Boris Johnson was once such a fervent supporter of the Parthenon Marbles being returned to Athens that he wrote to the Greek culture minister to denounce the British government for not giving back the antiquities.

Greek daily newspaper Ta Nea brought to light today previously unseen and unpublished letters, written in 1986, when Johnson was an undergraduate at Oxford University and Oxford Union president.

In the notes, the future British Prime Minister argued passionately for the ancient sculptures’ “immediate” repatriation, accusing the British government of “sophistry and intransigence”.

Johnson, then 21, went as far as claiming that the British government’s policy on the Parthenon Marbles was “unacceptable to cultured people,” and lamented the “scandalous” way it was handling the issue.

He wrote two letters to the then Greek minister for culture, late actor Melina Mercouri, in which he sided unreservedly with the Greek government’s campaign for the relics to be reunited.

He also cited a letter which proves that Lord Elgin removed the sculptures from the Parthenon in the early 19th century without securing legal permission to do so, arguing that its revelation had made the British government’s position “even shakier.”

Despite his enthusiasm for the Marbles’ return as a student, Johnson has refused to countenance such a move during his time as Prime Minister, sticking to the same position as the British government he criticised so heavily in 1986. Last November, Johnson rebuffed a direct request by Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis for the Marbles to be repatriated.

In an exclusive interview with Ta Nea published in March 2021, the British premier claimed that the Parthenon Sculptures “were legally acquired by Lord Elgin under the appropriate laws of the time.”

This claim contradicts Johnson’s statement in 1986 that “the Turkish authorities denied ‘that the persons who had sold those marbles to [Elgin] had any right to dispose of them’.” Johnson accused Lord Elgin of “wholesale pillage” of the Parthenon, arguing that the Scottish peer exploited the “near anarchy” of the Ottoman Empire to remove the carvings.

The letters were found in an Oxford library. Their authenticity has been confirmed by an Oxford source and someone who served as a Greek state official at the time.

Their unearthing comes six months after Ta Nea found a forgotten article written by Johnson in April 1986, in which he urged the British government to return the artefacts to Greece, arguing that they had been unlawfully removed from the ancient temple in Athens.

British government sources tried to downplay the extent of Johnson’s U-turn, arguing that the 21-year-old classics student wrote the now-famous article in a momentary outburst of youthful enthusiasm, but he later changed his mind.

However, the revelation of two letters with similar content indicates that this was not a "momentary" event; the future head of the British government seemed to be devoted to the repatriation cause, knowing - and providing evidence to support it - that the sculptures were removed from the Parthenon without permission.

Athens has campaigned to have the 2,500-year-old artefacts returned from the British Museum since they were removed by Lord Elgin when he was Britain’s ambassador to the Sublime Porte. At the time, Greece was under Ottoman rule.

Johnson invited Mercouri, who became culture minister after an illustrious acting career, to speak in a debate at the Oxford Union on 12 June 1986, entitled: “[This house believes] that the Elgin Marbles Must be Returned to Athens.” He said it would be “a marvellous evening for the cause”. The chamber voted 167 to 85 in favour of the Marbles’ restitution.

In his first letter, dated March 10, 1986, the future Prime Minister and Conservative leader informed Mercouri that “it is my firm intention to hold a debate on an issue that is scandalously handled by the British government, and which I believe to be of great importance.”

He went on to say that “I think the majority of students agree with me when I say that there is absolutely no reason why the Elgin Marbles, superlatively the most important and beautiful treasures left to us by the ancient world, should not be returned immediately from the British Museum to their rightful home in Athens.”

He added that he believed Mercouri would win the vote, something that would send a clear message to Whitehall: “If the motion was successful, and I am sure that it would be, it would be a clear message to the British government that their policy is unacceptable to cultured people. I believe that it would be an important step in your campaign.”

On April 16, 1986, Johnson sent a second letter to the Greek culture minister, insisting that “the issue of the Elgin Marbles (…) has been handled with sophistry and intransigence by the British government”.

“Since the discovery of Elgin’s letter of 1811, the Government’s position has grown even shakier,” he stressed.

The said letter was written on July 31st, 1811, by Lord Elgin and addressed to the Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval. “My successors in the Embassy could not obtain permission for the removal of what I had not myself taken away. And on Mr Adair's being officially instructed to apply in my favour, he understood, ‘The Porte denied that the persons who had sold those marbles to me had any right to dispose of them’,” Elgin wrote.

Lord Elgin had previously received a letter from the former British Ambassador to Constantinople, Robert Adair, which suggested that Elgin had not acquired the marbles legitimately. A 2002 BBC News report noted that Adair’s letter “could help to resolve the row between Britain and Greece over the Elgin Marbles.”

