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The Talbots and Slavery

Matgo

TS Member
Obviously the Black Lives Matter movement has featured heavily in the media lately, with calls to remove various statues of slave owners and others that profited from slavery. I've been doing some reading up on the history of it and happened across a piece of information which contains a very uncomfortable fact.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...omes-built-on-the-back-of-slaves-8518002.html

This article entitled The Stately Homes Built On The Back Of Slaves includes a mention of Alton Towers and confirms that the Talbot family not only owned 543 slaves, but received the equivalent of £3.4m compensation for loss of 'property' when slavery was abolished. The British taxpayer only finished paying the bill for this compensation scheme in 2015.

I know there is next to no mention of the Talbots at the park now but it does make you wonder, had Talbot Street existed today, would they have felt the pressure to change it.
 
Slavery was an appalling chapter of history. But we should remember, the reasons the Talbot family owned slaves would be because it was legal and the norm then, then it was rightly abolished. I think it's got to be something that is seen in context of history rather than single out the Talbots specifically.

Got to face the fact though that the Talbot family were a rich hereditary elite and Alton Towers was a pure indulgence, crazy when you think about it!
 
Slavery was an appalling chapter of history. But we should remember, the reasons the Talbot family owned slaves would be because it was legal and the norm then, then it was rightly abolished. I think it's got to be something that is seen in context of history rather than single out the Talbots specifically.

Got to face the fact though that the Talbot family were a rich hereditary elite and Alton Towers was a pure indulgence, crazy when you think about it!

Totally agreed. There has to be some context and lines drawn. No one is saying it was good or that we are proud of it. As we most certainly are not. But nothing anyone can ever do or say will re write history yet I feel some parts of the movement, specifically in this country are almost trying to do that. Which almost contradicts the whole movement they are fighting for in the first place. Anyway that is for a different topic.

People will be calling for Alton Towers to be boycotted next. No seriously, they will.
 
Over the weekend I watched for the first time the movie "12 Years A Slave" . This has really opened up my eyes to how terrible slavery was. However we can't be held accountable for what went on a few decade+ ago. We can't gloss over history, we can't change history, but we can embrace and learn lessons from our history to shape and evolve the way we can change our behaviour towards each other.

Buildings, statues are all snapshot or our history good or bad. They all should remain, but definitely with a accompany plaque to explain all aspects of its history warts and all for us all to become enlighten with our past.

Here in the UK, with have some of the best equality and discrimination laws to protect individuals, they may not be perfect, but here in the UK, we live in one of the most safe, democracy and inclusion compared to some of other countries out there in the world.

We should all count ourselves lucky to live here in the UK, there is a lot of terrible things on going in and around the word today in other countries.

Like I said on another thread, where do we draw the line in tearing down our history? Unless we completely bulldoze the entire country, we will never completely erase our past.

The bottom line is, I'm not racist, I'm in favour of equality and elimination of discrimination (not just with the BAME community), but I also don't agree with going round tearing down our heritage and history.

Let's embrace our past, learn from it , but don't sweep it under the carpet, because I learnt that if you try and sweep things under the carpet, it will always comes back and bite you
 
There's a brilliant quote that was made on this subject when referring to Americas founding fathers (in refernce to the musical Hamilton). Apologies that I can't find the exact quote but it went something like:

...Washington had slaves, Jefferson had slaves. These were not good men, but they were great men.

It really made me think when I heard that, because these were people that shapped the much more accepting world we now live in. Jefferson's famouse quote "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is used to promote equal rights today. In the fight against racism he played a key role but he still owned and relied on slaves as that was what the world was like then.
 
I agree with most of what is being said here (although just because we have equality laws it doesn't mean we have equality and I feel a little uncomfortable at being a white person and telling a black person they're lucky to live here and not somewhere else).

The truth is, our tiny island got its position of power in the world by invading other countries, using brute force to take control so they could be raped of their natural resources. So not just Alton Towers and a few other stately homes, but the very streets we live on were built on the foundations of our country being horrendous. It's something we should all have to face up to, and the fact that colonialism isn't taught in schools is in my view ridiculous.

I do think AT would think twice about any mention of the Talbots in future though. The only real reference I can think of at the moment is in Hex. The Chained Oak legend actually dates from around the same time slavery was abolished.
 
(although just because we have equality laws it doesn't mean we have equality and I feel a little uncomfortable at being a white person and telling a black person they're lucky to live here and not somewhere else).

My post was directed at all communities including LGBT, Disable, Women, Religion etc..

As I've said on here many times over the years, as a carer for my wheelchair bound wife, we are often on the receiving end of discrimination and abuse, the abuse we receive from other is often subtle. There is laws that protect us all equally, if anyone feels that they are treated unfairly due to discrimination, they can use the law in their favour. We don't report every hate crime against us, other wise we would be reporting it every few minutes, however, where we are unjustly treated unfairly, we have successfully taken action against individuals/companies by going down the appropriate route within the law and gotten results.

