristocracy found itself squeezed by high death duties and a dearth of estate workers, many of whom had been killed in the trenches. Historic estates risked being carved up or crumbling into ruins. The fabric of the landscape was starting to break down, says Liz Green, the trusts lead curator in Wales. You read about this in novels all the time: the young heir comes along, has to flog the family silver off and break apart these great estates. The solution was the National Trust Act of 1937, allowing estates to be given to the Treasury in lieu of inheritance tax and held by the trust on behalf of the nation in perpetuity. (The trust occupies an unusual position, independent of government but answerable to the nation; technically it doesnt own its assets, but cares for them on Britains behalf.) What followed was effectively nationalisation on a scale of which socialists might only dream, albeit in exchange for some hefty tax avoidance, leaving the trust with a new coalition of members: some who joined to walk the land, others interested in worshipping the aristocracy, or in pictures and furniture and china, as Dawnay puts it.

By the 1960s, that coalition was cracking, with complaints that the trust was becoming a cosy club for the gentry. It was saved by a unifying campaign to rescue the English and Welsh coastline from developers, reflected in the 775 miles of coastal path it owns today, which was so popular that membership soared from about 50,000 in 1960 to a million by 1981. Yet efforts in recent years to broaden the membership have strained that coalition once more.

You go into properties now and it tells you the difference between the Stuarts and the Tudors. The old guard thinks everyone should know the difference, and if they dont they shouldnt be there, Dawnay says. Its a small proportion of members, but they have undue influence because they have access to the columnists of the Telegraph and Times and Spectator.

Restore Trust is certainly well-connected for a small protest group, enjoying extensive media coverage for its claims to have attracted thousands of supporters or forced the resignation of the trusts long-serving chair Tim Parker this summer. (The trust insists Parkers departure was planned, and that Restore Trust demanded he quit the day after stakeholders were confidentially told he would be leaving.) It is backed by an unusually high-powered team, including PR executive Neil Bennett (an ex-journalist who worked at the Sunday Telegraph under Charles Moores editorship) and the millionaire Tory donor Neil Record. Its slickly designed website is currently pumping out information on how National Trust members can vote at the AGM for a change in direction, either in person, online or by post.

After a fiery launch, Restore Trust has seemingly tempered its rhetoric. A spokesperson emails that its chief concern is a shift of power from expert curators to managers charged with boosting visitor numbers, leaving properties peppered inside and out with signage in poor taste and lacking any coherent design, greatly detracting from the aesthetic impact. Offending examples apparently include signs encouraging children to pretend to be a bee and waggle along this path. Worse still, she adds: There are labels at Stourhead [a Wiltshire stately home], in one of the great libraries of England, on round tables in white gauze no understanding of the grandeur of the house. (Museum-style labelling is a surprisingly big bone of contention among members nostalgic for the days when the rooms of country houses were assumed to speak for themselves.) This rather esoteric crusade against dumbing down has, however, been amplified by a cruder rightwing backlash against social justice movements (or what the Common Sense Group calls cultural Marxism), plus a post-Brexit push for more patriotic history dwelling on past glories, not old wrongs. All three strands of opposition are converging on the AGM.

Stephen Green of the virulent rightwing pressure group Christian Voice perhaps most notorious for speaking in defence of a Ugandan law threatening to impose the death penalty on HIV-positive gay men who had sex is standing for election to the trusts governing council on a pitch accusing the trust of becoming obsessed with LGBT issues and woke virtue-signalling. Green, who is endorsed by Restore Trust, has over the years opposed abortion, the criminalisation of marital rape, compulsory sex education in schools, performances of the musical Jerry Springer: The Opera (which he regarded as blasphemous) and above all the sinful practice of homosexuality. He particularly resents the trusts outing of Robert Wyndham Ketton-Cremer, the owner of Felbrigg Hall in Norfolk until his death in 1969, as gay. Theres absolutely no evidence that this quite unobtrusive man was some prototype Peter Tatchell, but because he was single and adopted a funny pose outside Felbrigg Hall, he had to be gay, Green says indignantly. He doesnt expect to win, he adds, but wants the trust not to see itself as a vehicle for social change.

