Statement written by Dame Janet Suzman, Chair of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles read out by Danny Chivers during Saturday's BP or not BP? protest at the British Museum.

These unmatched sculptures that you see before you have a home waiting for them. These figures, part of an ancient belief system, have been stranded in the grandest refugee centre you’ve ever seen - the great British Museum itself. But home is where they were created two and a half thousand years ago. 

In Athens stands a fine building especially built to house them, and next year this New Acropolis Museum will celebrate its tenth anniversary. On its top floor there are yearning gaps where these very sculptures should be sitting, joined with the other half of the pedimental carvings and in direct sight of the ancient building from which they were chopped, and which, astonishingly, still stands proud on its ancient rock. That fact alone makes these sculptures unique; we can still see exactly where they first displayed themselves, for they were never intended as separate 'works of art', but as part of the mighty whole of Athena’s glorious temple. Who, one wonders, was a mere occupying Sultan to sign away the genius of Periclean Athens? 

Now is the time to make a grand and generous gesture to the Greek people who in distant times laid the foundations of our modern democracies and who informed our artistic heritage. No sculptures have ever matched these languishing here. They are unarguably part of a history the Greeks feel profoundly. Modern Greeks may be as distant from their forebears as we to Anglo-Saxons but that never stopped a nation feeling viscerally connected to its antecedents. 

Let’s do so by celebrating the tenth anniversary of the Acropolis Museum in 2019 with the return of their prodigals. What a fabulous birthday present that would be! How civilised and decent of the British Museumto divest itself of dated strictures belonging to an era - now so over - of colonialist finders keepers. The time has come to do the right thing. Go BM! Do it! 

For more information on BP or not BP, visit here.

20 November 2021, The Tablet

Just over 400 years have passed since Sir Henry Wotton, travelling through Europe on official business, offered a definition of his role: “An ambassador is an honest gentleman sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.”

Even if the preceding words are too harsh, the final six remain important. In everything they do or say, diplomats must serve their homeland, not their personal agenda. A recruit to the Foreign Office is warned of a code which forbids any use of an official position “to further your private interests or those of others.” Equally taboo is accepting “gifts or hospitality” which “might reasonably be seen to compromise your personal judgement or integrity.”

The past, you may say, is a foreign country, where things were done differently. But how differently? When Thomas Bruce, the seventh Earl of Elgin, was appointed ambassador to the Ottoman Sultan in 1799, it was an opportunity not just to consolidate an alliance against the French but to acquire some of the greatest artefacts ever fashioned – in order to decorate his house in Scotland.

He would later give different accounts of his motivation: at times he insisted that he was acting nobly to further British aesthetics. He would claim, quite implausibly, that he only decided to remove sculptures, as opposed to having them drawn, when he saw they were in acute danger. In more private communications, he was more frank. During the summer of 1801, when an exceptional military alliance seemed to offer exceptional personal opportunities, there is no mistaking the excited tone in which he writes to Giovanni Lusieri, his monument-stripper in chief: “The plans for my house in Scotland should be known to you. The building is a subject that occupies me greatly, and offers me the means of placing in a useful, distinguished and agreeable way, the various things that you may perhaps be able to procure for me.”

Studying the documentary evidence for the extraction of the Parthenon sculptures, which began in 1801 and continued intensively over two years, it is hard to avoid a sense of how shocking the operation was to many contemporaries. Was permission given? The original firman (an Ottoman letter of permission) has never been found but let us assume the authenticity of the Italian copy. The person induced to issue it was not the Sultan (who may never have known) but an official several notches down, the deputy to the Grand Vizier; and it has never been clear what exactly he meant by allowing the removal of “some pieces of stone with old inscriptions and figures” from the Acropolis. As the historian William St Clair concluded after a rigorous examination, Elgin’s agents used “cajolery, threats and bribes” to persuade Ottoman officials in Athens to exceed, at least in spirit, the firman’s terms.

When Lusieri and his team went to work with ropes, pulleys and saws, the spectacle was horrifying to British and Ottoman observers alike. As Edward Daniel Clarke, a traveller and antiquarian, describes the scene; “Down came the fine masses of Pentelican marble, scattering their white fragments with thundering noise among the ruins. The disdar (commander of the Ottoman garrison) took his pipe from his mouth and letting fall a tear, said in a most emphatic tone of voice, telos !
It was a scandalous act even with due consideration for the spirit of the times, which was itself pretty horrifying to modern sensibilities. The spirit might be described by the elusive New Testament Greek word harpagmos which refers to the act of grabbing, the thing grabbed or to a grabbing kind of mindset. For the powerful nations of western Europe and their wealthy representatives, Hellenism and its physical legacy was something to be grabbed: either by measuring, drawing and painting the ancient artefacts or, ultimately, by removing them.

Pause for a moment and consider what message is being sent to the world by the British establishment when it retrospectively endorses Elgin’s actions as procedurally correct and legal. Such formalistic arguments cut less and less ice in world where the tide of anger over Europe’s historic arrogance is growing. It surfaced most recently in September when a UNESCO committee, a rotating group of 21 countries, called with unprecedented firmness for the return of the Parthenon marbles to Athens. This emboldened Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the Greek prime minister, to make a formal request for talks on [reunification] during a visit to Britain this week.

The trustees of the British Museum insist, accurately enough, that they have no mandate to do anything except act in the interest of the institution and its educational mission. The British government hides behind the independence of the museum; it is not for any cabinet minister to interfere in the decision-making of such a robustly independent body. As a museum spokesperson said in response to the UNESCO vote, the trustees “have a legal and moral responsibility to preserve and maintain all the collections in their care and to make them accessible to world audiences.” But that need not be the final answer. Ways can be found to overcome the legal obstacles. A law was passed in 2009 to enable the Museum to return objects that had been looted by the Nazis. An equally powerful imperative is building up for the return of objects that were grabbed in the colonial era with egregious cynicism. These include the Benin heads that were seized in 1897 after British forces looted a royal palace in Nigeria.

In 2019, Germany vowed to work towards the return of imperial loot taken “in ways that are legally or morally unjustifiable today.” All over the world, the moral pressure to rectify (or at least not gloat over) the legacy of colonialism is growing, with the support of rising powers like China and India.  sensed and anticipated that trend when he said in 2017 that France’s museums should no longer be holding colonial booty from Africa, starting a process that culminated last year in a law which provided for some restitution.

Suppose Britain’s cultural establishment were to renounce the legacy of Elgin and instead throw itself behind the cause of the reunification of the Parthenon sculptures, perhaps on the understanding that Greece would freely grant or lend to the British people other artefacts of real value. Amidst the euphoric chain-reaction that would be triggered, wonderful new ideas would emerge as to how best to share the legacy of Greece with the world. Among the distinguished cultural and academic figures who advocate such a move, the term “reunification” is carefully chosen. If the sculptures now in London belong anywhere it is with the parts of the frieze that remain in Athens and are now superbly displayed, in Greek light and with the Parthenon in view, in the new Acropolis Museum. For the first time in two centuries, visitors would be invited to admire the great majority of the frieze, with its chariots, horsemen, tray-bearers and water-carriers … and ponder what they mean: the fact is that nobody knows.

In its handout on the marbles, the British Museum rightly notes that the Parthenon has a “complex history”, including phases as a “temple, a church, a mosque and now an archaeological site”. If there is a flaw in the way the Acropolis and its monuments are now presented to the world, it lies in the exclusive emphasis placed on the era of Pericles, leading statesman of Athens from 461 to 429 BC – perhaps the greatest of the Rock’s many ages, but not the only one. Eight centuries before Pericles, the citadel hosted a thriving Mycenean palace; two centuries before, the rock’s sanctity, whose violation incurred a terrible, inter-generational curse, became a wild card in Athenian power struggles. And the Parthenon was a temple of monotheism for longer than it served the Olympian religion: a Greek Christian cathedral for perhaps seven centuries, a Roman Catholic one for another two, then a mosque. For Christians, the mysterious light that emanated from the white pillars became an attraction for pilgrims and a sign of the Virgin Mary. In 1394 the Florentine duke Nerio Acciaiuoli bequeathed the entire modest town of Athens to the Catholic cathedral of Santa Maria, in other words the Parthenon.

It is an Ottoman Muslim traveller, Evliya Celebi, who gave one of the greatest descriptions of the Parthenon frieze: “The human mind cannot indeed comprehend those images – they are white magic, beyond human capacity: whoever looks upon them falls into ecstasy, his body grows weak and his eyes water for delight.” And the Acropolis has seen an extraordinary modern history – for example in 1941 when two brave young Athenians scrambled up a vertical tunnel first used by Myceneans in the middle of the night and tore down the Nazi banner that flew menacingly over the city. As described later by Manolis Glezos, emerging from the dark passage onto the moon-lit rock was a moment of spiritual ecstasy as well as political defiance.

All these moments have their place in the story of the Acropolis. It is a shame that the average guide book devotes, say 50 pages to the Periclean century and at most a paragraph to the monotheistic millennium. But if the injuries left by Elgin’s depredation could only heal, then the masters of the Acropolis would more easily find the freedom and confidence to present the story of the Sacred Rock in its mysterious entirety. And the whole world would joyfully assist them.

Bruce Clark’s article was published in The Tablet (Saturday 20 November 2021).

Bruce Clark writes for The Economist on history, culture and ideas. His latest book  'Athens: City of Wisdom', is published by Head of Zeus and is available to purchase via The Tablet also.

Ta Nea, 01 August 2020

UK correspondent for Ta Nea, Yannis Andritsopoulos wrote on Saturday 01 August 2020:

A new chapter in the campaign for the return of the Parthenon Sculptures will start next week, aimed at raising awareness of the public opinion and mobilizing politicians, organizations and public figures in the UK.

The main slogan of the campaign, run by the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles, is "Tell the real story", with the BCRPM inviting the British Museum to reveal to its visitors the truth about how the sculptures, displayed in London since 1817, were acquired.

“We urge the British Museum to tell the full story as Greece is preparing to celebrate 200 years of independence. The Parthenon Marbles were removed by Lord Elgin when Greece could not speak out. Reuniting the surviving sculptures from the Parthenon would be a friendly and just act by a nation looking to take the lead in responding to global challenges,” Dame Janet Suzman, Chair of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles, told Ta Nea newspaper.

The BCRPM is made up of respected British scholars, academics and artists, such as Emeritus Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine Studies Judith Herrin, fellow of the British Academy Professor Oliver Taplin and archaeologist Anthony Snodgrass.

“The Parthenon Marbles in the British Museum (since 1817) are a, perhaps the classic illustration of the colonialist-imperialist complex that so disfigures that august collection today. The large fortune acquired by the Museum’s founding collector and benefactor, Dr Hans Sloane, was itself deeply mired in the slave trade, and Lord Elgin, ambassador to the Sublime Porte, was able to loot the Parthenon marbles only thanks to Britain’s being an enemy of the Ottoman Sultan’s enemy, Napoleonic France, at a time when Greece was a possession of the Ottoman Empire. Next March 25, 2021, will mark the bicentenary of the Greeks’ declaration of independence from the Ottoman yoke after a subjection of nearly 37 decades. Is it too much to hope that it will also mark a significant moment in the decolonisation of the British Museum” said Professor Paul Cartledge, A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture emeritus, University of Cambridge, Vice-Chair of the BCRPM.

The BCRPM has produced a leaflet aimed at deconstructing the British Museum's arguments which are included in a leaflet distributed to visitors of Room 18 - also known as the Duveen Gallery - which houses the Sculptures. It says that this leaflet contains "inaccuracies and untruths" (the Museum goes so far as to claim that the Greek authorities completed Elgin's work because they transferred the Sculptures to the Acropolis Museum!).

Therefore, the BCRPM produced its own leaflet which contains the "true story" of the Parthenon Sculptures. It will soon send it to the British government, political parties and MPs, trustees of the British Museum and the British media. In addition, on specific dates in the fall, activists will distribute the booklet to British Museum visitors.

The campaign, which will unfold in the coming months, accompanied by the hashtags #TellTheStory, #TimeIsNow and #BMJustDoIt, is dedicated to the inspirers of the campaign in Britain, Eleni and James Cubitt, who had been urged to launch it by Melina Mercouri.

"Lusieri, the artist hired by Lord Elgin, literally demolished the temple so that he could extract the Sculptures," Robert Browning, a professor of Classics at the University of London and first Chair of the BCRPM, said on April 16, 1983, interviewed by Hara Kiosse for Ta Nea.

"That is why, when I hear that Elgin took the marbles so that they do not end up becoming quicklime in the hands of the Greeks, or that the British Museum keeps them because they are in danger due to air pollution of Athens, I feel that what they say is sacrilege."

Thirty-seven years on, the Museum still houses Pheidias's masterpieces, with its spokesperson telling Ta Nea that "the possibility of their permanent return is not being considered" and Marlen Godwin, the BCRPM's International Relations Officer, responding: "We will not give up. We will continue to call for the reunification of the Sculptures. Until then, we call on the Museum to reveal the truth to those who visit it to see the Marbles. That's the least it can do. "

Main points of the leaflet here.

