1. Thread: Nottingham university slavery report. Times article below demonstrates why we have impoverished debates about UK slavery history. Like the coverage of the @nationaltrust report, this article actively discourages serious engagement with research findings. 2. First, the starting point is not "what can we learn from the report"? Instead, the lens being used is one of guilt and shame, so the discussion seems to be framed by unnecessary reputation management by one powerful family, the Dukes of Portland, mentioned in the report.

1 of 5. Reflections on the reparations conversation:
STARMER saying no apology, no reparations: he needs to read the room in Samoa BUT he is speaking to his own electorate which has not yet heard a detailed case for reparations
theguardian.com/commentisfree/… 2. OTHER THINGS TO BEAR IN MIND:
-Commonwealth nations only asking this to be tabled as an agenda item i.e. spoken about. There is no formal request as yet
-Britain's pre-emptive VETO will likely be perceived as arrogant since it does not lead those nations

1. THREAD I welcome history discussions in newspapers if article-writers have read the books they're criticizing. My book came out yesterday. This @spectator
article, published 1 week ago, was sourced by @BBCr4today to ask a q. about my book's copper walk 2. The article misunderstands & distorts my discussion of copper (it's based on a brief summary of it in a Telegraph article). The criticism then morphs into a claim that @nationaltrust report was not an audit of 20 yrs' academic publications but an 'anticolonial distortion'

1. Many journalists are asking what the Royal family has to do with colonialism. I'll just cover the basics. Elizabeth I gave her ships to English slave trading voyages by John Hawkins in the 1560s. Slave-trading didn't begin in earnest, though, till the reign of Charles II. 2. Elizabeth I also signed the 1600 East India Company charter which granted royal permission to trade in the East Indies. A later charter signed by Charles II granted royal permission for armies, territorial expansion & wealth transfer. The Company also lent money to the King.

1. This is one last call to support academic freedom.

The below happened on @BBCr4today. If the @nationaltrust report matters to you, and you're able to complain, I will post a complaints form below. Please read this short thread (1 of 4) 2. As the victim of a 12 month smear campaign against an academic (& an entire organization) whose crime was to draw the nation's attention to heritage sites' connections to the British Empire it is no longer solely my responsibility to defend myself & coordinate a response.