Perhaps more typical of grassroots unease is Andrew Powles, chair of Wellingborough civic society, also standing for the council on a platform questioning the trusts direction. A member for 40 years, he says he was saddened by the bitter divisions evident at last years AGM, held virtually due to Covid. We all logged in and were left feeling: Does it really have to be like this? When you see things on the chat box, some people saying, Im going to resign now they wont visit, they wont go to the shop, they wont have a cup of tea in the cafe, and all that stuff is so crucial. Powles sees nothing wrong in saying an estate was built on slavery, although he thinks the right place for that information may be the website: It shouldnt necessarily spoil the enjoyment of the house.

The Tory MP and former Foreign Office minister Andrew Murrison, who led a parliamentary debate on the trust last autumn, predicts a great groundswell of members opinion coming to a head at the AGM. A former naval surgeon whose Wiltshire constituency includes Stourhead named in the colonialism and slavery report because its 18th-century owner inherited money made partly from trading shares in the South Sea company, which supplied slave labour to central and southern America Murrison regards the report as historically poor, underplaying Britains role in abolition. Its worthwhile just reflecting on where Britain actually was in the 19th century in relationship to slavery and the progress this country was able to achieve. None of that is really of particular interest to those behind this report and I think thats wrong, wherever you stand politically.

As trust properties have been either in lockdown or limiting visitors due to Covid since March 2020, its impossible to be sure how all this has affected visitor numbers although Marian Gwyn says a 2007 exhibition she staged on Penrhyns connections to slavery boosted visitor numbers by 12.5%. There are, she argues, commercial as well as ethical reasons for telling stories new to visitors.

Membership fell from a pre-pandemic peak of nearly 6 million to 5.4 million by this spring, but began rising again as lockdown restrictions lifted. The trusts director of communications, Celia Richardson, says the numbers closely track whether properties were open to visitors or not (most members are recruited on a visit). The rate of existing members renewing their subscriptions fell by only 1%, while small donations trebled. What characterises some of this culture war campaign is campaigners completely exaggerating the effect theyre having. Were recruiting members at the moment every 25 seconds, says Richardson, who suspects most trust members arent enormously interested in the row. People dont join a conservation organisation to argue about political theory.

Yet the attacks on an institution she calls about as Marxist as a cream tea take their toll. When theres a mainstream media story, we will see quite a lot of abuse starting to hit us via social media, via our call centres, direct threats coming into the director generals inbox. There are culture warriors out there looking for these stories, Richardson says. Recently she filed a formal complaint with the Spectator over a Charles Moore piece that quoted an employee who allegedly claimed that at interviews people are asked how they voted in the Brexit referendum, and rejected out of hand if they voted to leave. (The Spectators editor, Fraser Nelson, declined to comment for this article beyond noting that: Charles is a pretty well established journalist and biographer with a track record that speaks for itself.) Some of the social media abuse seems to come from bots or from overseas, Richardson says. But she worries about the chilling effect on other charities and cultural institutions, anxious to avoid similar attacks.

At her lowest point, Hilary McGrady admits she considered leaving. There were lots of days when I thought, Why am I putting myself through this? Would it be better for the trust, would it make life easier if I was to go? Yet she has, she says, emerged more convinced than ever that the charity should hold true to its beliefs and purpose. Work on slavery and colonialism will continue, but its only a tiny part of what the trust actually does.

The single biggest issue preoccupying her is the trusts role, as a major landowner across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, in tackling the climate crisis. We need to be active on our land, working to try to save nature this is really important right now, just as the survival of the country house was the thing to focus on in the postwar period. Once again, that means moving with changing times.

From the top of Holly Purdeys Exmoor farm, you can see right across the valley a lush patchwork of forest, moor and meadow, beneath a cornflower-blue sky. But Ben Eardley, riverlands project manager here on the vast trust-owned estate at Holnicote, isnt here to show off the view. We are, instead, gathered expectantly around a cowpat.

Look at the holes! Eardley says, pointing at the dung. And soon, a tiny black beetle crawls out. You rarely see holes on cowpats now, he explains, because theyre made by dung beetles to whom cattle-worming drugs can be lethal, even once excreted. But Purdey is a rewilding enthusiast, seeking to take her land back to a more natural state, and her cows arent chemically wormed. That makes their dung safe for the beetles, who in return break it down, fertilising the soil and improving the grass for the cows. That cowpat is an amazing habitat. Its not as exciting as a wildflower, but its really important, Eardley says.