Ta Nea, 01 August 2020

British Museum interim Director, Sir Mark Jones interviewed two weeks ago in The Times, explaining how he has dealt with the consequences of the British Museum thefts. He set a target of five years for the BM’s complete collection, eight million objects, to be catalogued online, each with an image. With 60% of the BM's objects already digitalised, this target will be met.

Ten of the recovered stolen items are to be featured in a new BM exhibition called 'Rediscovering Gems', which opens on Thursday, 15 February 2024. 

From theft of artefacts to the call for the British Museum to give back some of the contested items in its collection.

“It’s true that I find the legal situation of contested objects, and the historical justification for retaining them, much less interesting than consideration of their current and future benefits,” Jones says. "What we should really be thinking about is where these objects are going to create the most interest, where they are best going to engage people.”

We certainly concurr with that last sentence. The Parthenon Gallery in the Acropolis Museum is the one place on earth where it is possible to have a single and aesthetic experience simultaneously of the Parthenon and its sculptures. 

Read the full interview with Sir Mark Jones in the The Times.

Gareth Harris from The Art Newspaper also wrote quoting Sir Jones' response in The Times  with his reply to the question of if he were "still the BM’s director in a couple of years’ time, could he envisage supervising an arrangement to return the Elgin [Parthenon] Marbles to Greece?”

“Yes,” Jones said. “I could easily imagine a relationship between us and the Acropolis Museum [in Athens] that included mutual loans. Why not? They have some rather fabulous objects as well.”

Greece has been offering to loan antiquities to the British Museum in return for the reunification of the sculptures in Athens, for over 24 years.

11 December 2021, The Guardian

Miranda Sawyer reviewing Radio 4’s Vice World News, The Unfiltered History Tour ‘which brings a fresh eye to favourite museum pieces’.

'Remember Radio 4’s The History of the World in 100 Objects, hosted by the former British Museum director Neil MacGregor? This is the flip side. The Unfiltered History Tour wants the British Museum to return certain artefacts (“stolen goods”) to the places they originally came from.' Writes Miranda Sawyer. 

This one was about the Easter Island statues. Islanders Sergio Mata’u Rapu and Tarita Alarcón Rapu, who are working to get Hoa Hakananai’a back. “For us, it’s not just a well-carved rock,” said Tarita. “It’s a living ancestor. Living.” Miranda goes back to listen to  the relevant 100 Objects episode (this Easter Island statue is at No 70). 'The contrast between MacGregor’s lofty, academic approach and the emotion of Sergio and Tarita was stark.'

She concludes: ‘Other episodes discuss the Benin bronzes, the Rosetta stone, and, of course, the Parthenon Marbles. There is much non-romantic true love for them all, and it’s hard to argue that these works should not be returned to where they resonate the most’.

Nina Kelly is a London student studying A level Mathematics, Further Mathematics, History and Biology. She had always wanted to know more about the Parthenon Marbles and last year she made use of her EPQ (rs) as an opportunity to find out more.

Nina's research had her attend the BP or not BP? prtotest at the British Museum on 08 February 2020, travel to Athens and interview both Prof Paul Cartledge in Cambridge and William St Clair in London.

Professor Paul Cartledge

To watch her video, kindly follow the link here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbD-0qGwg08&feature=youtu.be

Nina's conclusion is one we can all take note of: "the more we know and understand about the Parthenon Marbles, the more we can all do to encourage and appreciate a fairer world. The outcome on the debate of this specific collection of sculptures is likely to go on forever or until the oldest of stories is being told in the most holistic setting possible." 

BCRPM wish Nina all the best with her University studies. 

16 October 2013, Room P4B001, European Parliament, Brussels, Belgium

Tom Flynn's presentation at yesterdays Round Table at the European Parliament in Brussels.

The round table was organised by The Swiss Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles under the patronage of the Ministry of Culture of the Hellenic Republic and MEP Rodi Kratsa, Vice-President European Parliament 2007-2012.

 The Parthenon Marbles — A European Concern

Ladies and gentlemen, colleagues, distinguished members of the European Parliament. Let me begin by thanking Professor Sidjanskifor the kind invitation to contribute to today's Round Table. It is a pleasure and an honour to be with you in Brussels.

What can we say about the case for reunifying the Parthenon Marblesthat has not been said a thousand times before? What more can we add to the numerous persuasive argumentsalready made for reuniting the dismembered components of Phidias's finest achievement? How many more times must we convene to reiterate the importance of restoring coherence to a work of art whose desecration at the hands of Lord Elgindamaged one of Greece's greatest gifts to the world?

The answer to these questions is that there will always be more to say about the case for reunifying the Marbles. There will always be new and ever more compelling arguments for reuniting them in Athens. And until that happens our generation and future generations will continue to convene and will go on reminding the British Museumof its moral duty to restore to these objects the dignity that Lord Elgin so rudely snubbed.The story the Marbles tell, is of a cultural moment that is a precious and irreplaceable part of our birthright as Europeans and the bedrock of our democratic ideals. That story loses much of its narrative charge while its components remain dispersed across different locations.

The Parthenon Marbles are more than just a work of art. They are more than a mechanism through which to increase the footfall of cultural tourism. They are more than a means by which to impose some meaning on the randomly accumulated collections of an encyclopaedic museum.

The reason the Parthenon Marbles transcend conventional museum categorisation is that they have the potential to demonstrate that in a time of global economic turmoil and geopolitical unrest cultural objects can unite us across national boundaries and remind us of our shared humanity. I say 'potential' because there is an irrefutable logic to the proposition that a united,coherent sequence of objects that speaks with such clarity of our shared background is more likely to foster unity among nations than a fragmented series of objects that continues to symbolise disunion and cultural rupture. For this process to begin, however, the dialogue between Greece and London must rise to a higher level based on mutual trust and generosity of spirit.

The Parthenon Marbles are unquestionably important within the cultural landscape, but they have become renowned for all the wrong reasons. While they should be celebrated for representing the zenith of the Periclean building programme of fifth-century Athens, instead they are more widely recognised as the most controversial and divisive objects in world culture. They should be peacemakers but we are not allowing them to take up that peacekeeping role. Thus they have become emblematic of the wider disputes between western museums and developing nations that have become known as the 'culture wars'. While the Marbles remain immured within the Stygian gloom of the Duveen Galleries where their true significance to European art and culture is so wilfully misinterpreted and misunderstood — our attempts to build harmony in the realm of cultural heritage will be impaired. The international museum community — but more specifically the British Museum — has the power to repair that rupture. The symbolic resonance of a unifying gesture of this kind could be profound and long-lasting.

Allow me briefly to frame this within a broader context. The events that unfolded in Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years, and now in Syria, have brought unprecedented quantities of looted cultural objects onto the international art market. Many of these objects are removed from ancient sites under cover of darkness by local people seeking to scrape a meagre living for themselves and their families. Such subsistence looting destroys what archaeologists refer to as an object's 'provenience', that is the specific positional coordinates and context in which the object was located in the ground, tomb or temple site. Having been extracted, the objects and artefacts are moved up the art market food-chain, so to speak, before finally ending up in the home of wealthy collectors or museums.

Most museums now know better than to acquire objects of uncertain ownership history and the UNESCO guidelines have set down clear markers on acquisition. Moreover, thanks to the Internet and related communications technologies the world's encyclopaedic museums are now vigilantly monitored by well-informed individuals and interested parties for any hint of a problematic acquisition. The social network has become a critical filter surveying the movement of cultural heritage goods and no longer can museums acquire or display suspect objects without risking public exposure and widespread condemnation.

Nevertheless, so profound and widespread is the political turmoil ravaging the Middle East that the traffic in cultural objects is now arguably out of control. It is unlikely to improve until peace and economic stability return to the nations affected. Museums are implicated in this 'food-chain', partly as a consequence of their historical development as the repositories of cultural objects and partly because of their self-imposed obligation to continue collecting. In the last few months a major Australian museum was found to have acquired an important temple statue of Shiva that had been looted from a site in South Asia. It now seems likely that other museums were recipients of objects from the same supply chain. That said, on the other side of the equation, many museums have taken it upon themselves to return objects that have been recognised as being of specific sacred or ritual value to the source nations and communities from which they were originally expropriated during earlier times.

It is against the background of ongoing cultural upheaval that the British Museum now has an opportunity make an extraordinary gesture of reconciliation by reunifying the Parthenon Marbles. This would set an example to other museums around the world and would confirm that contrary to what many people have been led to believe, the British Museum DOES appreciate and respect the architectural significance of the Parthenon Marbles in relation to the Acropolis monument. It would be an acknowledgement that their very uniqueness justifies an amendment to the British Museum Act that has hitherto obstructed substantive progress on the issue. Our most eminent cultural heritage lawyer, Professor Norman Palmer of University College London, has pointed out that such an amendment would be perfectly achievable. This would clear the way for both parties to enter with open minds into a constructive mediation process. Instead of cleaving to an anachronistic legal instrument that will merely perpetuate the impasse, the British Museum now has an opportunity to demonstrate that Europe — and indeed the rest of the world — is unified by cultural objects, not divided by them.

Dr Tom Flynn FRICS

15 October 2013, Brussels

Cultural heritage and its symbols undoubtedly constitute the main capital of European peoples and the soul of the European Union. Respecting and restoring them is a European obligation and concern.

Rodi Kratsa MEP, European Parliament.

 http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/henry-porter/parthenon-sculptures-its-about-liberty-too

Henry Porter : "One of the reasons I am here is the late Christopher Hitchens, a good friend with whom I worked and argued for twenty years. 

I disagreed with Christopher on practically everything - his belief in the innate corruption of Mother Teresa, for example, his enthusiasm for the Iraq invasion and for gun ownership in the United States.  

But on the return of the Parthenon Marbles to Athens, Christopher was right, and I want to take the opportunity to salute the work he did in pressing the case for restitution. To some extent my contribution today is in memory of his stimulating company and his ability to make us all think and argue better, however crazy some of his notions.  In his book, The Parthenon Marbles, he was at his most forensic, passionate and brilliantly polemical."

And indeed as Henry went onto say.... 'it's never too late'.

Coverage in the Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/Greece

18 December 2021, TA NEA,  Yannis Andritsopoulos, London Correspondent for the Greek daily newspaper

Boris Johnson as student in 1986 wrote that the Parthenon Marbles were pillaged and should be returned to Greece. A position the British PM has recently rejected when Greece requests the reunification of these antiquities, and insisting they were 'legally acquired'.

Boris Johnson’s insistence as Prime Minister that the Parthenon Marbles were legally acquired by Lord Elgin and should remain in the British Museum is a complete reversal of the position he previously held, Greek daily newspaper Ta Nea can exclusively reveal.

In fact, as a university student, Johnson urged the British government to return the artefacts to Greece, arguing that they had been unlawfully removed from the ancient temple in Athens.

It is the first time evidence has emerged that the British Prime Minister advocated the reunification of the 2,500-year-old sculptures, a request he has repeatedly rejected publicly in recent years.

In an article written in April 1986 for the Oxford Union’s magazine, Johnson, then an undergraduate at Oxford University, accused Lord Elgin of ‘wholesale pillage’ of the Parthenon.

As British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Elgin removed the sculptures from the Parthenon in the early 19th century, when Greece was under Ottoman rule. He then sold them to the British government which passed them on to the British Museum in 1817.

Writing as president of the Oxford Union 35 years ago, Johnson claimed in his article that an Act of Parliament to hand the Marbles back “could be passed in an afternoon.”

The future Prime Minister went on to accuse the British government of ‘sophistry and intransigence’, saying that Whitehall’s claim that the ‘transaction had been conducted with the recognised legitimate authorities of the time’ is “invalid”.

“A letter from Elgin of 1811 reveals that the Turkish authorities denied ‘that the persons who had sold those marbles to him had any right to dispose of them’,” Johnson wrote.

He added that Elgin “secured from the Sultan a firman to remove 'qualche pezzi di pietra’ - a few pieces of stone - that happened to be lying about on the Acropolis. Elgin's interpretation of this phrase was liberal to say the least.”

This statement contradicts Johnson’s recent remarks regarding the legality of Elgin’s actions. In an exclusive interviewwith Ta Nea published in March, the British Prime Minister claimed that the Parthenon Marbles “were legally acquired by Lord Elgin under the appropriate laws of the time and have been legally owned by the British Museum’s Trustees since their acquisition.” He stressed that this view is “the UK Government’s firm longstanding position on the sculptures”.

“It seems that Boris Johnson was aware of concrete evidence that Lord Elgin’s actions were unlawful from as early as 1986. This begs the question: did he mislead the public when he recently claimed that the sculptures were legally acquired by Elgin?”, a Greek official told Ta Nea.

It is the first time since its publication in 1986 that this article has been made public.

The Daily Telegraph reported last month that Johnson “wrote an article for a student magazine arguing that (the Marbles) should stay here”. In actual fact, though, it is now clear that he argued the exact opposite.

