A survey is bouncing around on Facebook and Instagram calling National Trust members to “help shape the future” of the organisation. Only, the survey hasn’t come from the National Trust. In reality, the post is a paid ad from a shady rightwing group railing against the institution’s inclusion policies and efforts to reckon with its racist, colonial past. It’s called Restore Trust.
Restore Trust survey on the National Trust
An eagle-eyed Instagram user first picked up an ad calling on National Trust members to complete a two-minute survey:
Important: this ‘2-minute National Trust survey’ is the work of private company RT2021Ltd or Restore Trust, trading here as Respect Britain’s Heritage. No personal data shared with them has any link to National Trust the charity. It’s appearing on people’s Meta accounts. pic.twitter.com/MAoA49MdHd
— Celia Richardson (@CeliaRichards0n) July 1, 2024
The National Trust’s director of communications Celia Richardson identified rightwing group Restore Trust were behind it.
Restore Trust first appeared on the scene in September 2020. Notably, a group of then undisclosed founders launched it in response to a National Trust report. The publication in question was the National Trust’s attempt to reckon with its legacy of colonialism and slavery across 93 of its historic sites.
To be expected, it had right wingers frothing at the mouth. So, enter Restore Trust to stoke its culture war against the ‘woke’ National Trust.
On Meta’s ad library, it shows Restore Trust offshoot Respect Britain’s Heritage launched the advertisement on 27 June. Restore Trust paid for the ad which has so far made 200,000 to 250,000 impressions across the two Meta platforms.
As the original poster pointed out, Restore Trust is likely using the survey to pick up National Trust member details.
Previously, Restore Trust has sought to pack the National Trust’s governing council with its right-wing plants. It ran a slate of candidates standing to push back against what it perceives as the left-wing takeover of the heritage organisation.
However, the bid failed, with members electing not a single candidate it promoted. It’s in this context Restore Trust has deployed the survey. Ostensibly, it looks like a devious data harvesting exercise of National Trust member emails.
Funnily enough, Restore Trust has been running other ads calling for members to vote in the next AGM. As Richards raised however, it was hosting this ad over two months before the annual meeting:
This ‘vote now’ ad is circulating now but voting in the National Trust AGM doesn’t open for 10 weeks. It’s from the private company RT2021Ltd/Restore Trust. The building seems to be Syon House, which is not a National Trust place, and belongs to the Duke of Northumberland. pic.twitter.com/ywsSVRuZya
— Celia Richardson (@CeliaRichards0n) June 10, 2024
Tufton Street and dark money think-tanks
A poster on X noted the parallels with Brexit’s Cambridge Analytica data scandal:
Hi @ICOnews
Is data scraping like this legal 👇?
It was exactly fraudulent ads on social media, like this one from the nutters at Restore Trust, that gave us #Brexit https://t.co/nHFisvW2UI— Andy Wood (@andyatnanyuki) July 1, 2024
And if the tactics seem familiar, that’s because they are. Unsurprisingly, Restore Trust actually holds connections with precisely the same opaque think-tanks that orchestrated Brexit.
Previously, Restore Trust had obscured the identity of the company and people behind it. However, thanks to pressure from the Good Law Project, it was forced to reveal this. It turned out that the astroturf outfit – a fake grassroots organisation – had ties to the shadowy rightwing think-tank network at 55 Tufton Street. A number of people on X underscored the links with these dark money organisations:
Standard far-right data harvesting and targetting for attack ads.
Who is paying to try to destroy our National Trust? Look at the dark money from Tufton St. https://t.co/PCOOxawlyZ— Rude Mechanical💚🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️💙 (@Bottoms_bray) July 1, 2024
A reminder that Restore Trust has nothing to do with the National Trust and is a Tufton Street associated reactionary pressure group with links to the Dubai based Legatum Institute. A nasty bunch. https://t.co/SQSm9fuPuW
— Bernard Smith (@BernardWMSmith) July 1, 2024
Another Tufton Street attempt to destroy the work of a British institution.
