Schools Drop Robert Aske Slaver Name, Masonic Lodges Memorialising The City Grandee Are Silent

At the start of this month there was some rather confused coverage by the UK national press of the Haberdashers’ Aske schools dropping the Robert Aske slaver name from their titles. Typical of the hard right’s ideologically driven culture war misinformation was a story carried by the Daily Mail.

Two top private schools are changing their names after discovering their founder was a shareholder in a slave trading company, the Mail has learned.

Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys’ School and Haberdashers’ Aske’s School for Girls yesterday confirmed the name of 17th century merchant Robert Aske will be removed from their titles.

In addition, the motto ‘Serve and obey’ will be ditched by the schools because it has possible slave connotations.

In March the £21,000-a-year schools, based in Elstree, Hertfordshire, announced they were considering the move after finding out that Aske invested £500 – then a large sum – in the Royal African Company, which shipped 100,000 slaves from Africa between 1672 and 1698.

In a letter to former pupils yesterday, the heads of the schools wrote: ‘Many feel that, regardless of its size, Aske’s investment was offensive, unacceptable and at odds with our beliefs and values today…

‘At an individual school level, we will no longer use the Aske name.’

The schools… will also introduce a ‘revised and more diverse curriculum…that places greater emphasis on ethnic minority history, the impact of colonialism and the challenges of integrating different faiths, ethnicities and origins into society.’

The original school was founded in 1690 after Aske created a charitable foundation from his estate and the letter acknowledged the ‘lasting impact’ on the education of thousands of children since then.

It concluded that the ‘legal and collective name of the schools should retain the Aske name’…

The school moved to Elstree in 1961. Several other schools around the London area have Haberdashers’ Aske’s in their titles, but they are not thought to be planning similar name changes.

Just don’t Aske! Top schools ditch name of founder Robert Aske over ‘slave links’ by Kumail Jaffer, Daily Mail, 2 September 2021. See the original piece of disinformation here.

It took us little time to confirm that – contrary to the Mail’s claims – state schools in south east London would be dropping the Aske slaver name too. It should also be noted that the Mail is being misleading – but following a fake narrative constructed by the Haberdashers’ Company that runs the schools – when it suggests the name change follows the Haberdashers’ (recent) ‘discovery’ that Aske invested in the slave trade. In fact the move followed on from pressure put on the schools by ex-pupils and parents of pupils after Reclaim publicised Aske’s investment in a December 2020 post about City of London councillors with historic slave trade links. The same piece also critiqued the obnoxious and now dropped school motto of ‘serve and obey’.

While what we posted in December was news to those we personally knew who had attended the Aske state schools in south-east London, it would have been known to the Haberdashers’ Company (who through common hall form part of civic government in the City of London and whose prominent members include William Russell – who currently holds the top council post of lord mayor). We took our information about Aske’s slave trade investment from the highly reputable scholarly source The Rulers of London 1660-1689 A Biographical Record of the Aldermen and Common Councilmen of the City of London by J. R. Woodhead (London & Middlesex Archaeological Society, London, 1966) – research that was funded by the City of London council. As we noted in a post earlier this year, given their funding of this research people in top positions at the City of London council and the livery companies connected to it (including the Haberdashers’) will have known about Aske’s investment in the slave trade for at least the past fifty-five years, and possibly much longer.

We have had to take The Mail – and The Times who also covered the story we’re looking at here – to task before for even worse misinformation in their anti-‘woke’ propaganda, including false claims that there was no evidence of  Gilbert Heathcote being a slaver when his portrait was recently removed from public display by the Bank of England. The right-wing press spread this ‘fake news’ despite the fact the standard scholarly sources document Heathcote as the leading independent slave trader of his age. Fortunately the Aske name being dropped from schools has been covered by local news outlets who don’t follow the hard-right ideological agenda of the The Mail and The Times. For example, hyper local community paper London SE1:

SE1’s newest school – the Haberdashers’ Aske’s Borough Academy in Southwark Bridge Road – has dropped Aske from its name after controversy over benefactor Robert Aske’s links with the slave trade.

The Haberdashers’ Aske’s Borough Academy opened two years ago as part of the redevelopment of the former Southwark Fire Station and fire brigade training centre.

The school is part of the Haberdashers’ Aske’s Federation which has this term rebranded as the Haberdashers’ Academies Trust South and dropped the Aske name from the titles of its schools…

Jan Shadick, chief executive of the Haberdashers’ Aske’s Federation, wrote to parents last week to update them on the findings of a consultation process… The trust has also dropped “serve and obey” as its motto. Ms Shadick explained: “There was overwhelming agreement that its 16th-century origins need explanation and are no longer relevant to the society in which we live.

“It is important that our pupils and staff feel a connection to any motto or strapline we adopt and we will begin discussions on a new one as part of our ongoing work on culture.”

The Southwark Bridge Road school – which last week welcomed its third cohort of new year 7 pupils – will now be known as the Haberdashers’ Borough Academy.

SE1’s newest school drops Aske from name over slavery link by London SE1 website team, 9 September 2021. See the original piece here.