Titled “Elgin goes to Athens – The President marbles at the Grandeur that was (in) Greece …,” the 978-word article was published in Debate, the official magazine of the Oxford Union Society (Vol. 1, No. 3, Trinity Term 1986, p. 22).

Ta Nea found the an unknown article in an Oxford library last week. It is not available online, nor is there any reference to it in the press or on the Internet. Two Oxford sources confirmed its authenticity.

Greece has repeatedly called for the return of the Parthenon Marbles, arguing that Lord Elgin had not secured permission to remove them from the ancient temple. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Culture Minister Lina Mendoni have said that the sculptures were 'stolen'. In his 1986 article, Mr Johnson appears to accept that view.

However, when he met with his Greek counterpart in Downing Street last month, the British leader rebuffed Mitsotakis’s request for the Marbles to be returned. He claimed that the issue was "one for the trustees of the British Museum".

This is inconsistent with the view he expressed in his 1986 article, in which he said that it is for the British Parliament to decide the Marbles’ fate.

“In 1816 (Elgin) sold them to the British government for £35,000. Therefore, it would require an Act of Parliament to hand them back. This, needless to say, seems to be a more or less insuperable brake on the process of return - yet it could be passed in an afternoon,” Johnson, who graduated from Balliol College with a BA in Classics, wrote.

The sculptures held in the British Museum make up about half of the 160-metre frieze which adorned the Parthenon, a 5th century BC architectural masterpiece. Most of the other surviving sculptures (around 50 metres) are in Athens.

Britain has repeatedly rejected Greece's request to hold talks on returning the Marbles. Earlier this year, a UNESCO committee said that Greece’s request for the return of the Parthenon Sculptures is “legitimate and rightful,” stressing that “the case has an intergovernmental character and, therefore, the obligation to return the Parthenon Sculptures lies squarely on the UK Government”. It also called on Britain “to reconsider its stand and proceed to a bona fide dialogue with Greece on the matter”.

In his magazine article, Johnson, then 21, called on the UK to return Phidias’s masterpieces to Greece so that they can be “displayed where they belong”.
“The reasons for taking the marbles were good. The reasons for handing them back are better still,” the future Prime Minister and Tory leader stressed.

“They will be housed in a new museum a few hundred yards from the Acropolis. They will be meticulously cared for. They will not, as they were in the British Museum in 1938, be severely damaged by manic washerwomen scrubbing them with copper brushes,” he wrote.

It had been claimed that as a student Johnson was "sympathetic" to the Greek request, but no evidence to support this had been presented until now. All his past public comments express the view that the Marbles should stay in the UK.

In 2014, he criticised George Clooney for suggesting Britain should return the Parthenon marbles to Greece. Johnson said at the time the actor needed his “marbles” restored, claiming Clooney was “advocating nothing less than the Hitlerian agenda for London's cultural treasures”.

In a 2012 letter shared with the Guardiannewspaper, Johnson, then mayor of London, wrote that “in an ideal world, it is of course true that the Parthenon marbles would never have been removed from the Acropolis,” but concluded that if the sculptures were removed from London, it would amount to “grievous and irremediable loss”. Therefore, he added, “I feel that on balance I must defend the interests of London.”

In March, the Prime Minister posed for Ta Nea in his parliamentary office next to a plaster cast bust of his “personal hero”, Pericles. The Athenian statesman is credited with ordering the design and construction of the Parthenon from which Elgin took the marbles.

As president of the Oxford Union, Johnson invited the then Greek Culture Minister Melina Mercouri to participate in a June 1986 debate titled: “[This House believes] that the Elgin Marbles must be returned to Athens.” She won the vote.
The Greek government says that the sculptures were illegally removed during the Ottoman occupation of Greece in the early 1800s.

It seems Greece has found an unlikely ally in its quest to reunite the Marbles in the form of the 21-year-old Johnson, who thought that “the Elgin Marbles should leave this northern whisky-drinking guilt-culture” and be displayed “where they belong: in a country of bright sunlight and the landscape of Achilles, 'the shadowy mountains and the echoing sea'.”

Boris Johnson’s article in full:

Elgin goes to Athens

The President marbles at the Grandeur that was (in) Greece …

On Thursday 12 June Melina Mercouri, the Greek Minister of Culture, is coming to the Oxford Union. Her subject, thanks to dynamic lobbying has a ring of familiarity all around the world: the return of the Elgin Marbles. Powerful forces will cause her to fly to Britain. They are on the one hand the passionate national feeling of the Greek people, and on the other the sophistry and intransigence of the British Government. And caught between these forces is, not a sack of old balls, but the supreme artistic treasure of the ancient world. The debate on 12 June will mark the climax of a renewed campaign by the Greek government to restore to Greece the sculptural embodiment of the spirit of the nation. The vote in Oxford - the centre of British Classical scholarship - will without question affect the decision in Whitehall. To put it crudely, your choice will count.

The background
In 450 BC Pericles, the ruler who steered Athens to her greatness, launched an ambitious programme of monumental public works. The Acropolis, the ancient citadel of Athens, was to become the glory and envy of the world. Puritan spirits objected, claiming that he was wrongfully using tribute from Athenian dependencies to ‘tart up the city like a whore'. But posterity has faulted their judgement. The craftsmen Phidias, Ictinus and Callicrates, with the personal encouragement of Pericles, created buildings and sculpture which are wholly emblematic of the pride and intellectual vigour of Athens. It is on the Panathenaic frieze, which ran along the wall behind the Parthenon's columns, that we see classical art at its most sublime. The technical control is minute, the features calm and passionless. The detachment and self-control of the figures are in harmony with the Periclean vision: of the city and citizens of the virgin goddess independent, self-reliant, and superior to the common calls of the flesh. The Panathenaic Frieze consisted of 111 panels. 97 survive. 56 of them are in the British Museum.

The Parthenon, the temple of Athena the Virgin, has suffered two major catastrophes in its history. The first was in 1678, when a cunning Turkish general, under siege from the Venetians, decided to use it as a munitions dump - like hiding a tank in a Red Cross tent. But the Venetian general Morosini reached for his gun, like Goering, at the mention of culture, shelled it, and blew up most of the central portion. The second major catastrophe was the wholesale pillage of the ancient shrine by Lord Elgin from 1801 to 1811.

Greece was at this time a tumbledown outpost of the Ottoman Empire. The national identity which Pericles glimpsed, and which has returned so conspicuously in the 20th century, had shimmered and vanished. Lord Elgin was Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, and had left behind him in England a young and skittish wife, with a pampered girl's insatiable desire for presents. It was in the Acropolis that he realised he had found a few things that might amuse here. Manipulating Turkish dependence in Britain for military support, he secured from the Sultan a firman to remove 'qualche pezzi di pietra’ - a few pieces of stone - that happened to be lying about on the Acropolis. Elgin's interpretation of this phrase was liberal to say the least. For ten years a team of labourers, under the direction of a rapacious Italian called Lusieri, sawed and hacked at the sculptures of Phidias. Huge ox-wagons daily lumbered down to the Piraeus laden with their pathetic cargo: Hermes’ Knee is still in Athens. The rest of him is in the British Museum.

It was the near-anarchy of the Ottoman Empire that allowed Elgin to get away with it. ‘Do you mind if I borrow these bits of stone for a while?’ was how he might have put it to the local sergeant, and the man would have shrugged and returned to his harem in the Erechtheum. And yet it was on precisely this point that the Whiteheall mandarins rejected, in 1983, the formal request of the Greek government for the return of the marbles: that ‘transaction had been conducted with the recognised legitimate authorities of the time.’ As it turns out, even this paltry defence is invalid: a letter from Elgin of 1811 reveals that the Turkish authorities denied ‘that the persons who had sold those marbles to him had any right to dispose of them.’

To be fair, Elgin did humanity a service by bagging the sculptures before they could be quarried for the construction of Turkish hovels. He lost a fortune on the enterprise, and his wife, who probably found them too cold and immodest, was not happy with them either. In 1816 he sold them to the British government for £35,000. Therefore it would require an Act of Parliament to hand them back. This, needless to say, seems to be a more or less insuperable brake on the process of return - yet it could be passed in an afternoon. The reasons for taking the marbles were good. The reasons for handing them back are better still.

The Elgin Marbles should leave this northern whisky-drinking guilt-culture, and be displayed where they belong: in a country of bright sunlight and the landscape of Achilles, 'the shadowy mountains and the echoing sea'. They will be housed in a new museum a few hundred yards from the Acropolis. They will be meticulously cared for. They will not, as they were in the British Museum in 1938, be severely damaged by manic washerwomen scrubbing them with copper brushes. Legend tells that the statues of the gods shrieked as they were torn from the Parthenon. It is now almost two centuries since Lord Elgin's deed, and the gods are not mocked.

Boris Johnson
Balliol

1986

 Guardian 18 December 2021

Helena Smith writes: 'The extent of Boris Johnson’s U-turn on the Parthenon marbles has been laid bare in a 1986 article unearthed in an Oxford library in which the then classics student argued passionately for their return to Athens.

Deploying language that would make campaigners proud, Johnson not only believed the fifth century BC antiquities should be displayed “where they belong”, but deplored how they had been “sawed and hacked” from the magisterial edifice they once adorned.

“The Elgin marbles should leave this northern whisky-drinking guilt-culture, and be displayed where they belong: in a country of bright sunshine and the landscape of Achilles, ‘the shadowy mountains and the echoing sea,’” he wrote in the article, republished by the Greek daily, Ta Nea, on Saturday.'

To read the article in full, follow the link here

Telegraph 18 December 2021

Steve Bird also took up the story: 'Thirty-five years ago, Johnson wrote how the UK’s claim to the artefacts relied on the “invalid” suggestion that Elgin had received the approval to remove them from “the legitimate authorities of the time”.

Johnson wrote: “As it turns out, even this paltry defence is invalid: a letter from Elgin of 1811 reveals that the Turkish authorities denied ‘that the persons who had sold those marbles to him had any right to dispose of them.’”

Greece has repeatedly insisted that because the Ottomans were an occupying force in Greece they had no right to sanction the removal of the frieze to anyone.

To read the Telgraph article, follow the link here(there is a paywall). 

THE PARTHENON MARBLES DISPUTE: Heritage, Law, Politics
Alexander Herman

The Parthenon Marbles are hot. Not in the sense that they are to be lusted after, as was Praxiteles’s also marble sculpture, the Aphrodite of Knidos, but because the question of whether the extant members should—ever—be reunified in Athens is a hot-button political issue, hot enough to set the Prime Ministers of Greece and the U.K. at each other’s throats. Into the fray intrepidly steps Alexander Herman, Director of the Institute of Art and Law, UK.

His otherwise estimable work suffers in one regard, however, the timing of its publication. It unfortunately finds itself up against that of Professor Catharine Titi, The Parthenon Marbles and International Law (Springer Verlag, 2023). Titi is an international human rights lawyer-academic of Greek origin based in Paris. Her magisterial work is truly groundbreaking and superior to the first four chapters of Herman’s (pp. 1-65). Those cover the original acquisition—or theft—of what ‘our man in Constantinople’, the Seventh Lord Elgin, UK ambassador to the Ottoman Sublime Porte, had removed by force and fraud from the ruined temple on the Athenian Acropolis to—eventually—London in the first decades of the 19th century. As Titi demonstrates beyond a peradventure, Elgin had no good legal title to what he claimed to own and sold to the British government in 1816 for £35,000. A fortiori, the British government had none either: it is only in UK domestic law that we the British people ‘own’ Parthenon sculptures.

H.’s book is, however, a useful and usable complement to Professor Titi’s. Like her, he rightly raises the crucially moral—as well as cultural, political, aesthetic etc.—issue at stake in the original Elgin (ad)venture—see ‘Law and Morality’ (pp. 51-3, concluding Chapter 3, ‘A Firman by Any Other Name’). He then proceeds in his remaining six chapters to give, as claimed, a thorough and no less importantly a balanced and critical account of the Elgin ‘dispute’, almost blow-by-blow.

Between 1816 and 2024 there have been several notable crunch-points: among them the newfangled Greek state’s original request for return of the BM’s marbles in the 1830s, and the passage in 1963—again, as in 1816, by a Tory government—of an Act of Parliament forbidding with only a couple of exceptions the BM ever to de-acquisition any of its now about 8 million (minus of course the 2000 or so recently liberated by a rogue curator) holdings. Look to the end, as Herodotus has one of his characters (Solon) presciently say …

Herman’s book is provided with a truly wonderful index, which has no fewer than ten ‘Parthenon’ entries, extending over almost 4 double-column pages. These start with: Parthenon centrality of, and proceed by way of … construction of (447-438) (Periclean Project); … Marbles (after arrival in Britain); … Marbles (history of the claim: British arguments against return/counter-arguments); … Marbles (history of the claim: legal action (IARPM)); … Marbles (history of the claim) (in date order); … Marbles (resolving the dispute); ‘Parthenon Partnership’; and Parthenon Project; to, finally, Parthenon sculptures.

Another special feature of H.’s book besides its index is its incorporation of the views of—among other interviewees—curators, museum directors, lawyers, archaeologists, and politicians in both London and Athens. Yet another are its suggestions for new ways of resolving all such cultural-heritage disputes going forward. If only….

