A Lake District boating company has been accused of “whitewashing” history after telling employees not to mention slavery during tours.
Paul Holdsworth, a local boatmaster, had worked for Windermere Lake Cruises (WLC) for 10 years, but quit in “disgust” after employees were banned from making reference to slavery in their commentaries.
The company told employees that disclosing such information may cause distress or upset to passengers. It also said that the guidebook, which tourists can buy, was being updated and references to slavery have been removed.
Holdsworth said that over the past 10 years, skippers were free to make up their own commentaries during boat tours, and employees talked of all aspects of Windermere’s life and history.
Windermere is the largest natural lake in England, measuring 10.5 miles (17km) long, one mile wide and 67 metres (220ft) deep. Thousands of tourists visit every year from across the world to admire the lake’s beauty and its mountainous surroundings as well as the nearby wildlife.
Many businessmen and merchants built grand houses on the lake’s shores, including those who profited from sugar and cotton grown by enslaved people and from transporting the enslaved people themselves. They included Col John Bolton, a Liverpool-based merchant, who derived his vast fortune from the transatlantic slave trade. Bolton lived in a mansion on the lake shore and was buried in the local churchyard.
“That’s a bit of a commentary that seems to have caused a problem, but there’s loads of other historical facts being said. And I’m not talking about the details of slavery, I’m just talking about the bald facts,” Holdsworth said.
“Lots of skippers routinely would mention this every trip and it was not a problem for years and years, and it’s been happening from before I joined the company,” Holdsworth added. “But then George Floyd is murdered, and a week later, the [Edward] Colston statue is torn down in Bristol harbour. A month after George Floyd is murdered, we get a message from the company saying we’ve had a request to stop mentioning slavery in our commentary.”
Holdsworth said many employees had continued including the slave trade in their commentaries. But in April, he queried the management’s decision to remove references to slavery in the new guidebook and recorded commentaries.
“The new guidebook mentions Colonel Bolton, but doesn’t mention that he was a notorious enslaver,” Holdsworth said.
According to National Museums Liverpool, Bolton financed 73 transatlantic voyages, transporting an estimated 20,000 enslaved African people to the Americas. Holdsworth said he felt sickened that the truth behind the origin of Bolton’s wealth had been removed.
When Holdsworth raised the issue with the company, he was told the company’s position was to avoid imparting information that may cause distress or upset to passengers, and that this applied not only to references to slavery, but to any aspect of history or culture that could be deemed upsetting or distasteful.
Holdsworth said there was no ban on other subjects that might be upsetting to some passengers. In their commentaries, skippers – including Holdsworth – talked about the Windermere children, who were liberated from Nazi death camps and flown to the Lake District to begin new lives; high-speed boat crashes, where people died in attempts to break world records; and incidents of people drowning in the lake on fishing trips.
“The only thing they’ve ever said explicitly that you mustn’t mention because it might upset people is the transatlantic slave trade. It’s completely incoherent,” Holdsworth said.
“In the end, I realised they weren’t going to change and that I couldn’t persuade them. They were going to expect me to be complicit in them censoring history and that was something, in all good conscience, that I couldn’t possibly do. So I walked away.”
The local group Anti Racist Cumbria has been supporting Holdsworth since his resignation and approached WLC to offer its support to co-create respectful transcripts and wording. They are yet to receive a response.
Janett Walker, the CEO of Anti Racist Cumbria, said: “We hope WLC will take us up on our offer. Windermere Lake Cruises says it aims to give a world-class visitor experience; an entertaining, accurate and informative commentary is part of that experience. Enslavement is part of the history of the lake, and it is an insult to people’s intelligence to pretend it didn’t happen. It is there for all to see.”
A spokesperson for WLC said: “We are a sustainable passenger transport provider and these parameters are intended to ensure that our commentaries add to our customers’ enjoyment of the services we offer and do not cause upset or offence to those listening.
“Following the receipt of complaints regarding the inclusion of reference to the transatlantic trade of enslaved people in our commentaries, we decided to amend the reasonable parameters for our commentaries.
“We are not an organisation responsible for providing education or historical interpretation of the area in which we operate and felt there was no compelling need to refer to the transatlantic trade of enslaved people, given that this aspect of our commentary had been the source of complaints.”
The mention of the transatlantic slave trade has in recent years provoked a backlash by politicians and the press. In 2021, the National Trust published a report that found connections between 93 of its historic places and colonialism and slavery. The trust was accused of perpetuating “Marxist” or “woke” views and reported to the charity regulator. The National Trust was later exonerated of any wrongdoing.