This time it’s ‘Restore Trust’ attempting to undermine the National Trust. Driving it this time is Neil Record of the dreaded IEA and others.
They have done so much damage to this country already 😡😡😡 https://t.co/I14d8S0eWr— Kevin Pascoe #PoliticsOfFairness #Ex-Labour (@KevinPascoe) July 1, 2024
Specifically, until January 2024, one of the group’s original directors was Neil Record, the chairman of multiple dark money think-tanks based at the same Tufton Street address.
Record is currently chair of Net Zero Watch, the campaign arm of climate denial organisation the Global Warming Policy Foundation. What’s more, prior to July 2023, he had been chair of the libertarian think-tank the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA). He is now a ‘Life Vice President’ of the organisation. The IEA played an instrumental role in the campaign for a ‘hard’ Brexit, peddles anti-climate rhetoric, and is more broadly an advocate of free market capitalism.
Another former Restore Trust director – Zewditu Gebreyohanes – arrived from the opaque Policy Exchange. This is the oil-funded think-tank that helped draft the Tories’ authoritarian anti-protest laws. Gebreyohanes left her directorship at Restore Trust for a role with yet another shady pro-Brexit rightwing think-tank, the Legatum Institute. The organisation’s parent company is a leading investor in GB News.
Dodgy data and sconescare gammon-baiting
And this latest campaign isn’t the first time the organisation has dealt in dodgy data misuse. The Good Law Project’s legal proceedings also challenged the group’s abuse of people’s personal data. Crucially, its website unlawfully seeded cookies in visitors’ browsers, without consent. It transmitted these to Google, Facebook, and Twitter for analytics and advertising purposes. This meant that Restore Trust could target visitors with their advertisements on social media.
What’s more, Restore Trust has been spreading its duplicitous assault against the National Trust on the ground too:
These cards are being handed out at National Trust properties on behalf of the private company RT2021Ltd that trades as Restore Trust and also campaigns as Respect Britain’s Heritage. The National Trust will use every penny of the £66m insurance and much more at Clandon Park. pic.twitter.com/1NpA2pdjaZ
— Celia Richardson (@CeliaRichards0n) June 11, 2024
But Restore Trust is all about protecting Britain’s heritage, like scones, the good old fashioned allergen unfriendly way:
Gosh I hadn’t realised Restore Trust (RT2021 Ltd) has been running a paid-for ad campaign about its National Trust sconescare. I wonder how much it cost. I wonder how much the company’s Respect Britain’s Heritage website and all its other ads cost. pic.twitter.com/dNaC7lJdix
— Celia Richardson (@CeliaRichards0n) April 27, 2024
Ludicrous sconescare banter aside, the shady group exists to protect something alright, and it’s the interests of a colonial nostalgia-bleating aristocracy. As one person on X recently highlighted, it has aligned itself with the pro-hunting elite following the National Trust’s hunting ban:
You know why Restore Trust want control of the National Trust?
The NT banned trail hunting because they couldn’t be trusted not to kill foxes. One of the candidates family, Violet Manners – continued to kill foxes and protected species. Legatum unwarranted NT attacks will fail. https://t.co/RMPZZPYlgf pic.twitter.com/48tKj8RgBZ— Raven Cozens-Hardy (@RaveCozensHardy) June 22, 2024
The National Trust is hardly a symbol of radical leftwing liberation, but it has clearly ruffled the feathers of the rightwing landed class.
Now, its leading front group Restore Trust is engaging in dodgy data-harvesting ad campaigns ahead of the National Trust’s council elections. Its funding might be as opaque as granite stone, but Restore Trust’s agenda is transparent. That is, it’s there to preserve the wealth of rich toffs – because to the rightwing, it’s the only heritage that matters.
Feature image via Simon Burchell/Wikimedia/the Canary, cropped and resized to 1200 by 900, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
