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ROBIN AITKEN: Fashioned in Athens two
and a half thousand years ago the beautiful Elgin Marbles used to adorn
the Parthenon Temple. But two hundred years ago they were shipped to London
by an acquisitive aristocrat and the Greeks have long wanted them back.
The Elgin Marbles are among the world's great cultural treasures - dating
from the time when Greek civilisation was at its zenith. They came here
to London when British power and influence was approaching its apex and
their removal has been a source of hurt to many Greeks ever since. Greek
governments have frequently called for their return only to be rebuffed
by successive British governments. But now it seems the tide of opinion
within the Labour party may be moving in favour of repatriating the Marbles.
ANDREW DISMORE: I think Labour members of parliament,
if they were given a free vote on the issue of the Parthenon sculptures,
I think there will be an overwhelming majority for a return to their rightful
home in Athens. And I think if you ask the average British person in the
street, all the opinion polls have shown that there is an overwhelming
view to the same effect; that the sculptures should go back to Greece.
TIM LOUGHTON: I'm interested in the Elgin
Marbles for what they are and what they represent and that has very little
to do with politics but has everything to do with appreciation of classical
art, archaeology and architecture two and a half millennia ago - and that's
the real issue here. So if various Labour MPs are trying to use it to
drum up some political opportunistic arguments then I think those should
be discarded very, very quickly
AITKEN: The British Museum, proud
custodian of one of the world's great cultural collections upon which
its mission to educate depends views the prospect of losing the Marbles
with horror.
ROBERT ANDERSON: ` Well the Marbles are terribly
important to the British Museum because they are part of the British Museum;
they are part of, if you like, the British Museum culture which has developed
from the inception of the museum in the mid 18th century. They were acquired
in the early 19th century, they've been here for 200 years now and they
are very influential indeed in the development of British culture, indeed
European culture. The fact is we're in a building now which was designed,
if you like, as a Greek temple built in 1823 by Smirk, and that's no accident.
AITKEN: The strange story of how
the Marbles came to England starts here - Broomhall, in Fife, home of
the Earls of Elgin. Constantinople was then the capital of the Ottoman
Empire and in 1799 the Seventh Earl was appointed British ambassador there
and he gained permission to remove the marbles. The Seventh Earl was
fascinated by the heroic age of Greek civilisation and a great admirer
of classical architecture and it was at his own architect's suggestion
that he conceived the notion of cataloguing and taking plaster casts of
the sculptures in the Parthenon but he went one step further and removed
the originals because he believed they were in danger of being destroyed.
And some have labelled that a work of cultural vandalism. The Earl took
an artist with him who painted the scene at the Parthenon on their arrival.
They found a noble edifice in ruins, great sculptures broken and vandalised.
The current Lord Elgin says the sketch vindicates his ancestor's decision
to remove the marbles.
THE EARL of ELGIN: Now that was the sight that
fell to his eyes, and what do you do? At least he did something and what
you're telling me is that a lot of people still continue talking and that's
what worries me because these talkers never achieve anything; they never
could be considered to be preserving a thing. The amount of wind that
has been passed in the last 200 years about what should or should not have
been done has saved nothing.
AITKEN: Calls for the Marbles to
be returned to Greece began almost as soon as they arrived in London; the
poet Byron was one of the early champions of the cause, but the museum
resisted those claims and insisted it was an exemplary custodian of the
treasures. The museum's claims were embrarrassingly undermined by the
historian William St Clair who revealed details of a ham-fisted restoration
which was then hushed up.
WILLIAM ST CLAIRE: The Marbles in the British Museum
were very badly damaged in the late 1930s through having their surfaces
scraped with wire brushes and harsh abrasives and they lost a great deal
of their authenticity and their original surface and then the British Museum
had a secret policy and maintained secret files for 60 years to prevent
the public and parliament and scholars from knowing about this.
AITKEN: The reason for the botched
clean up job was to render the Marbles gleaming white - but it outraged
Greek experts. Even so the Museum still maintains that its marbles
have fared much better than the ones Elgin left behind.