Readers will no doubt wish to be selective in what claims and arguments they choose to focus upon. The very construction of the original Parthenon (not the whole temple’s name) was controversial, and the temple’s function or rather functions, and the interpretation of some or all of its many and polyvalent adornments, remain controversial to this day. H. gives a helpful dateline of the history of the ultimately Greek claim to reunification and the mainly British government/Museum’s counter-claims.

But what of his own views? There is a clue in the fact that he is not in favour of modifying, let alone rescinding, the 1963 Museums Act, and on p. 155 there is perhaps a sketch in miniature of his own, studiously neutral, formally apolitical position: ‘Perhaps it may be better … to leave the ultimate question of resolution to the museums themselves’. That will not be music to those of us who firmly believe the rightful permanent home for those Parthenon sculptures that the British Museum currently holds in trust for the British nation is the (specially dedicated, opened in 2009) Acropolis Museum in their native Athens.

Paul Cartledge

Vice-Chair of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles (BCRPM), a non-profit campaign group established in 1983, and an elected Vice-President of the International Association for the Reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures (IARPS).

This review was published in Classic for All.

"I was deeply moved during a recent visit to the Acropolis Museum in Athens", writes Alfredo Cafasso Vitale. His article was first published in ekathimerini on Thursday 02 June 2022.

With the kind permission from Alfredo Cafasso Vitale, the remainder of the article can also be read below:

This fragment, which is part of the eastern frieze of the Parthenon, depicts a foot and a part of the peplos of Artemis, and was acquired in 1816 by the British consul in Sicily, Robert Fagan. After his death in 1820, it was sold to the Museum of the Royal University of Palermo and from there it was then passed to the Salinas Museum.

The top floor of the Acropolis Museum is a virtual reconstruction of the Parthenon, and the area has been designed, with its position and glass, to reflect, and to not only display this reconstruction, but to also visually link it to the original near 2,500-year-old structure on the Acropolis hill. The Fagan fragmentis now displayed in a glass case, within its place in the reconstruction and also looking out at the actual historical site.

I hope this trip paves the way for a much more important and long-awaited journey of the marbles from the British Museum, “stolen” in the early 1800s by Thomas Bruce, then made Lord Elgin, ambassador of Great Britain to Constantinople.

During the period of Ottoman occupation in Greece, Elgin apparently obtained the permission of the sultan to remove the marbles. These were then dispersed in different locations (the same Fagan fragment came directly from Elgin). Some marbles were lost at sea, during transport, but most eventually arrived at the British Museum.

This process, which is not, in some quarters, considered to be a valid and genuine method of acquisition, has triggered fierce international debates, and has initiated official requests for restitution of the marbles by various Greek governments.

The Nobel Prize winner Nadine Gordimer, in the preface to the splendid book by Christopher Hitchens, “The Parthenon Marbles,The Case for Reunification” underlined how the presence of the marbles in London represented the stone manifesto of British colonial arrogance, and how much the marbles belonged, representing their DNA in art, to the Greek people.

These sculptures by Phidias have been requested in vain for almost 40 years by various Greek governments (the first was Minister of Culture Melina Mercouri in 1984), and most recently by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in an interview on British television.

It should be noted that, as a student, Boris Johnson wrote, in an article in Oxford, “…it is evident to me, how much [these marbles] are woven into the Greek identity. It would be a wonderful thing if they could be returned.” Latterly, Ed Vaizey, former minister of culture of the Cameron government, recently stated that they should be in Athens.

The National Archaeological Museum of Athens has transferred its 10 fragments of the Parthenon to the Acropolis Museum, strengthening the reunification process and sparking a fresh discussion about the never dormant request for the return of the marbles.

I hope that the exchange program with Sicily will lead the way to a solution for the return of the marbles, which would, in turn, strengthen Greece’s cultural identity, and perhaps help reinforce it politically and economically. The country has been trying with all its strength and succeeding in re-emerging from the profound crisis of the last decade.

In another indication that perhaps the tide is turning in favor of the return of the marbles, the Musee des Civilizations du Quai Branly in Paris and the Berlin Ethnologisches Museum have initiated the return of African artifacts to Nigeria, improperly taken away during the colonial period from Benin City.

As a footnote, upon exiting the museum, I entered the metro, heading home, at the Acropolis station. Going down to the platform, I was greeted by the giant picture of Melina Mercouri in front of the Parthenon, wrapped in an elegant trench coat, a bundle of wild flowers in her hands, and an immense and radiant smile, which today seems even more radiant. The return process, dreamed of and initiated by her, seems to have perhaps gained some momentum.

What do the Parthenon and a weird Brazilian dinosaur known as “Ubirajara jubatus”* have in common? Apparently, not much. Yet, they are both protagonists of international restitution claims. On one side, Greece’s claim for the return of the Parthenon sculptures held in the British Museum, which will soon become a bicentenary dispute. On the other, Brazil’s claim for the restitution of a fossil holotype previously held in the State Museum of Natural History in Karlsruhe and demanded since early 2021. While Brazilians got to see their fossil return home this month, Greece’s claim remains the longest-standing dispute in the field.

Despite the obviously distinct nature of both claims, they complete each other so as to form a perfect example of how relentlessly repetitive and fallacious the “arguments” presented by retentionists are. In my Master's Thesis (Munich, 2020) I analyzed Greece’s claim against the British Museum and the United Kingdom under the International Human Rights Law framework. For that, I had to deconstruct a recurrent argument for dismissing Greece’s stance: that Lord Elgin had the authorization to remove and export the sculptures.

The argument goes: Elgin obtained a written authorization (the famous “firman”) to remove and export the Parthenon Sculptures, issued in 1801 by the competent Ottoman authority, as Greece was under Ottoman rule. This claim is deeply flawed for a myriad of reasons I explored in the Thesis, but let us assume, for argument’s sake, that the surviving versions of the “firman” do reflect the content of a real document issued prior to the Parthenon’s dismemberment and the dispatch of the sculptures.

Under Ottoman Law in the early 1800s, the Sultan had absolute control over antiquities and only he could authorize such removal. Nonetheless, the document so often relied upon by the UK and the British Museum is signed by Caimacan Seged Abdullah, an acting Grand Vizier who, regardless of his high status in the Ottoman Government, had no authority to issue a firman – definitely not one concerning the export of antiquities.

Likewise, when arguing that the “Ubirajara” fossil was legally exported from Brazil, the authors that described the species claimed they had a written export authorization from an agent of the National Department for Mineral Production. The claim completely ignores that Brazilian Law forbids any export of holotypes (as the “Ubirajara”) and that, even if it were a regular fossil, the competent authority to issue such an authorization would be the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq).

Back to the other side of the Atlantic, let us look at what this “firman” actually states. The supposed text of the 1801 Document (as the original has never been found) begins with a description of the activities Elgin wanted his workers to conduct – with no indication that he sought permission to remove any sculptures. The second part of the document expresses that it is the desire of the Ottoman Court to favor Elgin’s requests. The widespread argument that the “firman” authorized the removal of the Parthenon Sculptures relies on an extract from the last paragraph: “[no one should] hinder them from taking away any pieces of stone with inscriptions or figures”. The decontextualized interpretation of this quote ignores that, just above, the document presents an express condition to the authorization: “particularly as there is no harm in the said figures and edifices being thus viewed, contemplated, and designed”.

The sculptures were affixed to the Parthenon and were an integral part of the building. There is simply no good faith interpretation that could lead to the conclusion that the document allowed for the Parthenon’s dismantling. This quote, when properly contextualized, clearly refers to objects dug from the rubble of the Parthenon’s surroundings, which is compatible with what Elgin requested. Thus, even if we were to deem this document reliable, there is no way it authorized the export of the sculptures. What probably happened is that they left Greece in packages with misleading content descriptions (and under heavy bribes, but that's a story for another day...).

Now, it is time to zoom in on the authorization that supposedly allowed for the “Ubirajara” fossil to be exported from Brazil. As explained by Aline Ghilardi, a leading Brazilian paleontologist in the #UbirajaraBelongstoBR campaign, the “authorization” presented by the authors does not mention anything about definitively exporting the materials and does not specify the boxes’ content. In her words, “as it was written, the authors could continue to describe new species for the next 20 years alleging that all holotypes were inside of it”. In any event, the narrative by the authors was considered untrue by German authorities (but that’s another story for another day...).

Almost 200 years separate Greece's first claim over the Parthenon Sculptures and the #UbirajaraBelongstoBR campaign. Apparently, not enough to come up with better excuses for illegal and unethical behavior. Their arguments are old, weak, and honestly – and I say this as a Brazilian – offensive. We will continue to counter them all.

I end this brief commentary by drawing a last parallel between Greece and Brazil, Sculpture and Dinosaur. Two obvious statements that somehow still must be echoed:

#UbirajaraBelongstoBR

#ParthenonBelongstoGreece.

* In case you are wondering about the quotation marks, the article describing the species has since been retracted, which means that this name currently holds no taxonomic value.

Letícia Machado Haertel, Master of Laws (LMU), Specialist in Int. Cultural Heritage Law

BCRPM would like to thank Letícia  for this excellent article.

Editorial Footnote: on the pseudo-legality of Elgin’s in fact theft, see now, definitively, Catharine Titi The Parthenon Sculptures and International Law(Springer, 2023).

‘200 + 20 years in captivity. The Parthenon Sculptures from Elgin to Boris’

Paul Cartledge spoke at the Culture Through Politics online event on Sunday 11 April 17:00 BST. His talk followed on from Professor Pandermalis, President of the Acropolis Museum and was made alongside other distinguised speakers. 

‘Decolonising’ the Elgin-Parthenon Sculptures

First, may I begin with a huge vote of thanks: above all to the ‘Culture Through Politics’ group for organising this exceptionally important webinar, but also to my very distinguished fellow-invitees, for their important contributions.

Second, let me say a word about the title of our public webinar debate: it alludes of course to a very specific and very special anniversary, a famous bicentenary. And as a Greek historian colleague of mine has acutely observed, you tell me what anniversaries you want to celebrate/commemorate and I will tell you who you are. ‘1821’, in other words, is for Greece collectively and for Greeks individually a magical year – their ‘1789’, if you like. Or, in a way, our – English - ‘1066’! For it marks the beginning of a new Hellenic identity, but not only Hellenic: in retrospect, we can see that it was only the first step on the road to political freedom and ultimately to democratic self-determination throughout the continent of Europe.

To me, however, as a historian of ancient/Classical Greece/Hellas, 2021 has another signification as a major anniversary year: it is the 2500th anniversary of what the Western world’s first historian, Herodotus of Halikarnassos, called τα Μηδικα, what we ancient historians call the Graeco-Persian Wars. As in AD 1821, so in 480-479 BC, democracy as well as freedom was at stake – as I have tried to show in a number of lectures both in Athens and online. And at the beating heart of that ancient Greek – and more especially ancient Athenian – achievement of victory and liberation there lay and there still lies a building, a unique and quite extraordinary structure, one that we today – not quite accurately – refer to for short as ‘the Parthenon’.

What I want to do in my allotted 10 minutes is try briefly to con-textualise what (Lord) Elgin and his cohorts did TO – that is, against – that building and structure in and around 1801. I do so in the hope – probably a vain hope – of bringing the UK’s current, classically-educated Prime Minister to a proper appreciation both of the enormity of that long ago act of vandalism and of what now urgently needs to be done with and FOR those Parthenon Sculptures that are currently not in Athens. Which brings me to …

Thirdly, my own chosen title: “‘Decolonising’ the Elgin-Parthenon Sculptures”. If I may, I shall begin with a little autobiography. I was born in 1947, so that by my early teens I was well aware of the – literal – decolonisation, the shedding of imperial possessions, that Britain was – under its then also classically-educated PNM, Harold Macmillan – in the process of beginning. India had already ‘gone’, ‘been lost’, to the British Empire, so the focus in and around 1960 was on the continent of Africa, and I was at first puzzled to hear that the very word ‘empire’ had become – in some, enlightened quarters - a ‘dirty word’, something to be spoken of with distrust if not contempt. As I entered my late teens – and Oxford University (to read Classics, pretty much the same degree as Macmillan read before me and Johnson read after me) – I became even more acutely aware that there was something called ‘the Third World’, encompassing huge swathes of Asia, Latin America and – of course – Africa. It seemed obvious to me that the ‘Third World’ did not exist as if by nature, but was the direct product of self-interested intervention and depredation, mainly economic but also cultural, by the countries of the ‘First World’.

By the time Melina Mercouri ,in the early 1980s, launched her campaign for the repatriation and reunification of what were then usually called ‘the Elgin Marbles’ in the British Museum, it was becoming clear to me that the fact that the British Museum held the Marbles of the Parthenon (and other Athenian monuments) was part of a broader, imperial or imperial-colonial story.