When 33-year-old Purdey took over the tenancy of this trust-owned farm three years ago, she planted trees, rested exhausted pastures and used water management techniques to stop heavy rains from washing away topsoil. Now she calculates that her sheep, goat, cattle and chicken farm is finally carbon neutral, absorbing more carbon than it emits.

Purdey, who grew up on an organic farm on Exmoor, admits her methods initially met with some local scepticism. But shes determined to prove the changes can be economically viable, while reducing carbon emissions and building resilience to extreme weather. Me and my husband just feel that weve got to bring about change, and if that means going against the status quo, then weve got to make that stand and showcase how we can do it while still producing food, she says.

Further down the valley, the trust has reintroduced the first pair of beavers to roam this land in hundreds of years. Yogi and Grylls have dammed the shallow streams flowing through their enclosure, creating a lake that teemed with tadpoles in spring and which Eardley hopes will create rich new wildlife habitats. The beavers (and now their newborn kit Rashford) complement a river management system aiming to get water spilling up over the land where its safe to do so, reducing the flood risk downstream while creating a carbon-sequestering wetland home to dragonflies, birds, bats and insects.

Here, at least, the trust shares common ground with the government. The environment minister, Zac Goldsmith, is a rewilding enthusiast and Boris Johnson unexpectedly pledged in this months party conference speech to build back beaver in British rivers. Reducing carbon emissions from farming, meanwhile, could help Britain meet its net zero targets.

Yet McGrady insists this focus on the land doesnt mean neglecting the houses; if anything, she sees exhuming their hidden histories as a means of revival. Time and time again Ive spoken to visitors who said, I love this place, I havent been in the house for quite a long time because nothing has changed, but I love the garden. Actually what I want is to get more people back into the houses to really learn a bit more, so that every time they come there will be something different that will shine a light on a new bit of the collection.

In hindsight, McGrady admits she wouldnt have published the colonialism and slavery report while she was still busy managing the consequences of Covid, leaving little time to prepare stakeholders for what was coming. But she doesnt regret the work itself, rejecting suggestions that it was released under pressure from social justice campaigners. I never did this piece of work to appease one community or annoy another. I genuinely did it because I think its a fascinating story it adds more interest, more complexity, a depth of history that we havent told before. Why is that not a good thing?

What if it exposes the trust to demands for reparations, or repatriating colonial treasures currently in its collections? The shape of a fledgling British reparations movement is still emerging, although so far it has emphasised acknowledging and atoning for past injustices as much as money. McGrady cant yet say what it might mean for the trust, suggesting it would follow a national policy lead: We would be absolutely falling in behind the people who are responsible for that, like the Arts Council or English Heritage. But relations with donor families remain a delicate subject. The two surviving Pennant heirs one of whom still lives in north Wales, while the other is a poet living between the UK and Cyprus have donated to charities in Jamaica, but a source with knowledge of the family says they have faced criticism over its past actions. I know several families who have connections to slavery and have the same sort of paperwork the Pennants have, and no way will they share it because theyve seen whats happened.

This article comes from Saturday,the new print magazine from the Guardianwhich combines the best features, culture, lifestyle and travel writing in one beautiful package. Available now in the UK and ROI.

Thank you for your feedback.

McGradys Northern Irish upbringing has helped convince her that openness is crucial to reconciling conflict. I understand the complexities of history and different peoples perspective on history and why these are sensitive, she says. But my attitude, partly because I come from Northern Ireland, is that I think we need to talk about it.

Over summer, there have been signs of the culture wars cooling. Oliver Dowden visited the trust-owned Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland and publicly praised its work there; ministers pointedly defended the RNLI after Nigel Farage criticised it for rescuing drowning refugees from the Channel. Does McGrady sense a change in the political weather?

