Following Saturday’s National Trust Annual General Meeting held on 5th November 2022 in Bath, Christian Voice today criticises the Trust over a new voting practice we describe as ‘corrupt’.
The National Trust is Britain’s top conservation charity, so its woke posturing and virtue-signalling matters and affects our spiritual and cultural climate. To avoid criticism of its wokeness, this year the National Trust introduced a controversial mechanism known as ‘Quick Vote’ this year. Members voting online were invited to tick the ‘Quick Vote’ box to vote for all the candidates for Council the Trust recommended and against the resolutions it disliked. ‘Quick Vote’ was even presented as ‘Option 1’, ahead of proper voting.
We have now framed a Resolution against Quick Vote for debate and vote at the 2023 AGM. We know our petition against Quick Vote will be voted down, ironically by their use of Quick Vote, but that will make our point even stronger, to the glory of God.
If you are a National Trust Member, please pray into this matter, then Download, Print, Sign and Return the Resolution by clicking the yellow button below:
Sign our Petition against Quick Vote →
QUICK VOTE USED AGAINST RESOLUTIONS
There were six resolutions in all. They included a policy resolution to stop banking with Barclays and another to pull the Trust back from a tunnel project for the A303 at Stonehenge.
Christian Voice proposed two resolutions, one to cease wilding and wetting projects on Trust farmland, the other to stop the Trust parading in gay pride. The latter topped the yes vote for policy resolutions. But it made no difference with Quick Vote in the mix.
Two management resolutions were proposed by pressure group Restore Trust. They were firstly to appoint an ombudsman for the Trust, and secondly to prevent the chairman skewing the vote on resolutions with ‘discretionary’ members’ proxy votes.
EVERY MEMBERS’ RESOLUTION VOTED DOWN!
But they were behind the curve. Overnight, the Trust had moved the goal-posts. In the event, as the headline over an article in the Daily Telegraph put it, the ‘Annual General Meeting featured (an) unusual moment when every resolution proposed by members was voted down.’
Discretionary proxy votes this year were down by a factor of ten from last year. In 2021 the chairman cast around 20,000 block votes against each resolution the Trust objected to. This year, 2022, that was down to around 2,000. But hiding in the ‘No’ vote were the Quick Votes. The Trust did not disclose the number of Quick Votes. They simply included them in the ‘No’ vote, making it appear as if the resolutions lacked much more popular support than they did.
Based on the figures below, Restore Trust probably won the popular vote on the Chairman’s use of discretionary votes. It is shameful that the National Trust used both discretionary votes and Quick Vote to vote down that very resolution. Furthermore, our resolution on the Trust’s participation in gay pride possibly came close to securing half of the popular vote.
QUICK VOTE SKEWS COUNCIL ELECTIONS
It was worse when it came to the Council Elections. Last year, a candidate needed between 34,402 and 43,536 votes to be elected. This year, however, with Quick Vote tilting the table, the winning candidates secured between 63,771 votes and 72,963.
The Restore Trust candidates scored between 28,205 and 46,612 votes. Not one of them was elected. Under last year’s members-only voting system, at least three, possibly four, would have made it.
Quick Vote appears to have raised the bar for election by an average of almost 30,000 votes.
FULL BREAKDOWN CHALLENGE
Stephen Green, National Director of Christian Voice, proposed the wilding and gay pride resolutions. Today he said:
‘I have already challenged the National Trust to disclose the full breakdown of voting, separating votes cast by ‘Quick Vote’ from those cast in the popular vote in both the Council Elections and the Resolutions. Let’s see if the Trust can follow Biblical principles of honesty and transparency. I remind them:
Matt 10:26b there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known.
‘Then I call upon the National Trust to declare elected to Council those candidates who took the first seven places in the popular vote alone. Candidates only sneaking in because of Quick Vote lack all credibility and legitimacy.
‘In the past, the Trust Chairman used to cast proxy votes for Council Candidates. The Trust stopped this corrupt practice only very recently. It has now returned, called ‘Quick Vote’ instead.’