Johnson ended his letter by reassuring Mercouri that the result of the debate “will be a foregone conclusion”. He added: “This will be a great event and a marvellous evening for the cause.”

“On March 21, 1986, under the instructions of Greek ambassador Stefanos Stathatos, I, along with embassy press officer Peter Thompson, and three members of the BCRPM, met with Johnson in Oxford to discuss the debate’s details. He was very receptive and sympathetic to our cause. He later fully adopted the points we sent him on the reunification of the sculptures," Dr Victoria Solomonidis, who was Cultural Counsellor at the Greek Embassy in London for 30 years, told Ta Nea.

“Years later, when he was mayor of London, I met him in his office accompanying ambassador Konstantinos Bikas. I reminded him of the 1986 debate and gave him a framed picture of him next to Mercouri. He smiled, and changed the subject,” added Solomonidis, member of the Melina Mercouri Foundation’s Board of Directors.

In search of ‘cheap ouzo and retsina’

On April 15, 1986, Johnson wrote to Peter Thompson, a press officer at the Greek embassy in London, asking for his help to find “cheap ouzo and retsina”, two of the most famous Greek alcoholic drinks.

“On the day before the debate we will be having a large and splendid party. To make the thing go with a swing, we are in search of cheap ouzo and retsina. I was informed that it might be feasible to obtain it through the Embassy. Could you possibly advise?” Johnson wrote.

The event, titled “The glory that was Greece”, took place on Wednesday 11 June. According to the Oxford Union’s term card, it was a toga party held in the union’s garden.

The term card read: “Come trip it nymphs and dryad maids withal. We bring lashings of the gift of Dionysus, ouzo, lamb souvlaki, and a cornucopia of Greek delicacies to the lyrical strains of a Greek band.”

Article written by Yannis Andritsopoulos for Ta Nea, published on Saturday, 02 July 2022 

Today, 18 October 2020, is an extra special day as it marks the 100th birthday of a visionary actress, activist, campaigner and Minister of Culture for Greece, Melina Mercouri. And although she passed away in 1994, the iconic Melina inspired the world, so much so that Greece's Ministry of Culture declared 2020 as the Melina Mercouri year. To this day we continue to reflect on her tireless campaign to reunite the Parthenon Marbles with special thanks and gratitude to Victoria Solomonidis.

Victoria Solomonidis pictured here in the Houses of Parliament with the late Eddie O'Hara

From 1995 until her retirement in 2015, Victoria Solomonidis was a Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Specialist Consultant on Cultural Affairs, with the rank of Minister Counsellor, serving at the Greek Embassy in London.  The issue of the Parthenon Sculptures was high on her agenda: she worked in close association with the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures from its inception in 1983 and actively promoted in the UK all aspects connected with the design, building and completion of the New Acropolis Museum. In 2015 she joined the Governing Body of the Melina Mercouri Foundation. 

Victoria agreed in 2016 at the request of our then Chair Eddie O'Hara, to present Melina Mrcouri and the campaign for the reunification of the surviving sculptures from the Parthenon, the 200 Commemorative Event held at Senate House.

The presentation had the audience glued to Victoria's words. The final slide was a short clip, a video, which we have added across all our social media platforms: facebook, twitter and Instagram. Do watch it here too. Melina's words are as pertinent today as they were then, the campaign will go on until the day that the sculptures currently in the British Museum are reunited with their surviving halves in the Acropolis Museum.  

Photo from the archives of Victoria Solomonidis. From left to right: Melina Mercouri (Minister of Culture for Greece), Eleni Cubitt (founder of BCRPM), Graham Binns (the then Chair of BCRPM) in the British Museum's Duveen Gallery June 1986

In 1986 Melina made her memorable speech at Oxford Union, when PM Boris Johnson was then President of the Oxford Union. Melina's speech concluded with these timeless words: “We say to the British government: you have kept those sculptures for almost two centuries. You have cared for them as well as you could, for which we thank you. But now in the name of fairness and morality, please give them back. I sincerely believe that such a gesture from Great Britain would ever honour your name.”

Melina Mercouri, the then Minister of Culture for Greece in conversation with Boris Johnson the then President of the Oxford Union, 1986.

Melina Mercouri sadly passed away in 1994 and did not have the chance to see the superlative Acropolis Museum. Nor marvel at the superb display of the peerless sculptures from the Parthenon in the Parthenon Gallery or the uninterrupted views to the Acropolis and the Parthenon.

