The Restore Trust has a new list of candidates for the upcoming council elections and, this time, they’ve been endorsed by Nigel Farage.
Arch Brexiteer Nigel Farage has a new target in his sights: The National Trust. The former UKIP leader has now thrown his weight behind a renewed attempt by anti-woke activists to capture the Trust, which owns more than 1,300 farms, 775 miles of coastline and 250,000 hectares of land, making it Britain’s largest private landowner.
In October 2021, the charity and membership organisation for heritage conservation warned of an ideological campaign being waged against it by self-styled ‘anti-woke insurgents’ belonging to Restore Trust (RT). Last year’s AGM saw the Trust subjected to a well-coordinated campaign by RT.
The Restore Trust campaign began in 2021, in the wake of the publication of a report by the National Trust that highlighted connections between 93 of its historic places and slavery. The dossier of sites linked to ‘colonialism and slavery’ and included Winston Churchill’s former family home, citing the former prime minister’s role in the Bengal famine and his opposition to Indian independence. RT took exception to the report claiming it “presents a strongly negative view of Britain, and which does not properly represent the scholarly consensus.”
Now the RT has a new list of candidates for the upcoming council elections and, this time, they’ve been endorsed by Nigel Farage, who is a family friend of one of the candidates. Earlier this month, seven-time failed parliamentary candidate Nigel Farage said: “I hope that Restore Trust knocks a bit of common sense into what was once the great National Trust.”
Among Restore Trust’s candidates is Farage’s friend Lady Violet Manners. Yorkshire Bylines reports: “Manners is the eldest daughter of UKIP supporter the Duke of Rutland and her family’s estate, Belvoir Castle, has hosted fundraising events for the party. Farage has been a dinner guest at the castle which boasts 356 rooms and 16,000 acres of land.”
Other candidates include Philip Merricks, who has drawn criticism in the past over his links to the grouse shooting industry, as well as Lord Jonathan Sumption who is reported to have earned the highest legal fee in British history when as a barrister he defended the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich in the controversial Berezovsky vs Abramovich case of 2012.
Candidate Andrew Gimson is described as a brilliant sketch writer by Charles Moore, his close friend and former editor of the Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph and the Spectator.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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