A COUNCIL OF YES-MEN
‘Under Quick Vote, if your face doesn’t fit, you won’t be elected to the Council. No outsider need even apply any more. Quick Vote is a stitch-up. And if Council members want to be re-elected, they will know not to rock the boat, because now they must be a ‘recommended candidate’ to secure the Quick Vote.
‘It is clear the Trust have introduced Quick Vote to entrench the status quo. In future, no Members’ Resolution critical of the Trust will ever be passed. The Trust don’t trust the members to vote the right way or elect the correct people to the Council. They are now plainly trying to eliminate dissent and build a Council of time-servers and yes-men. Quick Vote is designed to prevent accountability.’
CHAIRMAN SHOULD BE ASHAMED
René Olivieri, Chairman of the National Trust, cast all the ‘Quick Votes’ against the members’ resolutions and for all the Trust’s recommended candidates.
‘The new Chairman, René Olivieri, was appointed in a fanfare as a safe pair of hands after the disastrously woke Tim Parker. But Mr Olivieri is entirely culpable for casting every single ‘Quick Vote’ to support the Trust’s establishment line and candidates. Brought in as a breath of fresh air, he has become just as corrupt as the rest of the National Trust Board. René Olivieri should be ashamed of himself.
‘Quick Vote is also now being used by a great many building societies, trying to avoid proper accountability just like the National Trust. The Building Societies Members Association (BSMA) is particularly critical of ‘Quick Vote’. In a list of desired changes, BSMA says: “All underhand practices such as the infamous ‘Quick Vote’ and tick boxes hidden in the small print should be banned”.’
John 3:20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. 21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
STOP PRESS 11/11/2022
We have today heard from ‘Jo’ in ‘Governance’ who says the Trust won’t disclose the numbers:
‘Following the weekend’s AGM, the Trust will not be issuing any further details in respect of the breakdown of voting.
‘The voting results as published are already broken down into the number of specified votes and the number of discretionary proxy votes cast. Only the discretionary votes are cast by the Chair. Using Quick Vote means members specify how their vote is cast – and these are therefore counted in the specified votes declared in the results.
‘For the avoidance of doubt, the Chair has no rights in respect of casting votes on the Council elections. A discretionary voting option is not available for the elections.
‘There is no governance requirement to break down the results further.’
Indeed the couple of thousand ‘Discretionary’ Proxy Votes were cast at the Chairman’s discretion against all the Resolutions the Trust disliked. But so were the Quick Votes, in much larger numbers, AND they were cast for the Trust’s preferred candidates as well. It is just not true that the members ticking the Quick Vote box ‘specified’ how their votes were to be cast, resolution by resolution, candidate by candidate. They allowed the Trust to vote for them.
This lack of honesty and transparency in revealing the number is worse in its way than how Quick Vote has skewed, not just the resolution voting, but the Council Elections, as one might say, for everyone, for ever (or until it is ditched). This corruption is going to reflect very badly on the National Trust. Not only have they brought in a dishonest voting system, but they won’t even disclose how many votes it was responsible for! On any measure, the whole affair is disgraceful and will be seen as such.
Prayer and Action!
If you are a National Trust Member, please pray into this matter, then Download, Print, Sign and Return the Resolution by clicking the yellow button below:
Sign our Petition against Quick Vote →
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7 comments
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It is obviously disappointing for the well-supported “outsider” candidates who found themselves out-voted by the abuse of Quickvote, and for members whose (so-to-speak) rank-and-file members’ resolutions, or “outsider” resolutions, were likewise defeated, or who voted for those resolutions. I have two important legal questions in mind, to ask in the aftermath.
The first legal question is whether the National Trust is a public authority. That first question is important because the answer determines whether the use of Quickvote is potentially judicially reviewable. The relationship between the trust’s governing documents and various Acts of Parliament and secondary legislation (documented at the following link) suggests that the trust might indeed be a public authority.
https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/features/our-constitution
The second legal question is whether the use of Quickvote in effect to perpetuate a self-perpetuating oligarchy and to impose that oligarchy’s will on the National Trust’s members active enough to bother to cast their own votes concerning the trust’s governance, also affects adversely those who sometimes attend National Trust premises, even though they aren’t trust members, a narrow class of claimant. For example, those who aren’t trust members any longer because they objected to certain of the trust’s behaviours. That second question affects who might have standing to bring a judicial review of the use of Quickvote, perhaps a wider class than just trust members disappointed with the recent outcomes.