Id certainly like to think the nations being a bit kinder to itself, she says, noting the way England rallied behind its football team this summer despite initial protests over players taking the knee. What the England team did was bring a huge sense of celebration and pride to the nation. I thought it was amazing, and to undercut it with all this sort of nastiness was just such an own goal. I think the nation did realise: weve got something here thats really valuable why are we giving it a hard time? In a way I think thats a little bit similar with the National Trust. With a potentially turbulent AGM approaching, she professes herself hopeful but not complacent; the lesson she has drawn from the past year is that conflict is unlikely to go away, but that leaders can become more resilient in the face of attack.

A few days later, the charitys official Twitter account posts a soothing picture of late-flowering roses and lavender, with the caption: A stroll through a well-appointed garden is where you can find your calm. But only, perhaps, after the storm.

See original here:
Cream teas at dawn: inside the war for the National Trust - The Guardian

Time to call a truce in the culture wars. Rather than stir up division, let’s seek solutions that bring people together – PoliticsHome

4 min read08 October

Whether it is the politics of gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, age, or disability, there is always someone ready to offend and be offended.

I would rather be awake than asleep. Prefer to be aware of what is going on around me, in my community, in my country, than blithely carrying on, oblivious to things that may well have changed.

That may make me woke and I am conscious that is bandied about all too readily as an insult, as if to be woke is a bad thing. As opposed to what exactly? Being unconscious? Because I would suggest you really dont want to be that.

But the thing I reject is that there has to be a culture war at all. And why is it always a war, with talk of the trenches, lobbing missiles at each other from both sides and indeed the middle? It doesnt have to be like that; we could all choose to debate some of the more vexed issues with sensitivity and nuance, recognising that it is all a great deal more complicated than the headline writers would have us believe.

Whether it is the politics of gender, or race, or religion, or sexual orientation, or age (thats always a good one, pitting the boomers against the millennials), or disability, there is always someone ready to offend and be offended.

We can learn from the past, apply it in the future and find the common ground

I am minded to recount the tale of a very close friend of mine, a tetraplegic confined to a wheelchair for the last 20 years, who was hounded off a discussion board for referring to himself as having a disability rather than being disabled. He looked at me, laughed, and said: Im the one in the wheelchair, and I am not remotely bothered as to how I refer to myself. And thats before we even start to discuss knitting wars.

So with plenty ready to go to war at the slightest provocation, surely it is incumbent upon politicians and political parties not to stoke culture wars, and to look for solutions and ways to bring people together rather than to stir up division.

It was the late Jo Cox who used her maiden speech to remind us we have far more in common than that which divides us. A point echoed last month by her sister, Kim Leadbeater, when she first spoke in the House. She is not wrong, Jo was not wrong, we are not wrong. From the most outspoken trans activist to the most determined feminist, common ground can be found.

Interestingly during the recent inquiry my select committee held into the Gender Recognition Act, all those who gave evidence agreed that a gender recognition panel was a nonsense. How can anyone judge if a hairstyle is sufficiently feminine? What is too much make-up and what not enough? Do I have to wear a dress to be a woman, or will jeans do? That ones a nightmare. What if theyre boyfriend jeans, does that count us out on all sides?

But culture wars are serious, and I am being deliberately flippant, because isnt humour one of the best ways to deflect an argument? And dont we need to avoid the urge to argue, and instead find some pragmatic solutions to the rows raging about statues, knees and the curriculum? Because shouting at each other is not going to work.

Of course cultures change, evolve and grow. And thank goodness for that, because if they didnt we would all be set in aspic, listening to frankly suspect music and wearing appalling clothes. It is pointless to fight change, to hark back to a bygone era and pretend everything was perfect then. It wasnt, but we can learn from the past, apply it in the future and find the common ground without launching missiles.

Caroline Nokesis the Conservative MP for Romsey and Southampton North and chair of the Women and Equalities Committee.

PoliticsHome Newsletters

Get the inside track on what MPs and Peers are talking about. Sign up to The House's morning email for the latest insight and reaction from Parliamentarians, policy-makers and organisations.

Read more here:
Time to call a truce in the culture wars. Rather than stir up division, let's seek solutions that bring people together - PoliticsHome

The Memo: Culture war intensifies over school boards | TheHill – The Hill

School boards have become a new front in the nations culture wars and hostilities are only getting more intense.