I became a very early member of the British Committee for the Restitution (now Reunification) of the Parthenon Marbles [BCRPM], as it became ever clearer to me that the ‘British Museum’ should really be known as the ‘British Imperial War Museum’. As regards specifically the Parthenon Marbles in the BM, this was not only because those Marbles had been acquired – stolen – when the British Empire was at its height and as part of a very dirty deal between Britain’s imperial representative in Constantinople and the local Ottoman authorities but also because the attitude of the British Museum Trustees towards their possession of the Marbles was – still, in the 1980s - precisely imperialist or colonialist: not only – in their view – had the Marbles been legitimately (as well as legally) acquired but also they thought the BM deserved to continue to hold them because, under the stewardship of the Trustees and the relevant Keepers and other curatorial staff since 1817, the intrinsic aesthetic and cultural value of the Marbles – the Marbles in London only, that is – had been somehow enhanced. Somehow, their stay in London was represented as so much part of the overall ‘story’ of ‘the Marbles’ that reunification of the ‘Elgin Marbles’ to Athens would somehow diminish them, all of the Marbles.

That indeed remained the status quo down to 2009 – when the entire BM colonialist-imperialist ‘narrative’ was disrupted, rendered null and void, by the foundation of the (New) Acropolis Museum (NAM), under the genial Directorship of Professor Pandermalis. A new justificatory strategy was therefore required by the BM’s Trustees, and they fell back on a supposedly decisive, and incontestable, distinction of hierarchy between ‘universal’ museums such as the BM and supposedly inferior (merely) local or national museums such as the NAM. All the while, the colonialist-imperialist line remained intact for the Trustees, who even invoked the ultimate absurdity that the Parthenon Marbles that were in the BM were better understood IN the BM – better there than anywhere else indeed, because they could be seen and appreciated in the context of all other ‘world’ cultures represented artefactually in that same (8 million…) collection. What the BM Trustees could not, however, either see or anticipate was that a big anti-colonial head of steam was building up, focused especially though not of course uniquely on artefacts looted from Africa.

I know a good deal about that anti-colonial head of steam because it has come to affect not only the Marbles but even my own discipline and profession of Classics, especially since the beginning of this year but not only since then by any means. In the very same decade that the BCRPM was founded (in 1983) scholars who were not actually Classicists began to put it about that Classics as a discipline was fundamentally flawed at its very roots and conception: it was at best an ethnocentric, at worst a racist and sexist, project of Western and male and white supremacy, rooted in the study of societies that were themselves based on slavery and generally sexist too. So, why bother to study two main ancient civilisations – the Greek and the Roman - that had so little that was admirable let alone imitable to offer us?

Needless to say, there are defences – very good defences – available to those who believe (as I do) that Classics has a great deal that is positive still to offer us, and that a key part of that is a story about freedom and democracy, a story that has at - and as - its centre the Parthenon. In my ‘Salamis 2500’ lectures I always end with the Parthenon and its place within the entire Athenian Acropolis building programme of the second half of the 5th century BC. I do so because the Athenians decided democratically to have the Parthenon built, in a quite extraordinary way, as an overpowering symbol: both of what it meant to be Greek, as the Athenians of the 5th century BC understood that – free both personally (free from) and politically (free to), self-governing, and of what it meant to be democratic – that is, giving the lion’s share of the political power of self-determination to the demos of the Athenians, the poor majority of the empowered (free, adult, male) Athenian citizens.

Of course, we must not hide the many features of ancient Athenian democracy that we today would not choose to repeat – the exclusion of women, the exploitation of non-Greek slaves – but these must be understood within the context of those, very different times. The positives also need to be emphasised, unashamedly. Which is why it matters so much to me that ALL surviving sculptures from the Parthenon currently outside Athens – not only but especially those in the BM – should be returned and reunified in Athens. As regards the BM in particular, the case for reunification is not only scholarly, not only aesthetic, but also – and perhaps above all – ethical and moral. And in that regard it is above all anti-colonial: an attempt both to repair the damage both physical and metaphorical done by Britain’s colonial representative Elgin 200 years + 20 ago, and at the same time to make a progressive statement of anti-colonialism today. It is a unique case but also one that is completely in line with and in sympathy with other campaigns affecting other museums and other cultures for the repossession and reintegration of culturally identifying material artefacts.

Professor Paul Cartledge 

Taxiarches, Order of Honour, Greece

A.G. Leventis Senior Research Fellow, Clare College, Cambridge

A.G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture emeritus, University of Cambridge

LONDON COLLOQUY 19 JUNE 2012

The Parthenon sculptures: a legal perspective

By Andrew Dismore

1 Ownership: who do the sculptures belong to, in law? The issue of ownership of the Parthenon Sculptures (PS) has vexed politicians, museum curators, campaigners and the public for decades: but does it matter? The way the PS came into the possession of the British  Museum (BM). is a matter of relatively settled historical record. Lord Elgin removed them from the Parthenon under an Ottoman firman, the legal effect of which has been hotly disputed ever since. The first argument is that the firman did not extend to the wholesale removal effected by Lord Elgin; and secondly, the Ottoman firman could not and did not lawfully allow the removal of the sculptures anyway. Be that as it may, Lord Elgin shipped the sculptures to his London home. His expenses were substantial, and his subsequent financial difficulties led him to negotiate for the sale of his collections to the BM In 1816, a House of Commons Select Committee considered the authority by which Lord Elgin's collection was acquired, the circumstances under which that authority was granted, the merit of the sculptures and the importance of making them public property and their value as objects of sale. It adjudged the sculptures to have been properly acquired,  both fit for and worthy of public purchase, and recommended a purchase price of £35,000, less than half the expenditure claimed by Lord Elgin. The Report was debated in the House of Commons. The House voted the money for the purchase by 82 votes to 30, and legislation was then passed giving effect to the recommendations. The collection was purchased from public funds and vested in the Trustees of the BM. The BM (and UK government) case is that the trustees of the British Museum are the legal owners of the Elgin Marbles. They were vested in the BM by the Act of Parliament in 1816, and that is it. There have been suggestions that the BM’s ownership could be challenged, The only way of resolving the ownership issue definitively would be a court declaration or judgment, but anyone attempting to do so would face insurmountable obstacles, in my view. But who owned the PS before Lord Elgin took them? Greece did not exist as a country, nor for that matter did it, when the sculptures were made, as Greece then was a collection of city states. The legal authority was almost certainly vested in the Ottomans and Greece did not emerge as a nation state till the 1820s. It would be necessary to establish and then apply the law of property and of contract as it stood in 1816.  Anyone challenging ownership would need to prove the museum had not lawfully acquired the PS.  A major obstacle is the 200 years delay and the law of limitation. Whilst the limitation period might be arguably disapplied from 1816, it would be a strong defence to say the clock started running at the latest when the restitution campaign began in earnest in the 1980s and started claiming ownership on behalf of Greece- and the limitation period would long have expired since then. The basic principles of the relevant English  law have not substantially changed.  It would be necessary to prove the 1816 Government was not a bona fide purchaser (BFP) for value without notice –an innocent party who purchases property without notice of any other party's claim to the title of that property. Even when a party fraudulently sells property to a BFP, that BFP will usually take good title to the property despite the competing claims of the other party. Bearing in mind the extensive parliamentary debate examining this precise issue at the time, this would be very difficult to establish. And ownership was not challenged by the Ottomans before the parliamentary committee. And as the purchase and transfer was by Act of Parliament, any challenge would face the overwhelming hurdle of the supremacy of Parliament, too. Parliament has overridden private property rights for the public good, including without compensation on other occasions. Any legal challenge could expect to end up in the Supreme Court. Given the analysis above, it is pretty well a lost cause, to think the Court would find any other outcome than that the PS belong to the BM as English law would be applied.

2 Ownership: does it matter? In the end, such a legal challenge would be an expensive and time consuming side show, as the political debate has moved on. Moreover if there were to be a case and it failed, such a defeat in the courts would be a major setback for the mainstream campaign. Even if the claim was successful, there would then be a conflict between the courts and the statute and consequent powers of the trustees, so a substantive change of the law through statute would probably still be required. The real issue is now generally seen by campaigners both in Greece and the UK as not to be who owns the PS, but where they are physically located, with suggestions about loans of the PS or a BM annex in Athens as part of the new Parthenon Museum, for example. The moral and political arguments about this point are for other presentations at the colloquy and not for this paper- but resolving the issue of location raises legal issues which are at the very heart of the debate. The major obstacle to overcome is the British Museum Act 1963, under which the PS collection is held.

3 The legislation: a) The British Museum Act 1963 The Act is reproduced in full in its current form as an appendix to this paper. The Act was passed in part to provide for the separation of the Natural History Museum and the separation of the collections between the BM and the NHM. In summary, the relevant provisions are: The BM Trustees have power to enter into contracts and other agreements, to acquire and hold and land and other property, and to do all other things that appear to them necessary or expedient for the purposes of their functions.

The Trustees must keep the collections of the Museum within its authorised repositories, except if it is expedient to remove objects temporarily for any purpose connected with the administration of the Museum and the care of its collections.

The Trustees, so far as appears to them to be practicable, must ensure the objects in the Museum (including reserve collection objects) are made available for inspection by members of the public.

The Trustees may lend for public exhibition (whether in the United Kingdom or elsewhere) any object comprised in the collections of the Museum: provided that the Trustees shall have regard to the interests of students and other persons visiting the Museum, to the physical condition and degree of rarity of the object in question, and to any risks to which it is likely to be exposed.

Objects vested in the Trustees as part of the collections shall not be disposed of by them otherwise than under section 5 or 9 of this Act [or section 6 of the Museums and Galleries Act 1992]

Section 5 provides that the Trustees may sell, exchange, give away or otherwise dispose of any object vested in them and comprised in their collection [only] if –

(a) the object is duplicate of another object, or (b) the object appears to the Trustees to have been made not earlier than the year 1850, and substantially consists of printed matter of which a copy made by photography or a process akin to photography is held by the Trustees, or (c) in the opinion of the Trustees the object is unfit to be retained in the collections of the Museum and can be disposed of without detriment to the interests of students:

(Section 9 is not relevant as it stands, as this now only relates to transfers between the BM and NHM)

4 The legislation: b) the Museums and Galleries Act 1992; the Human Tissue Act 2004; and the Holocaust (Return of Cultural Objects) Act 2009 Section 6 of the Museums and Galleries Act 1992 allows the transfer of objects or related documents between institutions if the transfer is to any other body for the time being specified in Schedule 5 to the Act: relevant extracts are annexed to this paper, including the list of specified bodies, being major museums (including the BM) galleries etc., all situated in the UK. The Human Tissue Act 2004 enables the trustees of the BM to de-accession human remains if it appears to them to be appropriate. The Holocaust (Return of Cultural Objects) Act 2009, which was a private member’s Bill I promoted,  confers power to return certain cultural objects on grounds relating to events occurring during the Nazi era. It applies to a list of bodies, including the BM.  A body to which the Act applies may transfer an object from its collections, if the Advisory Panel has recommended the transfer and the Secretary of State has approved the recommendation. The “Advisory Panel” considers claims which are made in respect of objects, and relate to events occurring during the Nazi era.

5 The current legislation: summary of effect

The legislation therefore forbids the BM to dispose of items except only in limited circumstances, such as duplication, printed material, or not worthy of being in its collection. It can voluntarily dispose of Holocaust looted art to its rightful owner, and can transfer to other major UK museums. Clearly none of these criteria apply to the PS.

The BM’s main argument is that it is a “world museum”, and the PS are integral to its story of the history of art and culture through the millennia. This is illustrated by the recent Radio 4 series, of BM director Sir Neil Macgregor, “the History of the World through a 100 objects” (incidentally I highly recommend it, in its own right). However, The BM has used its powers to dispose of other items. In March 2002, it was reported that the British Museum had sold some of its artefacts. The BM admitted selling 30 pieces of Benin bronze in the 1950s and 1960s. (The detail is not clear, but could well predate the 1963 Act so is of limited relevance as a precedent).

However, what is known is that the British Museum sold 21 duplicate prints in 1986 and a duplicate set of Hiroshige woodblock prints in 1995. Some 2,600 duplicate coins, medals and badges and 117 duplicate western prints have been exchanged for similar material since 1972. Two bronze plaques from Benin were exchanged for a unique bronze horseman in the style of the Lower Niger Bronze industry in 1972. A relic of cannibalism, judged unfit to be retained in the Museum's collection was exchanged with Fiji for a collection of prehistoric sherds in 1975. In 1991, an English court recognised the legal personality of an Indian temple claiming the recovery of an idol, notwithstanding that it was incapable of accepting formally legal personality under English law.

Whilst the closest similarity is with the Benin Bronzes return, the facts of that case are different and can be made to fit the existing law. When they were taken form Africa in the 1870s, this was seen under the law as it then imperiously stood as either acquisition by right of conquest or war reparations.  Accordingly, this explains  how we end up in the “pass the parcel” approach of the BM and Government, each saying it is the responsibility of the other. The British Museum considers that it is not permitted under its current statute to engage in negotiations to return objects (in the context of the PS). The introduction of any legislation to provide for the return of the Elgin marbles would be the responsibility of the Government. It can however, lend to other museums, including overseas, in tightly controlled circumstances. It is arguable both ways, as to whether in fact the museum could lend the PS under these restrictions (access, condition, rarity, and risk).