Janet Suzman's obsevations on  the campaign in February 2019 included the article  published by Yannis Andristsopoulos in Greek on Saturday 09 February 2019, in Ta Nea, Greece's daily newspaper. It was also re-printed in Parikiaki, a Greek Cypriot London community paper. At the start of this article Janet mentions Melina's impact:

"Melina Mercouri came whirling into Britain many years ago like a mighty wind, to stir up the clouds of dead leaves that often litter the venerable institutions of this land. She demanded the return of the marbles. She is long gone, but the wind still blows, sometimes stronger, sometimes just a breeze to disturb the quiet. Those winds have started up again." To read  Janet Suzman's statement in its entirety, please follow the link here.

"Melina was an actress, I am an actress; that probably means we are basically open-minded. Acting requires you to be non-judgemental about a character and thus to depict its point of view, often very far from your own in real life, as truthfully as possible. I am no scholar, no academic. My position on the BCRPM Committee is one of a perfectly ordinary museum visitor and as such I can see so clearly that the marbles are in the wrong room. They need the sweet Attic sunlight shining on them and a blue sky beyond; they ask to be re-connected to their other half in the New Acropolis Museum where a space for them awaits. They need to be seen in sight of the Parthenon itself, which still astonishingly stands, in full view of that space, so that I, the visitor could turn my head and exclaim “Now I see - that’s where they came from!” No more gloomy light, no more orphaned statuary. They need to be re-joined to their other pedimental half which sits in this fine museum so that I, the visitor, can understand the whole silent conversation between them." Janet Suzman, 2020

With thanks also to Viola Nilsson from SverigeSRadio for her time to interview BCRPM and the Swedish Committee on Melina Mercouri, you can hear the programme 'Stil' dedicated to Melina by following the link here.

 Melina Mercouri – Greece's brightest star and greatest ambassador..... Actress and politician Melina Mercouri put Greece on a whole new map through her passionate commitment to both culture and politics. This year, 2020, she would have turned 100.

18 December 2021, TA NEA,  Yannis Andritsopoulos, London Correspondent for the Greek daily newspaper

Boris Johnson as student in 1986 wrote that the Parthenon Marbles were pillaged and should be returned to Greece. A position the British PM has recently rejected when Greece requests the reunification of these antiquities, and insisting they were 'legally acquired'.

Boris Johnson’s insistence as Prime Minister that the Parthenon Marbles were legally acquired by Lord Elgin and should remain in the British Museum is a complete reversal of the position he previously held, Greek daily newspaper Ta Nea can exclusively reveal.

In fact, as a university student, Johnson urged the British government to return the artefacts to Greece, arguing that they had been unlawfully removed from the ancient temple in Athens.

It is the first time evidence has emerged that the British Prime Minister advocated the reunification of the 2,500-year-old sculptures, a request he has repeatedly rejected publicly in recent years.

In an article written in April 1986 for the Oxford Union’s magazine, Johnson, then an undergraduate at Oxford University, accused Lord Elgin of ‘wholesale pillage’ of the Parthenon.

As British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Elgin removed the sculptures from the Parthenon in the early 19th century, when Greece was under Ottoman rule. He then sold them to the British government which passed them on to the British Museum in 1817.

Writing as president of the Oxford Union 35 years ago, Johnson claimed in his article that an Act of Parliament to hand the Marbles back “could be passed in an afternoon.”

The future Prime Minister went on to accuse the British government of ‘sophistry and intransigence’, saying that Whitehall’s claim that the ‘transaction had been conducted with the recognised legitimate authorities of the time’ is “invalid”.

“A letter from Elgin of 1811 reveals that the Turkish authorities denied ‘that the persons who had sold those marbles to him had any right to dispose of them’,” Johnson wrote.

He added that Elgin “secured from the Sultan a firman to remove 'qualche pezzi di pietra’ - a few pieces of stone - that happened to be lying about on the Acropolis. Elgin's interpretation of this phrase was liberal to say the least.”

This statement contradicts Johnson’s recent remarks regarding the legality of Elgin’s actions. In an exclusive interviewwith Ta Nea published in March, the British Prime Minister claimed that the Parthenon Marbles “were legally acquired by Lord Elgin under the appropriate laws of the time and have been legally owned by the British Museum’s Trustees since their acquisition.” He stressed that this view is “the UK Government’s firm longstanding position on the sculptures”.

“It seems that Boris Johnson was aware of concrete evidence that Lord Elgin’s actions were unlawful from as early as 1986. This begs the question: did he mislead the public when he recently claimed that the sculptures were legally acquired by Elgin?”, a Greek official told Ta Nea.

It is the first time since its publication in 1986 that this article has been made public.

The Daily Telegraph reported last month that Johnson “wrote an article for a student magazine arguing that (the Marbles) should stay here”. In actual fact, though, it is now clear that he argued the exact opposite.