On Monday, Attorney General Merrick GarlandMerrick GarlandBannon's subpoena snub sets up big decision for Biden DOJ Navy engineer, wife accused of espionage plot Blinken warns Haitian migrants against making 'dangerous' trip to US MORE announced that the Department of Justice (DOJ) was taking a number of steps to address threats of violence against school board members at the state and local level.

Garland instructed the FBI and U.S. attorneys around the country to make contact with local law enforcement to discuss how to deal with this disturbing trend. A task force is also expected to be set up.

To supporters of Garlands position, this was an overdue action, given that school board members and teachers and, in some cases, students have faced verbal attacks and aggressive behavior, primarily over mask mandates and the controversy over critical race theory in recent months.

But the DOJ move incited fierce criticism from the right, with conservatives charging that the actions could have chilling effects on dissent and First Amendment principles.

The debate demonstrates, yet again, just how alienated from each other competing political tribes have become in America. Biden administration officials heralded the DOJ action as a commonsense safety measure. Republicans cast it as a nefarious attack on liberty.

White House press secretary Jen PsakiJen PsakiBannon's subpoena snub sets up big decision for Biden DOJ The Memo: Biden's horizon is clouded by doubt Biden administration competency doubts increase MORE, just days before Garlands announcement, said, We take the security of public servants and elected officials across the country very seriously. And obviously these threats to school board members [are] horrible. Theyre doing their jobs.

But when Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, she faced hostile questioning on the topic from Sens. Josh HawleyJoshua (Josh) David HawleyThe Hill's Morning Report - Presented by Facebook - Senate nears surprise deal on short-term debt ceiling hike The Memo: Culture war intensifies over school boards Senate GOP seeks bipartisan panel to investigate Afghanistan withdrawal MORE (R-Mo.) and Tom CottonTom Bryant CottonArkansas legislature splits Little Rock in move that guarantees GOP seats The Hill's Morning Report - Presented by Facebook - Senate nears surprise deal on short-term debt ceiling hike The Memo: Culture war intensifies over school boards MORE (R-Ark.), both of whom are possible 2024 presidential contenders.

Conservatives had already been outraged by a letter sent to the Biden administration by the National School Boards Association (NSBA) last week that described public schools and educators as under an immediate threat and suggested that some actions school board members faced were equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism.

Is it domestic extremism for a parent to advocate for their childs best interests? Cotton asked Monaco during the Senate hearing.

Hawley demanded that Monaco should tell me where the line is with parents expressing their concerns and also cast the FBI as interfering in school board meetings.

Responding to the second point, Monaco insisted, That is not going on.

Schools have increasingly become the focus of the tensions wrenching at the broader civic fabric of the United States. The trend is intertwined with the stresses and political polarization around the coronavirus pandemic, with some parents demanding mask mandates and others equally fervent in resisting them.

Meanwhile, the debate over critical race theory has become a proxy for the larger discussion of racial justice, as liberals see it, and excessive wokeness, from conservatives perspective.

That has fueled an atmosphere in which local school boards are increasingly dragged into national politics and affected by the passions that still swirl around former President TrumpDonald TrumpPennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro enters governor's race GOP lawmakers introduce measure in support of Columbus Day Bannon's subpoena snub sets up big decision for Biden DOJ MORE.

The path to save the nation is very simple its going to go through the school boards, Stephen Bannon, the former Trump aide predicted on his podcast in May.

The NSBA letter to Biden outlined numerous instances of trouble erupting at school board meetings.

The association noted that one person had been arrested in Illinois for aggravated battery during a school board meeting. Another example came in Virginia, where, according to the NSBA, an individual was arrested, another man was ticketed for trespassing and a third person was hurt during a school board meeting discussing distinguishing current curricula from critical race theory.

Facing those kinds of threats, school board members are adamant that action is needed.

Monica Peloso, president of the Cheyenne Mountain School District Board of Education in Colorado, told this column that she welcomed the DOJs moves and was thrilled that the national board had reached out to let them know what is going on. Its ludicrous.

Peloso has previously recounted to The Hill intimidating behavior experienced by her board. On Wednesday, she said that another school board district in Colorado had felt the need to have a large police presence, including SWAT teams, for one of its meetings.