6 changing the law: political will

It is clear there is no current political will within the coalition government to change the law to overcome these statutory obstacles. When in opposition,  their spokesperson said that the relationship between the Department and the British Museum is underpinned by a crucial arm’s length principle whereby Ministers set the financial, administrative, legal and overall policy framework for public bodies, but those bodies have a considerable and proper measure of independence in individual decision making. It is a long-standing policy of successive Governments in the UK that decisions relating to museum collections are for museum trustees to take, and the Government do not intervene. Nor was there any enthusiasm for changing the law under the previous Labour Government, though there was considerable support on the then Labour backbenches with one Early Day Motion (EDM- an expression of opinion on the backbenches only) attracting over 100 MPs’ signatures, mainly Labour. The Labour Government’s view was that the sculptures were acquired legally and that they are best housed in the British Museum in a multi-cultural context, seen free of charge by up to 5 million visitors a year.... to be clear about the responsibility of the British Museum for the Sculptures. The Trustees have a statutory duty to protect their collections and this duty could only be over-ridden by primary legislation amending Section 5 of the British Museum Act 1963, relating to the disposal of objects in the collections.

7 drafting a Bill

So whilst there is no immediate prospect of a reform of the law to enable the return of the PS to Greece, what would such a Bill look like? And what are the potential problems facing it? These can be categorised as both political and legal.

If a Bill is seen to be very specific and referring only to a particular private interest, for example referring only to the PS and their repatriation, there is a risk the Bill could be deemed to be hybrid. A hybrid bill is a public Bill which affects the private interests of a particular person or organization. It is generally initiated by the Government on behalf of non-Parliamentary bodies such as local authorities and is treated like a private Bill for the beginning of its passage through Parliament. This gives individuals and bodies an opportunity to oppose the bill or to seek its amendment before a select committee in either or in both Houses. This procedure is long drawn out and very problematic, so it is important that any Bill cannot be seen to be hybrid, so it need to be as broadly drawn as possible, and certainly not just referring to the PS alone. This then creates a political problem: the “floodgates” argument. One of the main arguments deployed against the PS return is that if the PS are returned, this will feed demands for other cultural objects to be repatriated too. The most obvious case is that of the Benin Bronzes, but no doubt we can all think of others. The BM strongly argues that removal of the marbles to Athens would encourage similar claims for other objects from other countries which would undermine the comparative principle at the heart of the British Museum's purpose. A subset of this argument that reinforces it is the issue of ownership, deal with above. Of course the political arguments about floodgates are somewhat spurious; there have been exceptions already, most notably the issue of holocaust restitution and human remains, which have not led to a long list of claims. The moral difference appears to be that the events leading to their inclusion in our national collections were more recent than Lord Elgin’s depredations; and the legislation applies not just to the BM but a wider range of institutions. But any Bill that did not head  this off would find it opposed in Parliament on these grounds. A Bill also needs to overcome the problem of the relationship between the BM and Government: the “arms length” relationship that implies ministers cannot order the trustees what to do and that decisions as to the collection should be primarily for the trustees. So the challenge for any Bill is to be sufficiently broad to avoid hybridity, yet sufficiently narrow to avoid these political  problems.

8 The British Museum Act 1963 (Amendment) Bill: summary of the Bill As set out above, at present the British Museum is prevented by statute from disposing of objects in its collections except in very limited circumstances. A copy of the Bill is annexed  to this paper  The Bill’s purpose is to amend the British Museum Act 1963 to enable the British Museum to transfer to another institution, for public exhibition, any object from its collections, in certain circumstances, where public access is guaranteed. The Bill is in two parts, first providing a more general power of transfer, having regard to the likely public access in the recipient institution, the interest of students and visitors to the museum, to the condition and rarity of the object, and any risks the object might face. The second part of the Bill empowers the secretary of State to require the transfer, if in his opinion, certain circumstances are met. Those circumstances can be summarised as: • where the object would be more widely accessible to visitors than in the British Museum • where it would be more appropriately displayed in the recipient institution than in the British Museum by reason of its historic links, or  where the object came to form part of the collections of the British Museum in circumstances which make its retention in the collections undesirable or inappropriate. To overcome the hybridity issue, the Bill confers these general powers without specific reference to the PS,  but there is only one situation in which it might realistically apply: to repatriate the Parthenon Marbles to Greece. So the Bill firstly empowers the BM trustees to effect a transfer by amending section 9 of the 1963 Act,  overcoming the existing restrictions. And it is the case that the Bill provides for the Secretary of State to override the trustees, which it is accepted interferes with the arms length relationship, but does so in only limited circumstances and after consultation with the trustees. In the end, this has to be necessary, to provide the political impetus to effect a return of the PS. The ownership issue is sidestepped by referring to transfer of the objects rather than arguing over rights of possession, but brings into play the circumstances of acquisition as one of the possible triggers to bring the powers in the Bill into play. The Bill also provides that any transfer should be effected at the expense of the receiving institution, which protects the UK public purse- but may now present a serious obstacle, given the present economic crisis in Greece. The Bill commenced its second reading debate on 15th May 2009, coincidentally on the same date as the Holocaust (Return of Cultural Objects) Act 2009, but whilst the latter Bill secured its second reading and went on to become law, the British Museum Act 1963 (Amendment) Bill did not: it was “talked out” and has no immediate prospect of proceeding in the current Parliament. Nevertheless, I would argue that it provides the best solution, to overcome the present legal obstacles should the parliamentary circumstances change, and is ready to take “off the shelf” in that eventuality. The second reading debate is set out below.

9 British Museum Act 1963 (Amendment) Bill: Second Reading Debate Mr. Andrew Dismore (Hendon) (Lab): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time. I suspect that I will not get the same consensus on this Bill, which, by happy coincidence, is back to back with my previous one—I think it will be a case of “won one, lost one” for me today. I accept that this Bill is a little more contentious than the Holocaust (Stolen Art) Restitution Bill, but it is nevertheless a relatively modest measure and aims to work in very limited circumstances. The Bill’s purpose is to change the British Museum Act 1963 so that the British Museum can transfer to another institution, for public exhibition, any object from its collections, in limited circumstances—where public access is guaranteed, where the object “would be more widely accessible to visitors...than in the British Museum”, where it “would be more appropriately displayed in the recipient institution than in the British Museum by reason of its historic links”, or because the object “came to form part of the collections of the Museum in circumstances which make its retention in the collections undesirable or inappropriate.” That is a general power, but I can think of only one set of objects to which it could realistically relate: the Parthenon sculptures. The time has surely come for the Parthenon sculptures to be reunited in the brand new museum that has been built on the Acropolis in Athens and is due to open next month. The issue is not who owns the sculptures, although they ended up in the British Museum through a very dubious history, but where they are best kept and displayed. In Athens, they would be reunited with the other half of the sculptures—those not taken by Lord Elgin over 200 years ago. Indeed, some of the marbles are literally cut in two, with half the body in London and half in Athens. They would be seen in their correct context, aligned with the Parthenon and in the right Mediterranean light. The argument for their return is popular with the British people, and Greece deserves its heritage back. The Parthenon sculptures—some people call them the Elgin marbles—are a matter of national identity to Greece. I have travelled in Greece over many years. If one asks anyone with any mental image of Athens or Greece to name the first thing that comes to mind, it will be the Parthenon. That is true for visitors, and even more so for Greeks worldwide. The Greek Government take a phlegmatic approach. They are not arguing about how the sculptures came to the British Museum, how they were obtained by Lord Elgin, or who should own them. The argument is simply about their location so far from their original home; Greece has waived all its other claims. The archaeological case is a strong one. The sculptures would be reunified in their original topographical, historical and cultural context. Contrary to popular understanding, not all the sculptures are in the British Museum. The frieze originally consisted of 111 panels, of which about 97 survive. Fifty-six are in the British Museum,40 are still in situ or in the Acropolis museum, one is in the Louvre, and there are fragments in Copenhagen, Vienna and elsewhere. Of the original metopes, 39 are in situ or in the Acropolis museum, and only 15 are in the British Museum. Some sculptures are broken, with heads and torsos split between Athens and London. In the case of the torso of Poseidon, the front—what one might call the Poseidon six-pack—is in Athens, while his rear, shoulders and back are in London; he is split straight down the middle. To view the sculpture, one would have to travel between Athens and London, as 98 per cent. of it is split between them. The Parthenon is the most important symbol of Greek cultural heritage, yet the sculptures are not properly displayed in the British Museum. They not only fail to appear to form a whole, which they do not, but are exhibited on the inside of a wall rather than on the outside. The new Acropolis museum intends to correct all this. The museum, now complete, is ready to re-house the marbles and will make sure that these unique objects are seen at their greatest advantage and close to their original position. The British Museum has always claimed that the sculptures were well cared for, but that is not the case. In the 1930s, they were cleaned, more or less with a Brillo pad and a wire brush, in the mistaken belief that they were originally brilliant white, and in doing so some of the residual ancient paint was taken off, as was the honey-coloured patina of ages. The Parthenon cannot come to London. Reunification would be voluntary, and it would not entail ceding legal titles of ownership and rights. The new museum on the Acropolis opens on 20 June. It is on the same alignment as the Parthenon, slightly below it on the foothills of the Acropolis. It contains a shell of the same dimensions to enable the marbles to be displayed on an outer wall, in their proper relationship, with windows out on to the Parthenon, lit by Mediterranean light reflected in through them. The Guardian recently published a review of the museum, which says: “Athens’s new museum is spectacular, even without its star exhibits...The new museum is undoubtedly going to be a huge tourist attraction. Its breathtaking design, with natural light flooding every corner, is a huge achievement in itself.” What a gesture it would be if our country were at long last able to do the decent thing and return the Parthenon sculptures to their rightful home. Athens has been transformed over the past few years; as a regular visitor, I am astounded by how it has changed. The archaeological sites have been pedestrianised, linking them all together, including the new museum, and the restoration of the Acropolis and the Parthenon itself has gone extremely well. Greece would not bring any other claims, but what is important is that the appalling block to a cultural exchange with Greece would end. We have seen objects and major collections lent to the UK from other places, but no major collections from Greece, and that is because of the dispute over the Parthenon sculptures. How wonderful it would be if, for example, we could see the Mycenaean treasures in the British museum, or some of the Macedonian objects from Philip the Great’s grave. How wonderful it would be if we could see some of the wonderful Minoan artefacts from Crete. We will never see any of those while the dispute continues. Greece has made it clear that it would not leave our art galleries empty, and the time has now come. The population believe that, all the opinion polls show it, and when we have tested it through early-day motions there has been a majority in the House as well. The Government say that, ultimately, it is a matter for the trustees of the British Museum. I cannot agree. The trustees’ refusal so far to deal with this issue is adversely affecting our relations with Greece and our reputation around the world. Greece made major concessions under the previous PASOK Government of George Papandreou, with Mr. Venizelos as Culture Minister, and those concessions have been carried forward by the current Greek Government. Their offer to provide a new home for the Parthenon sculptures on the Acropolis site is one that we should not and cannot refuse. Our Government should give the British Museum an extremely powerful steer to stop its dog-in-a-manger approach and allow the return of the marbles to Athens. My Bill would provide a mechanism to do that, and I hope that the House will accept that it is a moral, if not legal, obligation to return stolen goods back to where they belong 200 years later. Hugh Robertson (Faversham and Mid-Kent) (Con): I start, as I did on the previous Bill, by congratulating the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) on introducing the Bill. I congratulate him also on his success with the previous Bill. As he correctly surmised, I suspect that I shall not be able to be quite as helpful on this occasion. It might inform the debate if we considered for a moment the background details that affect the British Museum. It is one of the most visited attractions anywhere in the UK. Last year it had more than 6 million visits, which far exceeded the Department for Culture, Media and Sport target of 4.5 million. The year before there were a record 5 million visits. It is one of 22 museums and galleries that are sponsored by the Department and receive grant in aid. Of those, 14 are described as nationals because they were founded by Acts of Parliament. The British Museum received just over £41.5 million in revenue last year and just over £3 million in capital grant in aid from the Department. The Department has just confirmed the level of funding that it will provide the museum with for the next three years. As the Bill suggests, the British Museum was set up by Act of Parliament, back in 1753. It was the first national museum in the world. The collection that it houses spans 2 million years of human history and contains art and antiques from ancient and living cultures. Its aim is to hold, for the benefit and education of humanity, a collection representative of world cultures, and to ensure that the collection is housed in safety, conserved properly, curated, researched and exhibited. The relationship between the Department and the British Museum is underpinned by a crucial arm’s length principle whereby Ministers set the financial, administrative, legal and overall policy framework for public bodies, but those bodies have a considerable and proper measure of independence in individual decision making. When asked about the matter in Parliament, the right hon. Member for Barking the predecessor of the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Stevenage (Barbara Follett), stated: “It is a long-standing policy of successive Governments in the UK that decisions relating to museum collections are for museum trustees to take, and the Government do not intervene.”—[ Official Report, 5 February 2008; Vol. 471, c. 1040W.] That is a principle with which we would wish to concur. Under the British Museum Act 1963, which the Bill would amend, the trustees of the British Museum are the corporate body with the legal duty to hold the museum’s collection and make it available to a worldwide audience. The museum is, of course, governed by a board of 25 trustees who are non-executive and unpaid. On the disposal of artefacts from the British Museum, the trustees’ general powers are limited to the disposal of objects that are duplicates, that are unfit to be retained, that have become useless for the museum’s purposes and that are pre-1850 printed matter of which it holds photographic or other copies. Special new powers of disposal have been added to cater for special situations when those limitations have stood in the way of returning objects in response to acknowledged moral claims by former owners or their successors. One example of such a power, which the Human Tissue Act 2004 introduced, enables the trustees of the museum to de-accession human remains if it appears to them to be appropriate. The Chairman of the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford (Mr. Whittingdale), noted in the Committee’s report, “Caring for our Collections”: “It seems probable that there will at some time in the future be legislation to confer another special power, so that national museums will be permitted to return items which have been ‘spoilated’. Legislation has been recommended by the Spoliation Advisory Panel, which was set up to resolve claims from people, or their heirs, who lost property during the Nazi era”— as we discussed during the previous Bill’s debate— “which is now held in UK national collections. It advises both the claimants and the institution where the object is held, as to what action may be taken. The Panel provides an alternative to legal action, aiming to achieve a solution that is fair and just to everyone involved, taking into account the moral issues of every case”. However, the British Museum has a lending policy to allow its objects to be used in exhibitions elsewhere. Its trustees are able to make loans for the following reasons: first, to further knowledge, understanding and scholarship relating to the works in its care; secondly, to make the collections more widely accessible within the UK and throughout the world; thirdly, to increase national and international co-operation by the exchange of material and exhibitions; and, finally, to enhance the reputation of the British Museum and its good standing nationally and internationally. The trustees of the British Museum make loans under powers conferred by section 4 of the 1963 Act, which is up for amendment today. The Act states that the British Museum may lend for public exhibition (whether in the United Kingdom or elsewhere) any object comprised in the collections of the Museum: Provided that in deciding whether or not to lend any such object, and in determining the time for which, and the conditions subject to which, any such object is to be lent, the British Museum shall have regard to the interests of students and other persons visiting the Museum, to the physical condition and degree of rarity of the object in question, and to any risks to which it is likely to be exposed.” Those points cover the background to the matter. However, five particular issues are worthy of consideration. First, we are concerned that if the Bill is passed, it will breach the arm’s length principle ensuring that Ministers of any party are not able to interfere with the day-to-day running of our national museums and galleries. Secondly, we believe that the British Museum is unique among world museums, in that its collection is able to tell the whole history of human civilisation under one roof. It therefore seems wrong to remove the Parthenon sculptures and put at risk that vital collection and that history. Thirdly, it is important that the Parthenon sculptures stay at a museum where they are properly preserved and available to a world public for free, seven days a week. Indeed, by chance, I went to see them myself last Sunday. Fourthly, the British Museum trustees already have a power to loan the sculptures for a period in response to an appropriate request. I am not aware of any ongoing discussions along those lines with the trustees, but, indeed, that power already exists. Finally, a key part of encouraging people to visit museums is ensuring that our museums, particularly nationally, have high-quality exhibits. For all those reasons, I have grave reservations about the Bill. I know that the Minister wants a couple of minutes to give her winding-up speech, so I shall sit down, but before I do it would be wrong of me not to say that I am afraid that my party too has grave reservations about the Bill. 2.29 pm The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Barbara Follett): Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker— Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Michael Lord): Order.

