Why did Nottingham Castle close? You’ll get the truth here. I haven’t got a bloody clue why it closed! I simply do not have enough financial information, or financial expertise to make a judgment and, along with most of us, must await the report of the liquidators to the castle’s creditors, or the report of Nottingham City’s treasurer to the council.
So apart from the blindingly obvious observation that they were clearly not generating enough revenue to service their debts, and that the underwriter of those debts, the City Council, saw the numbers and pulled the plug to protect the city’s coffers, I have no idea why it has gone into liquidation.
It was, unfortunately, within what is known today as the heritage industry, a fairly modest attraction And it had plenty to be modest about. Without the link of Robin Hood and the Sherriff of Nottingham, it is doubtful if it would appear on any tourist itinerary at all.
So, ignorant as I am of the inside story of the financial collapse into liquidation, I do, however, hold some fairly strong views about what did not cause the closure of the castle.
The first of these is the rather pathetic “international boycott” campaign run by the Nottingham poet Panya Banjoko. There is no doubt the intention of that campaign was, with extreme malice, to close the castle down. But the evidence of any achievement by the campaign is extremely thin, both in terms of visitors and exhibitors.
If you were to take just one contemporary example, the now canceled Christmas Fare, then you would be hard-pressed to find a single enterprise that decided, because of the “boycott”, not to participate. Almost every corporate and independent trader in the East Midlands sought to take part. The boycott had zero effect, although Banjoko now claims, on social media, that it was the boycott that did the castle to death.
Perhaps for some, a more pertinent question would be why the boycott was such a failure.
The answer to that lies in the completely discredited allegations of racism made against the Castle, its staff, and its Trustees, which were the foundation of the boycott.
The evidence given to the Independent Investigation commissioned by the Castle, into the spurious allegations made against them, has now been published in full (see link below) and has been widely circulated. It reveals a maliciously constructed narrative about what happened in the Castle, in which the Castle staff are falsely smeared with the charge of racism and were falsely accused of being unsympathetic to Banjoko’s grandchildren. Even worse there was a vicious allegation that the castle was institutionally racist because of its lack of regard for the safeguarding of children. The campaign became mired in the making of false allegations, bullying, misogyny, sexism, sexual misconduct, and cover-ups, it went on and on.
The narrative was bought wholesale, mostly by the left, who never bothered to ask to read the investigation report, and the narrative persisted until the publication of the evidence given to the independent investigation. Even now, some on the left prefer the false narrative of everyone being a racist and turn away from the published evidence that proves the narrative to be a constructed falsehood. Even some journalists. Particularly those pretending to be journalists, who work for the Journal of the Museums Association who have pointedly refused to consider or report on the published evidence.
The liquidation has now put an end to two important events which would have shed some light on the castle’s collapse.
The first and most important is the claim for unfair dismissal by the former Chief Executive officer of the Castle Trust, against the Trust, which would have been the most thorough of investigations into the culture of the Castle. Early indications from the Interim hearing of that case suggest most of the allegations made against the trustees lacked a sufficient legal basis to go before the full tribunal, although the dismissal itself may have been technically unfair.
The second event, of much lesser importance, was the long-awaited meeting between the Trustees and Banjoko for which she had long called for, and in which she often announced in advance, was to be used to berate the Trustees for their institutional racism, their lack of safeguarding and She was to demand that they step down in disgrace.
I don’t know what the tribunal would have said of the CEO’s allegations against the Trust, but I think that had the meeting with Banjoko gone ahead then the trustees ought to have responded along the following lines.
“You are most welcome Ms. Banjoko.
First of all, we would like to apologise to your grandchildren for the disappointing day they had at the castle. Their day was clearly spoiled and we very much regret that it was not as pleasant as it should have been. We would like to offer the children a free pass for the whole year to come and enjoy our facilities although they will need, of course, to be accompanied by an adult.
Having said that, we must say you’ve got a bloody cheek coming in here to try and lecture us on equality, racism, and the safeguarding of children
You’ve read the independent report and you know very well that you staged an appalling scene in the Castle Visitors center. In front of the children, including that little girl of 8 with intellectual learning difficulties, you were aggressive and abusive and threatening and shouting at the castle staff, heedless of the distress caused to the children who were crying and upset. Your daughter, the mother of your grandchildren, was aggressively confronting the wheelchair-bound mother of the 8-year-old to such a degree that our security staff had to step in and ask her to step back and cease.
You constantly referred to the 8-year-old child, in her presence, as a racist hate crime perpetrator and you chased her, while she was extremely distressed and crying, out of the Castle grounds with such determined aggression that our security staff had to stand in your way to prevent the child from being grabbed by you. You can tell us nothing Ms. Banjoko, about the safeguarding of children and we will not listen to lectures from you about such safeguarding issues.
On top of that Ms. Banjoko, you proceeded to falsely accuse and smear our staff with claims of racism when you knew very well, from your own behavior and from the evidence given to the independent investigator, that it was simply not true. You accused them of not showing sympathy to your grandchildren and you know that that too is simply not true. You proceeded on a malicious vendetta against the castle, its staff and its trustees wrongly claiming racism, lack of safeguarding and defaming them with allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct and covering up breaches of the law.
You conducted your campaign against us on social media with such vigour that our staff were afraid to walk the streets of their city while wearing museum uniforms for fear of assault by your supporters. You ran a ridiculous and largely unsuccessful boycott of the castle because of a tiff between children in our playground. You have let down those in our communities who genuinely suffer racism by your crying the wolf of racism when there was no such wolf. You have done your considerable reputation permanent damage by the malice with which you have spread your false narrative of what occurred here in our castle.
You called for an independent inquiry and when we commissioned such an inquiry you declined to take part in it, or to give the slightest piece of evidence of your myrid complaints to it. You withheld from the enquiry the extensive recordings you and your daughter, the mother of your grandchildren, made on your mobile phones, evidence which would have been an essential corroboration of your claims. The decision to withhold the recordings is, we can only assume, because those recordings prove your narrative to be entirely without merit.
We are delighted you came to meet us Ms. Banjoko. We reiterate our apology to your grandchildren. Please shut the door on your way out.”
Broadsides - A collection of bits and pieces 
There seems to be a belief that the Castle can be reopened although there is unlikely to be any compensation for staff who lost their jobs. I certainly will not be volunteering as a trustee!