Sunday 20 June 2021, British Museum

Janet Suzman and members of BCRPM, with supporting friends stood outside the British Museum to celebrate the 12th anniversary of the Acropolis Museum and hand out flyers.

TELL THE STORY

It is time for this great world culture museum to COME CLEAN.

We at The British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles urge the British Museum to give visitors the full story of how the Parthenon marbles came to be in the Duveen Galleries - just as the Bristol Museum has now done with the fallen statue of Colston, the slave trader.

THIS SENTENCE APPEARS ON THE BRITISH MUSEUM’S WEBSITE:

‘Lord Elgin acted with the full knowledge and permission of the legal authorities of the day in both Athens and London. Lord Elgin’s activities were thoroughly investigated by a Parliamentary Select Committee in 1816 and found to be entirely legal’.

This is a factoid: a factoid is a false fact repeated often enough to take on a truth of its own. It is not worthy of such an august institution as The British Museum.

NO PROOF EXISTS of either the ‘full knowledge’ nor ‘the full permission’ being granted by the Ottoman Sultan giving Elgin permission to remove its sculptures.

Single-mindedly, selfishly (because he wanted these exquisite figures for his own pile in Scotland not for the nation) a Scottish lord appointed British Ambassador to the Ottoman Court chopped bits of sculpture off an edifice so perfect in its mathematical symmetry that it is a work of art in itself. All the carvings on the Parthenon were part of the fabric of the building itself.

You might say all of Western culture is predicated on this building. It is the logo of UNESCO. Every classical building in the ancient - and modern world - springs from its genius.

IT’S WHERE THE DEMOCRATIC IDEA WAS BORN

It is emphatically not with the expressed will of the independent Greek people that the Marbles reside in London. For over two hundred years they have ASKED FOR THEIR RETURN.

The Parthenon Marbles can no longer be kept hostage.

These marbles were wrenched from a building that belonged - not to 'the one true god', not a tyrant, nor a king - but to the people. And astonishingly, after more than two thousand years THAT BUILDING still stands atop the sacred rock of the Acropolis in the centre of Athens, in sight of millions of Athenians going about their business down below. It is embedded in their national identity.

The Greek government has never asked for any other piece of statuary in any other museum in the world to be returned to them.

The Culture Secretary’s latest refrain is to ‘retain and explain’ all colonial acquisitions, so while it insists on retaining the Marbles, the BM should have the honesty to explain their presence.

But it is NOT explaining the full story of these Marbles, and that is not worthy of such an august institution. Each case should be considered on its merits since each case is different. The Marbles case is unique.

Greece was under Ottoman occupation when Lord Elgin was appointed Ambassador to Athens.

There is vague wording in an Italian transcript of a 'firman' - an official permission - which only gives Elgin leave to take 'qualque pezzi di pietra' that had fallen to the ground – ‘qualque’ indicating 'some' or 'a few pieces of stone'.
He was permitted to 'mould and dig' around the base of the Parthenon only, or ‘copy and draw’ from a ladder on the figures up high.

Scholars know, and further research into the Ottoman archives in Istanbul has confirmed - and it is worth repeating this - that there exists no official permissions to take down friezes, pediments, nor metopes.

However we do know that Elgin heavily bribed various Ottoman functionaries who then turned a blind eye to his depredations. This is neither legal nor acceptable.

Elgin was a terrible imperialist, but the truly colonial-imperial act was that of the British Parliament in 1816 in recognizing Elgin's title to his loot by buying it from him. That Act of Parliament thereby claimed 'ownership'.

The BM is not a private company with a board of directors. Its Trustees are required solely to look after things entrusted to their care, not play at politics.

Does culture exist outside of politics? How can it?

Post World War II international Courts of Justice now exist where once they did not. Parliament should surely rethink its position.

Questions arise: does an occupying power have legitimacy to dispose of a vassal nation's heritage for the rest of history? Should Britain own a mass of foreign heritage till the crack of doom?

The BM's Director, Hartwig Fischer, has developed a defensive trope about separation being a 'creative act'. Well, he would, wouldn’t he? The Marbles are one of the BM's star attractions.

The Rodin show a few years ago re-enforced the marbles' supremacy in execution and their diminished meaning in isolation. Imagine one of Rodin’s great figures from the group called The Burghers of Calais standing separated from its fellows in a far country? That would hardly be a ‘creative act’.

The BM is a great encyclopaedic institution while being an Aladdin's Cave of conquest. Imperial Britain took objects from other countries because it could.
But there's a mood abroad which abhors colonialist attitudes and entitlement that it must wake up to

Polls taken in 2012 were 73% for the return of sculptures to Greece. That figure will have grown since then. Cultural appropriation is a hot subject for discussion.

The director of the Rijksmuseum recently said: "It's a disgrace that the Netherlands is only now attending to the return of colonial heritage…We should have done it earlier and there is no excuse". Macron in France is also thinking out of the colonialist box.

It is high time the BM showed us a heart within the beast. Make perfect models for heavens sakes! - but do the right thing.

In the name of fairness and morality' said Melina Mercouri in 1986 'please give them back. Such a gesture from Great Britain would ever honour your name'.

Hair-splitters say modern Greeks are not ancient Greeks. If language, landscape, philosophic and artistic tradition do not amount to national continuity, what on earth does?

There is nothing to stop the British from making a generous gesture, bar overturning an act of Parliament, and there is nothing to stop that except will.

WHAT REMAINS IS A MATTER OF SIMPLE JUSTICE. HISTORY HAS DONE ITS STUFF. THE FUTURE BECKONS.

For further information and a list of books you can read on the subject not stocked in the British Museum, please visit our further information section on this web site and head to books!

 The text printed on the flyer, is a joint effort of BCRPM and IOCARPM.