10 Appendices: the statutory provisions Relevant extracts from: BRITISH MUSEUM ACT 1963

An Act to alter the composition of the Trustees of the British Museum, to provide for the separation from the British Museum of the British Museum (Natural History), to make new provision with respect to the regulation of the two Museums and their collections in place of that made by the British Museum Act 1753 and enactments amending or supplementing that Act, and for purposes connected with the matters aforesaid.

2 General powers of Trustees

The Trustees of the British Museum shall have power, subject to the restrictions imposed on them by virtue of any enactment (whether contained in this Act or not), to enter into contracts and other agreements, to acquire and hold and land and other property, and to do all other things that appear to them necessary or expedient for the purposes of their functions.

3 Keeping and inspection of collections

(1) Subject to the provisions of this Act, it shall be the duty of the Trustees of the British Museum to keep the objects comprised in the collections of the Museum within the authorised repositories of the Museum, except in so far as they may consider it expedient to remove them temporarily for any purpose connected with the administration of the Museum and the care of its collections.

(2) Where it appears to the Trustee that any such objects cannot conveniently be kept within the authorised repositories, they may store them at other premises in Great Britain if satisfied that they can be stored in those premises without detriment to the purposes of the Museum.

(3) It shall be the duty of the Trustees to secure, so far as appears to them to be practicable, that the objects comprised in the collections of the Museum (including objects stored under the preceding subsection) are, when required for inspection by members of the public, made available in one or other of the authorised repositories under such conditions as the Trustees think fit to impose for preserving the safety of the collections and ensuring the proper administration of the Museum.

(4) Objects vested in the Trustees as part of the collections of the Museum shall not be disposed of by them otherwise than under section 5 or 9 of this Act [or section 6 of the Museums and Galleries Act 1992].

4 Lending of objects

The Trustees of the British museum may lend for public exhibition (whether in the United Kingdom or elsewhere) any object comprised in the collections of the Museum:

Provided that in deciding whether or not to lend any such object, and in determining the time for which, and the conditions subject to which, any such objects is to be lent, the Trustees shall have regard to the interests of students and other persons visiting the Museum, to the physical condition and degree of rarity of the object in question, and to any risks to which it is likely to be exposed.

5 Disposal of objects

(1) The Trustees of the British Museum may sell, exchange, give away or otherwise dispose of any object vested in them and comprised in their collection if - (a) the object is duplicate of another object, or (b) the object appears to the Trustees to have been made not earlier than the year 1850, and substantially consists of printed matter of which a copy made by photography or a process akin to photography is held by the Trustees, or (c) in the opinion of the Trustees the object is unfit to be retained in the collections of the Museum and can be disposed of without detriment to the interests of students:

Provided that where an object has become vested in the Trustees by virtue of a gift or bequest the powers conferred by this subsection shall not be exercisable as respects that object in a manner inconsistent with any condition attached to the gift or bequest.

(2) The Trustees may destroy or otherwise dispose of any object vested in them and comprised in their collections if satisfied that it has become useless for the purposes of the Museum by reason of damage, physical deterioration, or infestation by destructive organisms.

(3) Money accruing to the Trustees by virtue of an exercise of the powers conferred by this section [or section 6 of the Museums and Galleries Act 1992] shall be laid out by them in the purchase of objects to be added to the collections of the Museum.

9 Transfers to other institutions

(1) Any movable property vested in the Trustees of either Museum may be transferred by them to the Trustee of the other Museum                          

BRITISH MUSEUM ACT 1963 (AMENDMENT) BILL

A B I L L

TO Amend the British Museum Act 1963 to permit the transfer of artefacts in the British Museum; to confer powers on the Secretary of State to require the transfer of artefacts in specified circumstances; and for connected urposes.

BE IT ENACTED by the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:—

1 Amendment of British Museum Act 1963

(1) In section 9 of the British Museum Act 1963 (c. 24) (transfers to other institutions) after subsection (1) insert—

“(2) The Trustees of the British Museum may transfer to another institution for public exhibition any object comprised in the collections of the Museum: Provided that in deciding whether or not to transfer any such object, the Trustees shall have regard to the probable conditions of public access to the object in the recipient institution, to the interests of students and other persons visiting the Museum, to the physical condition and degree of rarity of the object in question, and to any risks to which it is likely to be exposed.

(3) The Secretary of State may require the Trustees of the British Museum to transfer to another institution for public exhibition any object comprised in the collections of the Museum if, in the opinion of the Secretary of State, the object— (a) would be more widely accessible to visitors in the recipient institution than in the British Museum, (b) would be more appropriately displayed in the recipient institution than in the British Museum by reason of its historic links with the country or region in which that institution is situated, or (c) came to form part of the collections of the Museum in circumstances which make its retention in the collections undesirable or inappropriate.

 (4) Before exercising the power in subsection (3) the Secretary of State must— (a) consult the Trustees of the British Museum, and (b) have regard to the considerations set out in the proviso to subsection (2). (5) A transfer under subsection (2) or (3) shall be effected only with the consent and at the expense of the recipient institution.”

2 Short title and commencement (1) This Act may be cited as the British Museum Act 1963 (Amendment) Act 2010. (2) This Act comes into force at the end of the period of 2 months beginning with the day on which this Act is passed.

Relevant extracts from: MUSEUMS AND GALLERIES ACT 1992

6 Transfer of objects or related documents between institutions.

(1)Any body for the time being specified in Part I of Schedule 5 to this Act may, by way of sale, gift or exchange, transfer an object the property in which is vested in them and which is comprised in their collection, if the transfer is to any other body for the time being specified in either Part of that Schedule. (2)This section applies in relation to a document as it applies in relation to an object other than a document. (3)Where the property in an object has become vested in a body subject to a trust or condition, the power conferred by subsection (1) above shall be exercisable in a manner inconsistent with the trust or condition if the erson who first imposed the trust or condition has, or his personal representatives or (in Scotland) his executors have, consented to the exercise of the power in that manner. (4)Where a body in whom an object has become vested subject to a trust or condition transfers the object under this section to another body, the object shall be held by that other body subject to the same trust or ondition. (5)The powers conferred on a body by subsection (1) above are in addition to any other powers of transfer which the body may have. (6)The Secretary of State may by order amend Schedule 5 to this Act by adding any body in the United Kingdom to those for the time being specified in that Schedule. (7)The power to make an order under subsection (6) above shall be exercisable by statutory instrument subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.  (8)The power of the Secretary of State to make an order under subsection (6) may, for the purpose of this section’s application to transfers of objects by bodies in Scotland, be exercised separately.

Schedule 5 Part I Transferors and transferees The Board of Trustees of the Armouries The British Library Board The Trustees of the British Museum The Trustees of the Imperial War Museum The Board of Governors of the Museum of London The Board of Trustees of the National Gallery The Board of Trustees of the National Galleries of Scotland The Board of Trustees of the National Library of Scotland The Trustees of the National Maritime Museum The Board of Trustees of the National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside The Board of Trustees of the National Museums of Scotland The Board of Trustees of the National Portrait Gallery The Trustees of the Natural History Museum The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum The Board of Trustees of the Tate Gallery The Board of Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum The Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England

Part II Transferees only Court of Governors of the National Library of Wales The Council of the National Museum of Wales The Trustees of the Ulster Museum The Trustees of the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum The Board of Trustees of The National Museums and Galleries of Northern Ireland Historic Royal Palaces The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty

HOLOCAUST (RETURN OF CULTURAL OBJECTS)ACT 2009

An Act to confer power to return certain cultural objects on grounds relating to events occurring during the Nazi era.

BE IT ENACTED by the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:—

1 Bodies to which this Act applies This Act applies to the following bodies— The Board of Trustees of the Armouries, The British Library Board, The Trustees of the British Museum, The Trustees of the Imperial War Museum, The Board of Trustees for the National Galleries of Scotland, The Board of Trustees of the National Gallery, The Trustees of the National Library of Scotland, The Trustees of the National Maritime Museum, The Board of Trustees of the National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside, The Board of Trustees of the National Museums of Scotland, The Board of Trustees of the National Portrait Gallery, The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, The Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum, The Board of Trustees of the Tate Gallery, The Board of Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum, The Board of Trustees of the Wallace Collection.

2 Power to return victims’ property (1) A body to which this Act applies may transfer an object from its collections if the following conditions are met. (2) Condition 1 is that the Advisory Panel has recommended the transfer. (3) Condition 2 is that the Secretary of State has approved the Advisory Panel’s recommendation. (4) The Secretary of State may approve a recommendation for the transfer of an object from the collections of a Scottish body only with the consent of the Scottish Ministers. (5) “Scottish body” means— The Board of Trustees for the National Galleries of Scotland, The Trustees of the National Library of Scotland, The Board of Trustees of the National Museums of Scotland. (6) The power conferred by subsection (1) does not affect any trust or condition subject to which any object is held. (7) The power conferred by subsection (1) is an additional power.

3 “Advisory Panel” (1) For the purposes of this Act “Advisory Panel” means a panel for the time being designated by the Secretary of State for those purposes. (2) The Secretary of State may designate a panel for the purposes of this Act only if the panel’s functions consist of the consideration of claims which— (a) are made in respect of objects, and (b) relate to events occurring during the Nazi era. (3) “Nazi era” means the period— (a) beginning with 1 January 1933, and (b) ending with 31 December 1945.

