A growing number of the British public believe that the sculptures held in the British Museum should be reunified with those in the Acropolis Museum in Athens. So why did Rishi Sunak seem so offended by Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s remarks?
The morning after Greece went into meltdown at the cancellation of a scheduled meeting between the Greek and the British prime ministers, a spokesperson for Rishi Sunak said the Greek government had “provided reassurances that they would not use the visit [of Kyriakos Mitsotakis] to relitigate long-settled matters relating to the ownership of the Parthenon sculptures”.
It was news to me that discussions over ownership of those sculptures were “long-settled”. Since when? The discussion is very much alive – and more hotly debated than ever. Not only do surveys continue to indicate that the British public believe that the sculptures held in the British Museum should be reunified with those in the Acropolis Museum in Athens, but the debate constantly grows over ownership of many other cultural artefacts and treasures that have been housed there from the days of empire.
But there is an even more significant factor with the Parthenon sculptures. And this is to do with what I will bluntly call daylight robbery.
I suspect that Sunak, like many British politicians, has not read enough around the detailed facts of what actually happened back in the 19th century when Elgin employed a team of people to hack and crowbar those beautiful treasures from the Parthenon in Athens. Most significantly, perhaps, he doesn’t know (and I am giving him the benefit of the doubt) that Elgin did not have permission from the Ottoman authorities to do this. He merely had a letter which stated he could take impressions of the sculptures in order to make copies. He was not supposed to steal the originals.
Another fact (not hearsay, but fact) is that Elgin took them with the intention of decorating his own mansion in Scotland. The only reason they found their way to the British Museum (where they were eventually scrubbed with wire wool to “clean them up” and were thereby damaged) was that Elgin was bankrupt by the time the sculptures reached the English shores, and he needed to flog them. So yes, money was paid for them by the British government, but they were purchasing stolen goods.
The British Museum does nothing to dispel the myth of Elgin’s supposed “saving” of the marbles from the Ottoman empire which might not respect their value and beauty. And they have the nerve to talk about a “loan” to Greece. It is patronising beyond words.
The British Museum still has the shadow of a scandal over it – no one has yet been arrested for the systematic thefts of items from its collections. It has not explained why they ignored all the information that was being passed to them about this, for over two years. They have still not appointed a new permanent director. I assume much is going on behind closed doors, but nothing that is being shared with us the public, odd given that this is an institution that receives plenty from the public purse. How well do they curate their artefacts (99 per cent of which live in a store that is invisible to us)?
So, if this meeting truly was cancelled because Sunak was offended in some way by Mr Mitsotakis’s comments on the sculptures during Laura Kuenssberg’s Sunday programme, then this was a very unstatesmanlike reaction to say the least. Surely one of the skills of a politician is to discuss, debate, argue, and share differences.
So if Sunak was afraid of doing this, I think it massively reduces his reputation. He is already doing badly in the polls, so this will not have helped. And if it was because Mitsotakis had already spoken to Keir Starmer, it’s a manifestation of his weakness (as well as inability to pick decent advisers). The decision was rude, disrespectful, and an enormous diplomatic error.
Greece is in meltdown because of this slight. Post-Brexit, Britain has already lost a fair number of friends in Europe. Why did Sunak decide to alienate one of the oldest and most treasured among them? I am truly baffled.
Victoria Hislop is a member of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles, and wrote this comment article for the Independent. Her latest novel, The Figurine, was inspired by the issue of archaeological theft.
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