CULTURE wars started by the uncultured are quite the thing. This is worth remembering in light of the National Trust’s investigation into how its properties were in part built on slavery and colonialism, and a similar study into historical slave links with Rowntree of York.

Apparently, and wouldn’t you just know it, more than 50 Tory MPs and peers belong to something called the Common Sense Group, whose members are dedicated followers of culture war fashion.

I like to see them carrying a shield of ‘common sense’ – more of a battered suitcase perhaps, stuffed with gin-stained pages torn from the Daily Telegraph – as they demand cosy history lessons and the veneration of colonial statues.

Those Tory MPs want the National Trust to concentrate on afternoon teas and old paintings and over-flowing borders. That is to tell only half the story, the prettier half. Anyone brave enough for the unexpurgated version should visit the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool – a necessary rather than an enjoyable trip.

After the National Trust published its Colonial Countryside report last autumn, those common sense Tories complained it was an “ideologically motivated endeavour” to rewrite history. No such thing, of course, but rather an honest attempt to write a fuller version of history, reflecting the bad as well as the good.

The academic behind the report, Corine Fowler, sees such reactions as a “menacing” attempt to politicise and censor historical research.

Fowler, a professor of postcolonial literature at the University of Leicester, speaks too much common sense for the Common Sense Group. “How can less history be better than more history?” she said in an interview with the Guardian in February. “Surely we should be deepening our understanding of history in all its complexity.”

More is better when leafing through history’s mildewed pages: more research, more depth, more understanding, more of an effort to see the flaws in that old diamond of our past.

Incidentally, my own leaky paddling pool of ‘common sense’ makes me wonder if any of the MPs and peers in that grouping have ancestors who benefitted from slave labour.

Prof Fowler’s report is interesting and well worth a read, although its 115 pages contain too much to share for a man hurrying along a ledge.

Here is my main takeaway: slave owners and their companies were handsomely compensated for the end of slavery, rather than those they helped to enslave; and the generous sums on offer led to what the report calls a “feeding frenzy” among certain sections of elite society.

The uppers were eager to grab unto themselves what they could. Then as now you might say, when glancing over at David Cameron.

Normally the history of Rowntree rests on good bricks of “civic philanthropy and social reform”. In its new report, the Rowntree Society looks back with wider eyes to explore the colonial context of the Rowntree company’s growth.

Matters considered include global supply chains, histories of slavery, forced labour, colonialism and racial injustice.

Such potentially shaming research does not detract from the socially minded work carried out in the past by Joseph Rowntree. Or from the work continued today by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and accompanying charitable trusts, as they fight to end poverty and raise awareness about those living in poverty. But it does set Rowntree in the wider panorama of time.

The revelations are uncomfortable but not in a sense unsurprising, as even such a morally intentioned company operated in the world as it was, cruel imperfections and all.

An honest account of the past provides a better perspective on the present, although not if you are among the anonymous commentators who skulk below the line in the comments sections of the Press here in York.

An interesting and detailed report by Stephen Lewis into Rowntree’s past led to reactionary heckling from the usual suspects. Witness some classic drool about how slavery made this country great and “you woke types should learn to be proud of our heritage”.

Perhaps you un-woke types should remember that history doesn’t belong to you or to anyone.