There are enough British rascals historically linked to the slave trade to put Tate to one side.
The UCL site Legacies of British Slave-ownership (ucl.ac.uk/lbs....) shows hundreds of British residents who received payments when slavery was abolished - look into them. The people who received the money may have included some who had no idea where family wealth/possessions came from, as with those whose rental income from British slums became the theme of George Bernard Shaw's play Widowers' Houses first performed in 1892.
Jeff Green
========================================
Message Received: Apr 05 2017, 12:08 PM
From: "Kathleen Chater"
To: [log in to unmask]
Cc:
Subject: Re: Anyone see this letter in the Guardian yesterday? Thoughts?
This is all true. The problem is that Tate & Lyle used West Indies sugar and people have a knee-jerk reaction to it. The company gets very bored with having to explain that both Henry Tate & Abram Lyle (1820-91), who never seem to have met, imported sugar from the West Indies, but the firm wasn't founded until 1923. Although Lyle was born when slavery was still in force in the West Indies, he didn't set up his sugar refinery until 1865. You can google all this or (as I did when I did local history walks in Newham) contact the company, but like I say they really do get tired of it.
Some years ago Hackney Museum had an exhibition for Black History Month, which included a film on a loop where someone raved about how he wouldn't use Tate & Lyle sugar because it had been built on the slave trade. I asked the staff what had been done to substantiate this - they got very defensive and wouldn't put me in touch with the film-makers. I realised there was no point in pursuing this because you can't tell people what they don't want to believe. Undoubtedly this man and his numerous ilk have spread this widepread myth - I've heard it a lot of times.
So sorry to yet again have to introduce dull research into a good story!
Kathleen
________________________________
From: The Black and Asian Studies Association on behalf of Miranda Kaufmann
Sent: 05 April 2017 10:34
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Anyone see this letter in the Guardian yesterday? Thoughts?
The Tate was not built on gains from the slave trade
Letters
Tuesday 4 April 2017 19.05 BSTLast modified on Tuesday 4 April 2017 22.00 BST
It is an insult to the memory of Henry Tate, and to the reputation of the gallery that his money and paintings helped to create in 1897, to suggest that the Tate’s establishment was based on gains from the slave trade, as implied by your correspondent Ian West (Letters, 3 April).
Henry Tate was 14 years old when the act abolishing the slave trade in the British Empire became law in 1833. He made his money from a chain of grocery shops in Liverpool and in the 1870s from sugar refineries in Liverpool and London. He was never the owner of sugar plantations in the Caribbean or elsewhere. Throughout his life he also made many generous donations to charities, particularly those involved with health and education.
In 1997, I produced a documentary film for the BBC exploring 100 years of the Tate – Mr Tate’s Gallery – and in previews and reviews had to contend with the same ignorance about the founding of the gallery.
John Bush
Mentmore, Buckinghamshire
It was in response to this one:
I was interested to read about the campaign to rename a building at Bristol University because the fortune of Henry Wills III, who funded it, derived from the slave trade (Pass notes, G2, 30 March). Has anyone warned the Tate?
Ian West
Broseley, Shropshire
---
Dr. Miranda Kaufmann
Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Commonwealth Studies
www.mirandakaufmann.com
[log in to unmask]
07855 792 885
|