A letter which is said to show Lord Nelson was a racist supporter of slavery is forged, according to the author of a new book.
Chris Brett, the chairman of the Nelson Society, contends the letter was the work of opponents of the abolition of the slave trade who wanted to use the reputation of the hero of Trafalgar after his death to boost their cause.
Nelson was accused in a Guardian article in 2017 of being a “white supremacist” who used his seat in the Lords to “perpetuate the tyranny, serial rape and exploitation organised by West Indian planters”, sparking calls to pull down his column in Trafalgar Square.
Soon afterwards, Martyn Downer, a leading Nelson expert, said a letter on which many of the accusations depended was a forgery.
Now, Mr Brett says he has found a second letter was forged, adding that it shows how Caribbean plantation owners were misusing Nelson’s name to turn opinion against anti-abolitionists.
They copied a genuine letter from Nelson but changed the wording to make it appear he would not have supported the Bill to end the slave trade. Mr Brett says he has amassed a wealth of evidence that shows Nelson’s views were quite different from the depiction of him by his modern-day critics.
He said: “I have read hundreds of books on Nelson, and when accusations of racism and support for slavery were made against him, I was surprised that no one had ever mentioned it before.
Even after Martyn Downer found that a letter of Nelson’s, which his detractors had quoted, had been forged, the accusations didn’t stop.
“Then I remembered a screenshot I’d taken of a purported ‘Nelson’ letter from an auction catalogue several years earlier, and when I went back to look closely at it, I saw it was also a forgery.”
The letters were put in circulation after Nelson’s death at the Battle of Trafalgar in an attempt to block the passage of the Bill ending the slave trade before it was passed by Parliament in 1806.
The letter Mr Bett says is a forgery is dated June 1805, less than five months before his death. In it, he asks Simon Taylor, a plantation owner in Jamaica, to find work for his friend.
Mr Brett explained: ‘In it, he attempts to please the recipient. He discusses the war against the French, states his support for the colonial system and criticises [slavery abolitionist] William Wilberforce’s ‘hypocrisy’ and his ‘damnable cruel doctrine’.
‘He never states his support for slavery or the slave trade, and the criticism of Wilberforce has to be understood in context’.
“While Wilberforce opposed the slave trade, he also opposed workers’ rights and supported acts aimed at curbing freedom of speech and suppressing trade union activity.”
According to Brett, the forgers changed the letter to remove crucial context. It no longer states it was written to get a job, and it leaves out the sign-off “you friend”, so it appears to be for general circulation.
Mr Brett said: “If Nelson’s original letter showed support for slavery, it wouldn’t have needed to be amended. But forgers changed words, added parts and circulated copies to influential people, and Nelson was not around to make his position clear. Other evidence shows that Nelson actually freed slaves, argued against the Barbary slave trade and supported proposals for slaves to be replaced with paid labour.
‘The accusation that he used his role in the Lords to support slavery does not stand up to scrutiny – he spoke only six times and never mentioned it’.
‘And the charge of him being a ‘white supremacist’ is based on zero evidence. He had black sailors in his navy as well as freed slaves who were paid the same as everyone else. If Nelson hated any people, it was the French.
“The last person’s hand he shook on land before departing on his final voyage was that of a black sailor – his friend.”
People say that we live in an age of misinformation and the manipulation of facts, but as this shows, this is not a modern development. Technology has changed how misinformation and manipulation are done and made disseminating it to a massive worldwide audience easier.
In June this year, St Paul’s Cathedral, where Nelson is buried, placed a statement on its website claiming that Nelson had “a personal commitment to the system of slavery”. There is, of course, no proof of this, but to the Liberals who run much of the Church Of England and other public organisations, this does not matter. They choose to spread such untruths because it suits their agenda to attack the history of our country and the historical figures who dedicated their lives to protecting and building our Nation, unlike these modern “politicians”, public figures and so-called “activists” who seek to rip our country apart and destroy our proud history.
The Government needs to act to ensure that coming generations are told the natural history of our Nation and our ancestors, who were, in general, a force for good not just here in the UK but in all corners of the world and who gave their lives to protect and advance britains interests unlike those today who only seek to take and undermine Britain.
