Many thanks to you and others for this informed and lively discussion. I'm the Minister of Effra Road Chapel, founded in 1839 and one of Brixton's oldest religious communities. We also belong to the same religious denomination in which Tate's father was a Minister and into which he was born, the Unitarians, a small but quite influential liberal church which Tate supported throughout his life, attending our chapel which was the nearest Unitarian place of worship to his London home in Streatham. Noteworthy is that the Unitarians joined up with the Quakers (also from the left of Christianity) assist their fellow Christians on the evangelical wing to campaign for the abolition of slavery long before Tate came along, and this was the tradition in which he was raised. You may recall our Josiah Wedgewood's medal from the time, showing a slave uttering the words 'Am I not a man and a brother?' This was an amazingly successful piece of propaganda that found its way into surprising places.
I agree entirely that '...the wealth of someone like Tate comes from the work of others'. But I wonder if this is quite the 'bottom line' that you state it to be? Businesses require investment, risk-taking, and management and there is value in all these and Tate was extraordinarily hardworking, rising to the dizzy heights of his worldly success as a self-made man coming from a modest family. He created thousands of jobs here and abroad without which so many people would have been the poorer and donated most of his wealth to public causes. From a modest background myself I studied at Manchester College, Oxford which Tate so generously supported for the education of Nonconformists originally excluded from the rest of the University.
I have no doubt that work on the Caribbean estates connected with Tate was as backbreaking, unpleasant and poorly paid as so many other jobs of the time, including the coal mining my working class forbears were engaged in. But we are told that along with other Unitarians and Quakers, Tate was a modest, kind and enlightened employer and this cannot, certainly in Tate's case, be put down to a cynical philanthropy designed to appease the oppressed. Indeed Unitarians have throughout their history been engaged in working to set free all of from our literal and mental chains, and you don't build public art galleries and libraries if you want to keep the plebs down. A taste of knowledge and beauty is invariably incendiary. It certainly was for me all those years ago at Upper Chapel, Sheffield under Peter Godfrey and at Manchester College, Oxford under Tony Cross and for so many over the years who have attended our small chapel built for South London's religious liberals and freethinkers.
With many thanks again
Julian
www.brixtonbuzz.com
www.tate.org.uk