But a completely different view is put forth by Sue Zoldak, a GOP strategist and founder of a parents group in Fairfax County, Va., called Do Better FCPS.

To Zoldak, the DOJs actions are a clear exaggeration and overreaction to what has happened in the last 18 months.

Zoldak argued that the pandemic has opened parents eyes to how much power school boards wield. She said that her group was focused on getting accountability and transparency regarding how her county, in the D.C.-adjacent northern suburbs of Virginia, operates.

Asked whether she felt some other parents groups had gone too far in their actions, Zoldak demurred.

We wouldnt be at this point where parents were that upset if school board members were accountable to their constituents and they were listening, she said. What we have found is that school board members consider themselves to be politicians as opposed to school administrators.

She added: They have put their political opinions above the educational progress of the students and the families they are supposed to be taking care of. Parents are frustrated.

Right now, just about everyone in the debate is frustrated. And there are no signs of those passions cooling off.

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.

Excerpt from:
The Memo: Culture war intensifies over school boards | TheHill - The Hill

Rep. Coleman: I returned to Austin to protect the legislature’s redistricting role – Austin American-Statesman

By Rep. Garnet F. Coleman| Austin American-Statesman

Redistricting is often portrayed as nothing more than a partisan battle, but most importantly, redistricting sets the stage for a decade of public policy decisions that directly impact our lives and our communities. The drawing of district lines goes a long way toward determining whether the next decade will be one of progress in public education, health care, and opportunity for working Texans, or a decade of divisive culture wars.

Knowing how important it is for legislators to be directly involved in the actual drawing of redistricting plans that provide representation for those who are driving our states rapid population growth, I could not understand why some of my Democratic colleagues wanted to extend a successful quorum break indefinitely, because there was no way that the Texas Supreme Court would prevent the Legislative Redistricting Board (LRB) from drawing the lines in our absence. The five-member LRB is composed of four Republican statewide elected officials, the only exception being the Speaker of the House.

As weve seen time and again this year, putting our faith in the Texas Supreme Court is a bad idea. Half of the current members of the all Republican Court have been picked and appointed by Governor Abbott, and any glimmer of hope that the court would protect the legislatures role in redistricting was extinguished when they upheld the governor's veto of Article X legislative funding, which read more like the governor's political talking points than legal reasoning.

As a legislator I need to be prepared for the worst, and the obvious worst case scenario had we continued to break quorum indefinitely was that the Texas Supreme Court would allow the LRB to draw the maps. Allowing the LRB to draw the lines, with no formal input from legislators and our constituents, would have been a monumental disaster for people of color and a decade of policy decisions that affect their everyday lives. Whether our communities be liberal or conservative, under the current redistricting process, I believe the drawing of the maps should be done by legislators who know their communities much better than distant statewide elected officials.

After we brought national attention to federal voting rights legislation that would lead to a fair and just redistricting process, I decided to come back to the Capitol. I didnt ask anyone to come back with me. I came back because it was the best way to represent my district in the Texas House, where each member has a voice and the opportunity to represent our constituents.

The quorum break was an important part of representing our districts. We accomplished a lot by bringing voting rights to the front burner in Washington, and I share with my Democratic colleagues an intense desire to stop harmful voting rights legislation from passing. But the only available remedy for Texas and many other states that have passed discriminatory voting laws this year is federal action. U.S. Senate Democrats who, unlike Texas Democrats, have a majority and the power to pass legislation, need to act now to protect every Americans right to vote.

Now we are in Austin, working to draw lines and present redistricting plans. That option would not be available had we let the LRB take over the process. Ultimately, I may disagree with the way all or part of the redistricting plans are drawn by the legislature, but by working with my colleagues in the Texas House, I am able to draw my district in a way that best represents my constituents

Coleman, D-Houston, represents the 147th district in the Texas House.

See more here:
Rep. Coleman: I returned to Austin to protect the legislature's redistricting role - Austin American-Statesman

Nadine Dorries is prepared to give the BBC a hard time dont expect relations to improve any time soon – iNews

The most controversial appointment of the reshuffle was Nadine Dorries as culture secretary. It didnt just lead to headlines that Boris Johnson was escalating the culture wars and aggravate Ms Dorriess critics in the arts world with the screenwriter Russell T Davies this week labelling her a f***ing idiot to i. It also came as a surprise to her colleagues. Its just mad, was one ministers blunt reaction on discovering the news.

