“Fuller Must Fall”
Anti-racist campaigners seek biography ‘rewrite’
1066 Country’s official website for tourism and travel information describes Fuller’s Follies, bizarre brick and stone structures erected in and around the village of Brightling outside Battle, as “testaments to the eccentricity of John ‘Mad Jack’ Fuller, a Victorian Squire who was prone to outlandish wagers and daring endeavours”.
A biographical summary goes on to outline Fuller’s career as MP for Sussex and as patron of the arts and sciences. He built an observatory in Brightling and a lighthouse at Beachy Head; he bought Bodiam Castle to save it from demolition. He sponsored Fullerian science scholarships at the Royal Institution in London. The tourism note mentions in passing that he was “a known drunk and outspoken supporter of slavery”.
In the era of Black Lives Matter, that last attribute is seen by many historians and campaigners, albeit two hundred years on, as his defining characteristic. Members of the Sussex Stand Up To Racism group (SUTR), with branches along the Sussex coast from Worthing and Steyning to Hastings, certainly see it so. In an open seminar promoted by SUTR and delivered on Zoom last week, a number of academic and activist speakers identified Fuller’s family interests in two Jamaican slave plantations as effectively providing the finance for the building of the follies, and as underpinning his other supposedly altruistic conduct. History has been literally “whitewashed”, according to moderator Nick Hines.
Airbrushed myth
Gill Scott, a retired lecturer at the University of Brighton, called Fuller a proponent of “racialised capitalism”, along with many other property owners of eighteenth and nineteenth century Sussex who invested in West Indian slave estates. Another speaker, Mike Anderson, described Fuller’s career as “tainted by the blood and misery of slavery” and argued for an end to the “sanitised and airbrushed national myth of eccentric philanthropy”. In keeping with current national debate over the statue of Cecil Rhodes and his scholarship legacy at Oxford University, shouldn’t Fuller fall too?
The Royal Institution is considering how it might disassociate from its Fullerian brand of scholarships. So what to do about the self-aggrandising follies which by their size and placement attract the unavoidable attentions, if not admiration, of local residents and passing visitors alike? Simon Hester, of Hastings SUTR, said he was not in favour of destroying the physical legacy, but suggested that the group should draft an open letter that exposed the background history of their original promoter, “so people will see the real story behind them”. Others were keen to tie any historical expose to present-day campaigns in favour of refugees and other oppressed. But when a listener Linda Grace queried whether it was useful to focus on two-hundred-year-old slavery history when there were modern slavery issues that need tackling, she received no support. Dawn Dublin of Black Butterfly told her “We can’t forget about the past…That’s just a way to distract, by saying ‘don’t look at those statues’. We have to look at them whether they’re current or past. If they’re flawed, they’re flawed.”
No one questioned, on the other hand, whether the 1066 Country brand itself might be taking its identity from another moment in history of political, indeed racial, oppression.
We hope you have enjoyed reading this article. The future of our volunteer led, non-profit publication would be far more secure with the aid of a small donation. You can also support local journalism by becoming a friend of HIP. It only takes a minute and we would be very grateful.
Leave a Reply