4 Short title, extent, commencement and sunset (1) This Act may be cited as the Holocaust (Return of Cultural Objects) Act 2009. (2) This Act extends to— (a) England and Wales, and (b) Scotland. (3) The preceding sections of this Act come into force on such day as the Secretary of State may by order appoint. (4) An order may make different provision for different purposes. (5) Before appointing a day for the coming into force of the preceding sections of this Act so far as they relate to Scottish bodies the Secretary of State must consult the Scottish Ministers. (6) “Scottish body” has the meaning given by section 2(5).  (7) This Act expires at the end of the period of 10 years beginning with the day on which it is passed.                                            

29 November, 2021, The Critic

 Zachary Hardman states that Greek Prime Minister Mitsotakis, on the issue of the reunification surviving sculptures, the Parthenon Marbles, can only counter logic with more logic.

"When Elgin’s men hacked off the marbles, they left half a frieze behind. The body of the goddess Iris now resides in London. Her head is in Athens. This is the masterpiece of the ancient Greek sculptor Phidias. But the story his masterpiece once told is now unfinished; his protagonists mutilated. Imagine a Rembrandt or Delacroix painting cut in half and you will get some measure of the Greeks’ distress. Restored to its former glory, millions would flock to Athens to see it.

These two arguments make Athens’ claim an exception. And there are others. Who, for instance, in modern-day Iraq or Turkey could seriously lay claim to the treasures of Babylonian or Hittite civilisations. There are few treasures so emblematic of a people, and of an entire civilisation, as the Parthenon. The treasures of antiquity are the heirlooms of all humanity: no country has a God-given right to possess or hoard them. That’s true of the Elgin marbles, too. But they would just be better off in Greece."

To read the article in full, follow this link to The Critic.

 Diary page of The Spectator, 11 March 2023, George Osborne wrotes: 

The Elgin Marbles have always been controversial. Some, like that great Romantic poet Lord Byron, thought they should never have left Greece; but at the British Museum they have been admired by tens of millions of people and I believe they play a vital role in telling the complete story of our common humanity. We trustees are exploring with the Greeks whether there’s a way to solve this 200-year-old dispute so that the sculptures can be seen both in London and Athens, while treasures currently in Greece could be seen by new audiences here. We may succeed, or we may not, but it’s worth trying. I read this week that that other great romantic, Boris Johnson, is worried about it. Surely that can’t be the same Boris who once wrote a column saying that ‘the reasons for taking the Marbles were good. The reasons for handing them back are better still. The Elgin Marbles should leave this northern whisky-drinking guilt culture, and be displayed where they belong: in a country of bright sunlight and the landscape of Achilles, “the shadowy mountains and the echoing sea”’? There must be two Borises.

Read this in The Spectator, 11 March 2023, Diary, page 9.

We would add, that tens of millions of visitors can also see the surviving Parthenon Marbles in the superlative Acropolis Museum, in Athens. A purpose-built state of the art museum which opened on 20 June 2009. The top floor, glass walled Parthenon Gallery, displays the surviving sculptures not removed by Lord Elgin's men at the start of the 19th century when Greece had no voice, and offers direct views to the Parthenon, which still stands.

The Parthenon Gallery in the Acropolis Museum is the one place on earth where it is possible to have a single and aesthetic experience simultaneously of the Parthenon and its sculptures.

15 December 2021, artnet

Parthenon Galleries, Room 18 in the Briish Mueum remained closed for 13 months and were reopened this week, on Monday 13 December 2021 

Dan Hicks' Op-Ed article in artnet says it all. Wednesday 15 December 2021 was the 10th anniversary of Christopher Hitchens' death. For those of you that have supported our Committee for nearly four decades and those of you that have joined us recently, the book that Christopher Hitchens wrote, is one to also read. 

Dan Hicks article 'The U.K. Has Held Onto the Parthenon Marbles for Centuries—But the Tide Is Turning' in arnet suggests that change may come by 2030. As we circulated this article to our members, Alex M Benakis emailed a swift response: 'oh please can we do better than 2030! I will be 93! Don't know if I can hang on for that long.'

Dan starts his article by quoting Christopher Hitchens: "those who support the status quo at the British Museum have the great advantage of inertia on their side.” Dan Hicks adds:'Today, things could hardly be more different.' As more museums are considering returing artefacts to their countries of origin. The best example to date are the returns of the Benin Bronzes.

The third edition Christopher Hitchens book 'The Parthenon Marbles, The Case for Reunification' was launched at Chatham House in May 2008 by BCRPM with George Bizos and Christopher Hitchens travelling to London, a year before the opening of the new Acropolis Museum. It is available from Verso, you can follow the link here.

'Now that the Benin Bronzes are being returned by an ever-growing number of European and North American institutions, might we finally see the return of the Parthenon Marbles?' Asks Dan Hicks. He believes so and adds: 'today, the longstanding push-and-pull between Athens and London over the legal technicalities of what constitutes rightful ownership and what museum press-officers prefer to euphemistically call acquisition is being reframed.'

Dan also feels that 'matters came to a head this fall, on September 28, when a resolution about the return of the Marbles came before UNESCO’s Return and Restitution Intergovernmental Committee (ICPRCP). The British rhetoric that the British Museum “is a world museum” sounded tired coming after the elegant claim by professor Nikos Stampolidis, the newly-elected Director-General of the Acropolis Museum, that “the return of the Parthenon Marbles back to Greece is a universal demand.”

The newly elected Director-General of the Acropolis Museum, Professor Nikos Stampolidis in the Parthenon Gallery, Athens, Greece.

'The committee’s concluding decision stated that “the obligation to return the Parthenon Sculptures lies squarely” on the U.K. government and expressed “disappointment” with the U.K.’s position. The group called on the nation “to reconsider its stand and proceed to a bonafide dialog with Greece on the matter.”

This was swiftly followed by Kyriakos Mitsotakis London visit on 16 November 2021 and his eloquent request for reunification made on breakfast TV and at 10 Downing Street, plus the Science Museum. Janet Suzman, BCRPM's Chair wrote: 'Sometimes fairy tales come true: I never thought to see the stunning coverage given to the Parthenon Marbles by two leading right-wing newspapers, The Mail and The Telegraph.' To read her article follow the link here.

Just last week on 08 December 2021, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution (supported by 111 countries) introduced by Greece entitled: “Return or restitution of cultural property to the countries of origin”.

Dan Hicks concludes that 'predictions are always risky, and as an archaeologist I confess that the future is technically not my period of expertise. Nonetheless, in this new cultural, internationalist, and intellectual atmosphere, it’s hard to believe that the Parthenon Marbles won’t have been reunited in Athens by the end of the decade.' To read the full article on arnet, follow the link here.

Dan Hicks is Professor of Contemporary Archaeology at the University of Oxford. His latest book, The Brutish Museums: the Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution is now out in paperback. Twitter: @ProfDanHicks

Jack Blackburn, The Times: 'The [British] museum is said to be wary of highly accurate copies. Some fear it could make the argument about returning the sculptures unanswerable'.

It is ALREADY unanswerable! Do the decent thing, British Museum Trustees! And soon.

Professor Paul Cartledge, Vice-Chair of BCRPM

 We would love to have your views too, send us an email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Sir, If the British Museum has thousands of uncatalogued items in store, it should have no higher priority than to catalogue them. But I cannot be persuaded that this has any bearing on the Marbles from the Parthenon. These belong together in Athens, irrespective of the competence of the British Museum’s curation. It is normal archaeological practice to unite broken fragments, just as it is normal curatorial practice to catalogue all holdings.

Professor Andrew Wallace-Hadrill
Faculty of Classics, Cambridge

I’ve long argued (not too subtly, I grant you) that it’s the cold, dead hand of the British Establishment that is the main impediment to any resolution of the Parthenon Marbles issue. The British Museum Act of 1963 remains the great immoveable object and requires repealing or amending for any progress to happen. While the Tories are in power that seems vanishingly unlikely.

This became abundantly clear again this past week when a comment piece by Emily Sheffield appeared in the London Evening Standard, a ‘newspaper’ owned since 2009 by the Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev (Lord Lebedev after being ennobled by his chum Boris Johnson).

In 2017, Lebedev appointed Johnson’s Eton and Oxford buddy (and David Cameron’s former Chancellor of the Exchequer) George ‘Austerity’ Osborne as editor. Osborne only lasted a couple of years before leaving for more lucrative pastures (the list of his well-remunerated City positions is as long as the Parthenon frieze).

Who took his place in the editor’s chair? Why Emily Sheffield, of course — sister of Samantha Cameron, the wife of former Tory Prime Minister David Cameron, another Eton and Oxford-educated chum of Osborne and Johnson.

Sheffield didn’t last long as Standard editor. Unlike Osborne, who inexplicably was appointed chairman of the trustees of the British Museum, La Sheffield subsequently satisfied herself with penning the occasional think-piece for her old organ and joining the ghastly Piers Morgan on the Murdoch-owned TalkTV.

Given her family connections to the Eton and Oxbridge Tory clique (her parents are members of the land-owning British gratin), it was no surprise that she chose to hack out a few hundred banal and ill-considered words on why the Parthenon Marbles should stay in London. This in the very week that it became clear that Osborne’s much vaunted “deal” with the Greeks to return the Marbles to Athens was just another tranche of Bullingdon bullshit. He ought to have kept his powder dry until the traditionally entrenched “red lines” separating the two sides had been properly and amicably resolved.

But what really sticks in the craw is not Sheffield’s basic misunderstanding of the issues surrounding Elgin’s desecration of the temple, but utterances like this: “Our ownership has even put pressure on the Greeks to finally build their own beautiful museum.”

Clearly she never visited the old Acropolis Museum on the monument. Anyone who did will know that it was only a matter of time before a new home was built to accommodate the numerous treasures it held. “Our ownership” is a provocative phrase designed to sustain the erroneous idea that Britain has legal title to the sculptures. Ethics be damned, it seems (another entrenched Tory tendency).

Meanwhile, “the onus is on the Greeks to gain our trust if they are to be loaned.” Loaned? The temerity of the British Establishment takes the breath away. You cannot loan something to the person from whom you stole it.

If all her ignorant bloviating were not enough, Sheffield concludes with this: “I’m sorry, dear Greeks, but the Elgins remain here.”

“The Elgins?” What the hell are they? Perhaps Ms Sheffield has been smoking the cannabis that occasioned her expulsion from the élite Marlborough College public school?

“The Elgins”? I almost choked on my moussaka.

Tom Flynn
Partner at Flynn & Giovani Art Provenance Research

What can we say about the case for reunifying the Parthenon Marbles that has not been said a thousand times before? What more can we add to the numerous persuasive argumentsalready made for reuniting the dismembered components of Phidias's finest achievement? How many more times must we convene to reiterate the importance of restoring coherence to a work of art whose desecration at the hands of Lord Elgin damaged one of Greece's greatest gifts to the world?

The answer to these questions is that there will always be more to say about the case for reunifying the Marbles. There will always be new and ever more compelling arguments for reuniting them in Athens. And until that happens our generation and future generations will continue to convene and will go on reminding the British Museum of its moral duty to restore to these objects the dignity that Lord Elgin so rudely snubbed.The story the Marbles tell, is of a cultural moment that is a precious and irreplaceable part of our birthright as Europeans and the bedrock of our democratic ideals. That story loses much of its narrative charge while its components remain dispersed across different locations.

The Parthenon Marbles are more than just a work of art. They are more than a mechanism through which to increase the footfall of cultural tourism. They are more than a means by which to impose some meaning on the randomly accumulated collections of an encyclopaedic museum.

The reason the Parthenon Marbles transcend conventional museum categorisation is that they have the potential to demonstrate that in a time of global economic turmoil and geopolitical unrest cultural objects can unite us across national boundaries and remind us of our shared humanity. I say 'potential' because there is an irrefutable logic to the proposition that a united,coherent sequence of objects that speaks with such clarity of our shared background is more likely to foster unity among nations than a fragmented series of objects that continues to symbolise disunion and cultural rupture. For this process to begin, however, the dialogue between Greece and London must rise to a higher level based on mutual trust and generosity of spirit.

The Parthenon Marbles are unquestionably important within the cultural landscape, but they have become renowned for all the wrong reasons. While they should be celebrated for representing the zenith of the Periclean building programme of fifth-century Athens, instead they are more widely recognised as the most controversial and divisive objects in world culture. They should be peacemakers but we are not allowing them to take up that peacekeeping role. Thus they have become emblematic of the wider disputes between western museums and developing nations that have become known as the 'culture wars'. While the Marbles remain immured within the Stygian gloom of the Duveen Galleries where their true significance to European art and culture is so wilfully misinterpreted and misunderstood — our attempts to build harmony in the realm of cultural heritage will be impaired. The international museum community — but more specifically the British Museum — has the power to repair that rupture. The symbolic resonance of a unifying gesture of this kind could be profound and long-lasting.

Dr Tom Flynn

This extract is from a speech that Dr Tom Flynn made addressing a round table organised by the Swiss Committee for the Return of the Parthenon Marbles, held in the  European Parliament, Brussels, Belgium, on the 16th of October 2013.