I like to think that we live in a democracy, where as we can discuss things and every one gets a say and some form of compromise is reached, however when there is demands to remove buildings, statues etc.. then it then boarders on dictatorship. At the end of the day, in a democracy country we don't always get what we want (Brexit, I voted remain) but we have to sometimes accept the things we don't like.

I wasn't implying that black person are lucky to live here, I was just saying that if you think that some of our history is terrible (and I'm not proud of some of it) and that it should be erased, then take a look around the word today to see that as a country we have made changes for the better.

Before you judge our history, force slavery is still going on in south Africa today
 
I agree with most of what is being said here (although just because we have equality laws it doesn't mean we have equality and I feel a little uncomfortable at being a white person and telling a black person they're lucky to live here and not somewhere else).

The truth is, our tiny island got its position of power in the world by invading other countries, using brute force to take control so they could be raped of their natural resources. So not just Alton Towers and a few other stately homes, but the very streets we live on were built on the foundations of our country being horrendous. It's something we should all have to face up to, and the fact that colonialism isn't taught in schools is in my view ridiculous.

I do think AT would think twice about any mention of the Talbots in future though. The only real reference I can think of at the moment is in Hex. The Chained Oak legend actually dates from around the same time slavery was abolished.
Personally I'm not bothered if references to Talbots and other questionable people are removed. I don't agree with the "rewriting history" idea, you can still read about these people if you like. Street names, statues and the like are a form of honour and we shouldn't be honouring these people. In the case of Alton Towers though I don't think it's an issue - the only "Talbot" I knew about was Talbot Street.

It would be good to learn more about colonialism in school. We did study Africa and India in Geography however in both cases it was current events (poverty in developing countries and shanty towns, respectively).
 
my grandfather who come over to work from Ireland always tells me of how his family suffered at the hands of the English over many years. It’s shocking really how close to home the brute of the old English empire is really. End of the day no one who goes to Alton Towers know who the talbots were and I guess they would have no interest 99.9percent of people at tower during a normal day isn’t interesting in the history of the house or the grounds like the early years. Things and places move on unfortunately and get buried in the sands of history until someone decides to unbury them to then get annoyed about these things. What happened in the past was horrific for all who suffered under the rule of the English empire but we have to learn and accept how to make sure history never repeats itself.
 
and the fact that colonialism isn't taught in schools is in my view ridiculous.

Isn't it? Sure as hell was when I was at school 25 years ago. Mental if it's not.

The destruction and removal of history is a dangerous game, we must learn from out mistakes and won't if we remove all record and reference of them. On the other hand, statues and monuments which are positively celebratory of their subjects when said subjects were demonstrably wrong'uns have no place. I don't think there's any if that at towers though.
 
It's probably worth pointing out that the article has some inaccuracies in it specifically regarding Alton Towers.

The article is talking about Charles Chetwynd-Talbot, 2nd Earl Talbot, but he never owned Alton Towers. He was a contemporary of Charles and John Talbot, the Earls of Shrewsbury who were responsible for the construction of the Towers and Gardens.

The Chetwynd-Talbots were a separate line of the family, who did eventually come to inherit the title of the Earl of Shrewsbury and Alton Towers a generation later (after a severe legal battle, so the lineage was by no means direct), so that family were instrumental in the sale of Alton Towers but not its construction.

That is not to say that the Talbots themselves (or their wealth) might not have had some involvement in the slave trade, but they are not implicated in the database that the article is discussing.
 
I think the question is the manner in which it is taught, rather than if it is taught.

Exactly. I have a friend who took GCSE History and she says she was taught about the British Empire but not any of the grim detail of how it was colonised.
 
The irony of the British Empire is that it is directly responsible for many of the things fascists hate - 'foreigners, blacks, multiculturalism', etc. It's also more obviously responsible for many of the things the economic left hate. One has to ask why anyone is proud of its legacy.
 
Totally agreed. There has to be some context and lines drawn. No one is saying it was good or that we are proud of it. As we most certainly are not. But nothing anyone can ever do or say will re write history yet I feel some parts of the movement, specifically in this country are almost trying to do that. Which almost contradicts the whole movement they are fighting for in the first place. Anyway that is for a different topic.

People will be calling for Alton Towers to be boycotted next. No seriously, they will.
I couldn't agree more. People need to remember that if it wasn't for slavery then we wouldn't have Nemesis and Oblivion - it puts it in perspective really.
 
I couldn't agree more. People need to remember that if it wasn't for slavery then we wouldn't have Nemesis and Oblivion - it puts it in perspective really.
Not sure that's true to be honest. Slavery has played a major role in history, that doesn't mean it was essential!
 
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