Although Greece was at first encouraged by the invitation from Lord Parkinson, Britain’s Minister for the Arts, to meet and discuss the future of the Parthenon Marbles, subsequent events have shown this confidence was misplaced. 

Not only is the British government in no mood to compromise, but the British Museum has resorted to spinning disputed facts as a device for clinging on to its most valued cultural asset.

Lord Parkinson’s invitation to his Greek counterpart Lina Mendoni on 29 April can best be described as a cynical diplomatic device. It enables the United Kingdom to confirm it has met a UNESCO recommendation to convene talks about reaching a mutually acceptable solution, but it doesn’t commit the United Kingdom to returning the Marbles to Greece.

Since 1984, UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Committee for Promoting the Return of Cultural Property to its Countries of Origin (ICPRCP) has made numerous recommendations to the United Kingdom and Greece to resolve this long-running, increasingly heated dispute. But there’s plenty of evidence to show the British government is still not serious about repatriation.

The ICPRCP session held in September 2021 called upon the United Kingdom “to reconsider its stand and proceed to a bona fide dialogue with Greece on the matter [of the Parthenon Marbles]”. By inviting Mendoni to talks, which are due to be arranged “in due course”, Lord Parkinson can demonstrate that the United Kingdom has complied with this UNESCO recommendation.

However, the British government’s true position, nicknamed the “Bloomsbury Defence”, was laid bare at the latest ICPRCP session held in Paris last month (18-20 May). While Greece was reporting they have accepted Britain’s invitation to hold talks, the British delegation was dismissing the meeting's significance. Helen Whitehouse, deputy director of museums and cultural property at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) was spinning the familiar mantra: "It is not for the UK government to enter into discussions on the future of the Parthenon sculptures with the Greek government".

From Britain’s point of view, the official line confirms that nothing has changed - the Marbles are legally owned by the trustees of the British Museum. No new negotiating position has emerged to suggest Lord Parkinson, the British minister charged to sit down with Mendoni to discuss the fate of the Marbles, will do anything more than repeat the same message he gave to Parliament last February:

“Our prime minister emphasised the UK’s longstanding position that this is a matter for the trustees of the British Museum, who legally own the sculptures. The British Museum operates independently of the government, meaning that decisions relating to the care and management of its collections are a matter for its trustees.”

But this position deftly avoids realities.  Numerous delegates at the ICPRCP session pointed out that only the British government can introduce the legislation necessary to amend the Act that would enable repatriation.  Arms-length independence doesn't give the Museum’s trustees the right to exercise their powers beyond those within the existing the British Museum Act 1963. Significantly, this governing Act prevents trustees from disposing of objects in the Museum’s collection. There are only a few exceptions to this disposals policy, one of which relates to objects the trustees consider are "unfit to be retained". But it's very unlikely the trustees would ever consider the Marbles "unfit to be retained" - they remain one of the British Museum's greatest assets and tourist attractions.

It would be brave indeed for the trustees, fifteen of which are appointed by the Prime Minister, to vote to dispose of one of the British Museum’s major attractions. However, were they ever so minded to recommend the Marbles are returned to Greece, perhaps after reflecting on the superiority of the moral case over present legal constraints, they would still need Parliament to amend the existing Act. Equally, if Parliament made its own decision to amend the Act, the Museum’s trustees would be forced to comply.

In other words, irrespective of whatever view the trustees take, the role of Parliament remains at the core of whether the Marbles remain in London or return to Greece.

What are the chances of Parliament amending the existing Act? Right now, there are so many greater priorities on the government’s agenda it seems improbable. It also seems unlikely that a government so committed to leveraging the spirit of Britain’s imperial age in their quest to inspire a new era of global trade would voluntarily give up one of its greatest imperial trophies.

In the meantime, with the British Museum's trustees sidelined from talks between Lord Parkinson and Lina Mendoni, the Museum has thrown a new spanner into the debate. Deputy Director Jonathan Williams, attending the ICPRCP session in Paris, said the British Museum “firmly believes” that most of the sculptures in the Museum’s collection were recovered from the ancient rubble around the temple site and were not hacked off the temple’s walls. This claim was swiftly rejected by Greek authorities and flies in the face of authoritative studies on the history of the Marbles.

The original of the document that may have authorised agents of Lord Elgin to remove items from the Acropolis temple site has not survived, only a Turkish copy translated into Italian. As a result, neither Greece nor the United Kingdom can prove beyond all doubt the extent of 'official' permissions Lord Elgin may or may not have received from the ruling Ottoman authorities. But we do know that over a period of eight years, Elgin's workmen removed 274 feet of the marble frieze blocks from within the Parthenon's main inner chamber, 15 of the 92 metopes and 17 figures from the triangular pediments. Several authoritative studies provide evidence to refute the British Museum's claim these objects were found among the building's rubble.  For example, William St. Clair’s Lord Elgin &The Marbles (first published 1967), which draws heavily on original correspondence, provides clear evidence that Elgin instructed his workmen not only to copy and to dig, but also to take architectural elements from all the surviving ruins.

“I should wish to have examples in the actual object, of each thing, and architectural ornament – of each cornice, each frieze, each capital – of the decorated ceilings, of the fluted columns – specimens of the different architectural orders and of the variant forms of the orders – of metopes and the like, as much as possible.”

Letter from Lord Elgin to Giovanni Battista Lusieri, 8 August 1802

The British Museum's latest apologia for retaining the Marbles in London is disappointing coming from an institution of such enormous academic stature. Perhaps it’s a desperate tactic to compensate for a government which refuses to accept responsibility. Certainly it gives little confidence that any progress will be made when the two Ministers for Culture finally get to meet.

Photo: Horseman from the North Frieze, Parthenon (British Museum)