ANDERSON: I have no doubt at all
that many of the sculptures from the Parthenon would not now exist if Elgin
had not acted in the way that he did. There's also of course the issue
about what happened after Elgin; There's been the recent phenomenon of
acid environments and marbles not only in Athens, but in all parts of the
world, are being eroded very fast.
AITKEN: Melina Mercouri - the actress
turned Culture Minister demonstrated the magnetic appeal the Marbles have
always exercised on Greek politicians when she dramatically called for
their return in the early 1980s. The present Greek Foreign Minister George
Papandreou himself also paid homage two years ago. For the Greeks the
return of the Marbles has never only been about dry rationality and scholarly
debate; it has attained a near religious significance.
VICTORIA SOLOMONIDES: For us they are a symbol of our nationhood
if you wish. When we talk about the Parthenon sculptures we talk about
returning to the monument works of art, sculptures which were created with
that monument in mind. They are not free-standing artefacts like the Venus
de Milo. They were created for that space and they are best seen in the
context of the monument in the context of that particular site.
AITKEN: That's the argument that
long ago persuaded the British left to back the Greek claim and they still
remain loyal to it.
MICHAEL FOOT: We should be doing our best
in my opinion to be assisting Greek democracy. We couldn't do anything,
any better service to those who fought to maintain real democracy in Greece
than to send back the Marbles. It would be a great triumph for the present
government and I hope we do it in response to Mr Papandreou. We should
have done it long ago.
AITKEN: The moment came when the
promises could have been redeemed in the aftermath of their great 1997
triumph were Labour going to give the Marbles back?
CHRIS SMITH: We are not. For two reasons:
One is they are an integral part of the British Museum collections, they
are wonderfully displayed in the British Museum, millions of visitors come
every year to see them, not just from Britain but from everywhere around
the world and it would make no sense at all to split up the British Museum's
collection in that way. But the second reason is that if you start embarking
on questioning where particular works of art are located around the world
then you get into all sorts of difficult areas of discussion and you're
going to have swaps of works of art taking place throughout the entire
world disrupting everything and it just doesn't make sense.
HUMPHRYS: The previous Labour Leader
said we should do it, so they were wrong?
SMITH: It's something we had a
look at over the course of the last five years. We decided it was not a
feasible or a sensible option and we won't do it.
AITKEN: But the case of the Glasgow
Sioux Indian ghost shirt shows that restoring important works to their
original cultures isn't entirely without precedent. Last year the Kelvingrove
museum in Glasgow handed back to tribal representatives the sacred Latoka
Sioux garment retrieved after the Battle of Wounded Knee in 1890. The museum
had been swayed by arguments that the garment had spiritual significance
for the tribe. But the British Museum believes it must resist similar
claims.
ANDERSON: Requests come from all
over the world for material to be repatriated. If a major change were to
take place and, unlikely though it is if they were to leave here, then
there's no doubt there'd be a torrent of requests from countries from all
over the world, the precedent would have been set and I think the possibility
of having great centres of learning, great centres of education indeed
great centres of enjoyment like the British Museum would be totally undermined.
AITKEN: And it is this issue that
Gerald Kauffman has decided his committee should investigate. Leading
from the front, he took members of the Culture select committee to the
Parthenon as part of its enquiry into the return of antiquities. The committee
is still deliberating. Others have made up their minds.
ANDREW DISMORE: I think it's part of their national
identity. They were given away during the Ottoman occupation of Greece
which went on for hundreds of years. The Greeks could do nothing about
it at the time; they wept when they saw the Marbles leave the Parthenon.
We've looked after them for them I suppose for 150 - 200 years now and
now it's time for them to go home where they belong.
LOUGHTON: It's actually patronising
and xenophobic of Greece or whichever country it is to suggest that it
is our history and we must have everything that goes with it, we must have
all the bits and pieces and antiquities that go with it in order for us
to display our history to its best.
AITKEN: As one of the great cultural
treasures of the Western World the Marbles are a huge draw for visitors.
Each year some five and a half million people visit the British Museum
to see them. That fact alone underscores their continuing importance to
the collection. and makes the stakes in this long running, cultural tug-of-war
even higher.
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