We’d like the Haberdashers’ Company to take a lead from its schools and replace it’s ‘serve and obey’ motto with something more modern. Likewise this livery company should remove the art works that memorialise slavers from its hall in Smithfield and apologise for the leading role some of its most prominent members played in the slave trade. However we won’t hold our breath waiting for this to happen since the Haberdashers’ clearly prefer reputation washing themselves to actually standing on the right side of history. Helping organisations like the Haberdashers’ along with their reputation washing are right-wing journalists peddling fake news. These hacks include Tom Newtown Dunn who falsely claimed in an opinion piece for The Standard entitled How to defuse a culture war: a group of London schools can teach us a lesson (8 September 2021): “…in March this year, a disturbing discovery was made. As well as his silk business, Aske also invested £500 in the Royal African Company…”

As we make clear above, Aske’s slave trade investment has been known about for well over fifty years and possibly a lot longer. Only a journalist who either doesn’t check facts or doesn’t care about them could claim Aske’s stake in the Royal African Company is a recent discovery. Dunn is one of many hacks furthering the hard right’s culture war agenda by replacing facts with fake narratives created by organisations like the Haberdashers’ Company who wish to escape criticism for holding Aske up as a role model for children at their schools until just a few months ago. The Haberdashers’ did this by erasing Aske’s real history – it stretches credulity to suggest they weren’t aware of it – and replacing it with a mythologised fake one.

Moving on , although we’ve checked their websites and done other online searches, we can find no indication that the two masonic lodges connected to the Haberdashers’ schools plan to drop Aske from their names. The older of these lodges is the Haberdashers’ Aske’s Lodge No: 3362. It provides the following history of itself on its website:

The Lodge was sponsored by the Lewis Lodge No: 1185 and there were 12 Founders (we’ve removed list that show most of them to be former pupils of Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys’ School)…

It is interesting to note that none of the Founders came from the sponsoring Lodge and that only one of the Founders was a member of the school staff. It is also worth noting that the instigator of the Lodge Mr H F Brooks, a former scholar, was not at that time a Mason but he later went on to become W. Master in 1914.

The date of the Warrant was the 25th February 1909 but the Lodge was Consecrated at Freemasons’ hall on Monday 24th May 1909. The Consecrating Officer was V.W. Bro Sir Edward Letchworth, Grand Secretary and he was assisted by five other senior Grand Officers…

The next meeting was held on the 19th June 1909 when the agenda included the Ballot for and Initiation of no less than 6 candidates. Amongst these was a certain Mr Richard William Hinton BA, Headmaster of the Haberdashers’ Aske’s Hampstead School. To the compiler’s knowledge Mr Hinton was one of only three Headmasters who joined the Lodge, the others being Mr F J Kemp Initiated on 15th May 1920 and Mr Tom Taylor Initiated on the 15th April 1950….

The next important date in the historical calendar of the Lodge was the celebration of the Golden Jubilee meeting which was held on 26th May 1959 in the crypt of Guildhall (HQ of City of London council and also the regular meeting place of the Guildhall Lodge 3116 to which two thirds of Lord Mayor’s of London from the start of the 20th century to today belonged to), London followed by dinner at Haberdashers’ Hall….

In 1971 The Old Askean Lodge No: 6986 was formed with Haberdashers’ Old Boys’ Lodge being their Mother Lodge. The Old Askean’s were former pupils and staff from the Haberdashers’ Aske’s School at Hatcham in South London…

Being a small Lodge did not prevent good quality work and in the late 1990s several meetings of note took place. On Saturday the Lodge held its first ever meeting at the school at Elstree. W. Bro K Lowe was Installed as W. Master (for the 3rd time) and a new Lodge Banner was dedicated with the Oration given by V.W. Bro N Barker Cryer PGChaplain. On this occasion there were 20 Lodge members present and 33 guests. On the 4th September 1999 the Lodge was proud to host the Federation of School Lodges, once again at Elstree. This proved to be a magnificent occasion with over 300 Freemasons attending. The weather was perfect and there was only one general complaint, the bar ran out of beer! The school caterers provide an excellent dinner in the school dining room and rightly received the acclamation of all present.

Installations were again held at the school in 2002 when Bro C Waterman was Installed and again in 2003 for W. Bro M Chaplin. Unfortunately this was the last time the Lodge would meet at the school mainly because of logistical reason(s). However, the lodge held several successful ladies lunches there and these were very popular and well attended…

The History of the Haberdashers’ Aske’s Lodge No: 3362 by Jacob Ayres. See the original here.

The website of the Old Askean Lodge No: 6986 claims it was founded in 1950 rather 1971 as Jacob Ayres states on the website of what he paints as its mother lodge. We are quite used to coming across dubious masonic claims about the antiquity of various lodges and practices but in this instance think it more likely the 1950 date for the founding of the lodge connected to the state school is correct. The masons of lodge 6986 currently note on their history page they were allowed to make use the Haberdashers’ Hall in 1963, but there is no mention of them ever being hosted at the Guildhall like the older Aske lodge. While we’d like to see lodges 3362 and 6986 drop the Aske slaver name, and also the Haberdashers’ ‘serve and obey’ motto, from what we can see it doesn’t appear that there are currently any plans for them to do this.

We suspect that like the Haberdashers’ Company (and the City of London Corporation), the Aske lodges will do the minimum they can get away with in terms of properly addressing the real history of those they have long held up as important predecessors and role models. Since the Aske masonic lodges are largely closed off from public scrutiny they will probably do nothing.

For more on the removal of Aske from the names of south-east London schools see Haberdasher’s Schools Drop Aske’s Name Because Of Investment In Notorious Slaving Company by Kit Heren, Southwark News, 10 September 2021.

The header shows a portrait of Robert Aske. Below Aske lodge meeting and a lodge banner.