In short, does any of this affect me, and could I therefore challenge the use of Quickvote by way of judicial review, or would somebody such as yourself have to do that? I shall make enquiries as to the answer to both questions. You may wish to ask your legal friends (likely different from mine) just about the answer to the first question. However, you might not need judicial review. You may have contract law rights, even if the trust isn’t a public authority. As an ex-member of the trust, I don’t have any contract rights.
Author
Thanks, Mr Allman.
Of course it is more than ‘disappointing’, it is larceny, it is an outrage. We shall see firstly if they can be shamed into releasing the numbers, re-assessing the Council votes and lastly, removing Quick Vote.
And in answer to your question, the National Trust is not, in law, a public authority. The only ones who would have an action are those robbed of a Council seat.
Possibly also those whose resolutions were voted down could go to law as well. But rest assured we are not going to waste our members’ money by going down that route.
Thanks, Stephen. Please feel free to call me John, rather than “Mr Allman”.
My qualified legal advice expresses an opinion that concurs with yours, that the National Trust, which wasn’t founded as a public authority, still isn’t a public authority today, but I have my doubts about that, because of the following contents page in the link on the page I linked to:
The National Trust Acts
1907 – 1971
as varied by a Parliamentary Scheme implemented by
The Charities (National Trust) Order 2005
and incorporating amendments made by
the Commons Act 2006
CONTENTS
The National Trust Act 1907 page 3
The National Trust Act 1919 page 12
The National Trust Act 1937 page 14
The National Trust Act 1939 page 19
The National Trust Act 1953 page 26
The National Trust Act 1971 page 29
https://nt.global.ssl.fastly.net/documents/national-trust-acts-1907-1971-post-order-2005-and-the-commons-act-2006.pdf
That degree of state interference over the years in the governance of the trust suggests to me that the trust might have become a public authority for present purposes. If it doesn’t have a public law function, why does it nowadays need a statutory constitution to replace the original constitution that it had when it was founded as a limited company in 1894?
However, I am glad you don’t intend to waste Christian Voice members’ money suing the trust as an organisation. I was thinking more of a well-aimed sling-shot whilst disguised as a shepherd, rather than of your going into a court battle with a Goliath like the trust wearing (so-to-speak) “Saul’s armour”. (I’ve recently won a case against a utility that any professional lawyer would have advised me not to bring. I don’t have any money but my own to waste either. So I’ll keep my options under review, and my channels of communication open, and read with care the legislation that sets out the trust’s present-day, statutory constitution, whose contents page I’ve quoted.)
They clearly don’t want to adopt a homophobic agenda nor should they, there is nothing wrong with this organisation participapeing in pride events it needs to be inclusive to all and not just those with a hate filled homophobic agenda.
Author
Thanks Paul. Firstly, please try not to be insulting. Expressions like ‘hate filled homophobic agenda’ don’t help you and have become devalued as debating currency in any case.
Secondly, the National Trust is ‘inclusive to all’ when it butts out of gay pride and promoting trans ideology. When it participates it says it is advancing those godless agendas and those rebellious minorities and so it becomes less inclusive, not more.
Prov 29:2 When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.
It has nothing to do with hate. It has everything to do with what is spoken in His word. If any one is exhibiting hate, it would seem to be your teeth gritted response. Stop hating those who disagree with you. Don’t try to stop dissent at the National Trust’s undemocratic agenda. If you do, it is you who are not being inclusive, We love you and God bless you and let’s agree to disagree in love.
Whatever one’s views on homosexualality the point is ‘Quickvote’ stinks and makes a sham of any sort of open democracy by any group that employs it. Definitely not in the best interest of the average Trust supporter and the general public.