The Sunday Telegraph

Badenoch: National Trust is using ‘anti-white’ rhetoric

Organisati­on has adopted politicise­d guidelines and phrases such as ‘global majority’, says minister

THE National Trust has adopted guidelines that use “anti-white” rhetoric, Kemi Badenoch has suggested.

The trust is among several British institutio­ns now using the term “global majority”, which Mrs Badenoch, who is the minister for women and equalities and a member of the Cabinet, warned has “political implicatio­ns”.

The phrase is a collective term for non-white people, who make up about 85 per cent of the world’s population and is sometimes used instead of “ethnic minority” or “BAME” – terms that some people believe to be outdated.

Mrs Badenoch’s comments come after the National Trust faced a backlash following an announceme­nt that it would be “training 100 new walk leaders from global majority communitie­s” and that “people from the global majority are widely under-represente­d in the outdoors”.

Mrs Badenoch said: “Many organisati­ons adopt phrases like ‘global majority’ innocently without understand­ing the political implicatio­ns. Often they feel compelled to use them by following guidance from bodies who claim to be anti-racist but are actually just antiwhite.

“The Government has issued guidance on how people should be referred to and that is by their specific ethnicity where it is relevant. At the end of the day, the National Trust is a national organisati­on, not a global one. They should apply the principle of equality under the law and focus on delivering for everybody, regardless of their background or whether they are a minority or majority.”

The term “global majority” has become increasing­ly common across state-funded bodies, such as the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), a non-department­al public body which is sponsored by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.

One of its subsidiari­es offers “global majority directed studentshi­ps” whereby successful candidates receive tuition fee funding and an annual maintenanc­e stipend of around £19,000, among other benefits.

Others institutio­ns using the phrase include NHS South East (England), which hosted a “global majority conference” last year where attendees were offered resources on “being not-racist and being anti-racist” and The Royal Opera House, which offers a mentorship scheme for young instrument­alists who “identify as being from the global majority background or from another underrepre­sented group”.

In October 2023, Arts Council England (ACE) announced “Devon’s first global majority theatre company”, Beyond Face, which receives £250,000 in funding each year.

Inaya Folarin Iman, founder of the Equiano Project, an ideas forum that debates race, culture and politics, told The Telegraph: “Global majority is a nonsensica­l, divisive and patronisin­g phrase. It lumps billions of the world together solely on the basis of them not being white. Most people, regardless of race, have no idea what it means and it is shameful that large organisati­ons are using it seemingly solely at the behest of self-appointed, astroturfe­d EDI consultant­s. It is deeply anti-democratic.”

Paul Morland, an academic, demographe­r and author of the forthcomin­g book No One Left, said: “In a world full of a multitude of identities and ethnicitie­s, the term ‘global majority’ is meaningles­s. Who are they? Non-Luxembourg­eois? Non-Chinese? Non- Burundians? All are technicall­y global majorities. It’s just a way of discrimina­ting against whites without using the W word.”

A National Trust spokesman said: “The National Trust normally uses different language. However, sometimes, when sharing informatio­n about community groups, as we are on this occasion, we use the language that [we] feel is most appropriat­e.”

A spokesman for UKRI said: “[We] invest in a diverse research and innovation portfolio. This includes awarding block grants to Higher Education Institutio­ns to support PhD studentshi­ps to train the next generation of researcher­s. The institutio­ns make decisions about both the terminolog­y they use and how they allocate the funding to specific studentshi­p proposals, following an applicatio­n process.”

The Royal Opera House declined to comment. The NHS was approached for comment.