Not only was it a notable promotion for the former health minister, her straight talking ways mean that traditionally she hasnt been viewed as Cabinet material.

She spent much of her parliamentary career in political Siberia after calling the then prime minister and chancellor David Cameron and George Osborne two arrogant posh boys.

A long-time supporter of Mr Johnson, her appointment was read as sending two important signals: 1. Loyalty pays off 2. The government is upping the ante on culture wars. Evidence of the latter has been on full show in Manchester this week where Ms Dorries has been making waves at the Conservative Party conference.

In a series of appearances, Ms Dorries suggested that the BBC is an institution staffed by people whose mum and dad worked there, warned that the corporations next licence fee settlement would be dependent on change and suggested that the BBC might not exist in 10 years time.

It was part of a wider theme with the culture wars opening and closing Tory conference. Party chairman Oliver Dowden kicked things off with an attack on cancel culture while the Prime Minister ended it by railing against the tearing down of statues, warning the country was at risk of a know nothing iconoclasm.

In a week that saw Tory activists gather for their first in-person meet since Mr Johnson announced a tax rise, its understandable that ministers are keen to have some things to point to that play well with the base. As ministers pushed for workers to return to the office, the phrase stop woke-ing from home was a regular utterance in the fringes.

But up until this point, Mr Johnson has been reluctant to fully step into culture war issues. So, whats behind the noise? Opinion is divided in the Tory party as to whether recent moves really amount to a hardening of the governments culture war position.

As one adviser puts it: A lot of this is talking tough so you dont have to walk the walk. They argue that by having someone who is prepared to be very vocal and indulge in a bit of BBC-bashing, the government actually has less to prove on policy.

Although there are senior figures in Downing Street pushing for a tougher stance such as head of policy Munira Murza and her husband Dougie Smith, Mr Johnsons preferred approach has been to wait for the other side to overstep and then jump in.

Even Ms Dorriess appointment can be read through this prism. It comes as relations between the government and BBC have come under strain with a very public row over the appointment of the journalist Jess Brammar as executive editor of the BBCs news channels.

Old social media posts were dug up by media on the right to claim Ms Brammar was unsuitable for the role while former No 10director of communications Robbie Gibb warned the BBC it cannot make this appointment if it wants to retain the support of the government.

By bringing in Ms Dorries, one government insider argues that Mr Johnson is showing two can play at that game. Tory MPs complain that so far the government has played too nice.

The new BBC chairman Richard Sharp may be a Tory donor, but he is a former Goldman Sachs banker, not a bomb thrower. He is not going to take on the BBC in the way that the other mooted candidate Charles Moore former Spectator editor could have.

In Ms Dorries, the BBC faces a politician who is willing to give them a tough time. But the caricature often conjured up of her as someone who wants to preside over the end of the BBC could also prove wide of the mark.

Supporters of Ms Dorries say much of the commentary around her appointment amounts to snobbery. She is a successful author in her own right and someone who is unashamedly pro Coronation Street when many of her colleagues would rather talk opera.

Its part of the reason she was picked by No 10. She sounds different to many of her cabinet colleagues her working class roots means that on some of the key levelling up issues she has an air of authenticity. Whats more, Ms Dorries isnt particularly attracted to the phrase culture wars, instead preferring to view such fights through the lens of social mobility.

While the Government wants to have the fight on British history and statues, there are limits to how far both she and Mr Johnson want to go. There is a reluctance, for example, to expand into areas such as trans rights.

But even if Downing Street is just looking for a focussed fight, it doesnt take much to transform into something else.

Relations between the BBC and government didnt exactly blossom this week with Mr Johnsons tetchy appearance on the Today programme with Nick Robinson, and every time Ms Dorries attacks the corporations staff, saying their parents all worked there, it leads to a backlash amongst employees to say she is wrong, with Huw Edwards among those to hit back.

Its why few on either side believerelations between the Government and the BBC will improve anytime soon instead, expect the opposite.

Go here to read the rest:
Nadine Dorries is prepared to give the BBC a hard time dont expect relations to improve any time soon - iNews