The Elgin Marbles Are To Stay In Britain
The Elgin Marbles will not be returned to Greece by the new Labour Government,
National Heritage Secretary Chris Smith has announced.
Speaking to the BBC he said "They are wonderfully displayed in the British Museum, they get millions of visitors every year....It would make no sense to split up the British Museum collection in that way."
"If you start embarking on questioning where particular works are located
around the world then you get into all sorts of difficult areas of discussion.
You are going to have swaps of works of art taking place throughout the world,
disrupting everything and it doesn't make sense.
"It is something that we had a look at over the course of the last five
years. We decided it was not a feasible or sensible option. We won't do it."
The Greek Government has long been pressing for the return of the marbles which were taken from the Parthenon in Athens by Lord Elgin in 1803.
They had hoped a Labour government would return the marbles after Neil
Kinnock, when he was party leader in 1985, pledged they would go back.
Mr Kinnock said that without the stone frieze, the Parthenon was "like a
smile missing a tooth".
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