Titled “Elgin goes to Athens – The President marbles at the Grandeur that was (in) Greece …,” the 978-word article was published in Debate, the official magazine of the Oxford Union Society (Vol. 1, No. 3, Trinity Term 1986, p. 22).

Ta Nea found the an unknown article in an Oxford library last week. It is not available online, nor is there any reference to it in the press or on the Internet. Two Oxford sources confirmed its authenticity.

Greece has repeatedly called for the return of the Parthenon Marbles, arguing that Lord Elgin had not secured permission to remove them from the ancient temple. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Culture Minister Lina Mendoni have said that the sculptures were 'stolen'. In his 1986 article, Mr Johnson appears to accept that view.

However, when he met with his Greek counterpart in Downing Street last month, the British leader rebuffed Mitsotakis’s request for the Marbles to be returned. He claimed that the issue was "one for the trustees of the British Museum".

This is inconsistent with the view he expressed in his 1986 article, in which he said that it is for the British Parliament to decide the Marbles’ fate.

“In 1816 (Elgin) sold them to the British government for £35,000. Therefore, it would require an Act of Parliament to hand them back. This, needless to say, seems to be a more or less insuperable brake on the process of return - yet it could be passed in an afternoon,” Johnson, who graduated from Balliol College with a BA in Classics, wrote.

The sculptures held in the British Museum make up about half of the 160-metre frieze which adorned the Parthenon, a 5th century BC architectural masterpiece. Most of the other surviving sculptures (around 50 metres) are in Athens.

Britain has repeatedly rejected Greece's request to hold talks on returning the Marbles. Earlier this year, a UNESCO committee said that Greece’s request for the return of the Parthenon Sculptures is “legitimate and rightful,” stressing that “the case has an intergovernmental character and, therefore, the obligation to return the Parthenon Sculptures lies squarely on the UK Government”. It also called on Britain “to reconsider its stand and proceed to a bona fide dialogue with Greece on the matter”.

In his magazine article, Johnson, then 21, called on the UK to return Phidias’s masterpieces to Greece so that they can be “displayed where they belong”.
“The reasons for taking the marbles were good. The reasons for handing them back are better still,” the future Prime Minister and Tory leader stressed.

“They will be housed in a new museum a few hundred yards from the Acropolis. They will be meticulously cared for. They will not, as they were in the British Museum in 1938, be severely damaged by manic washerwomen scrubbing them with copper brushes,” he wrote.

It had been claimed that as a student Johnson was "sympathetic" to the Greek request, but no evidence to support this had been presented until now. All his past public comments express the view that the Marbles should stay in the UK.

In 2014, he criticised George Clooney for suggesting Britain should return the Parthenon marbles to Greece. Johnson said at the time the actor needed his “marbles” restored, claiming Clooney was “advocating nothing less than the Hitlerian agenda for London's cultural treasures”.

In a 2012 letter shared with the Guardiannewspaper, Johnson, then mayor of London, wrote that “in an ideal world, it is of course true that the Parthenon marbles would never have been removed from the Acropolis,” but concluded that if the sculptures were removed from London, it would amount to “grievous and irremediable loss”. Therefore, he added, “I feel that on balance I must defend the interests of London.”

In March, the Prime Minister posed for Ta Nea in his parliamentary office next to a plaster cast bust of his “personal hero”, Pericles. The Athenian statesman is credited with ordering the design and construction of the Parthenon from which Elgin took the marbles.

As president of the Oxford Union, Johnson invited the then Greek Culture Minister Melina Mercouri to participate in a June 1986 debate titled: “[This House believes] that the Elgin Marbles must be returned to Athens.” She won the vote.
The Greek government says that the sculptures were illegally removed during the Ottoman occupation of Greece in the early 1800s.

It seems Greece has found an unlikely ally in its quest to reunite the Marbles in the form of the 21-year-old Johnson, who thought that “the Elgin Marbles should leave this northern whisky-drinking guilt-culture” and be displayed “where they belong: in a country of bright sunlight and the landscape of Achilles, 'the shadowy mountains and the echoing sea'.”

Boris Johnson’s article in full:

Elgin goes to Athens

The President marbles at the Grandeur that was (in) Greece …

On Thursday 12 June Melina Mercouri, the Greek Minister of Culture, is coming to the Oxford Union. Her subject, thanks to dynamic lobbying has a ring of familiarity all around the world: the return of the Elgin Marbles. Powerful forces will cause her to fly to Britain. They are on the one hand the passionate national feeling of the Greek people, and on the other the sophistry and intransigence of the British Government. And caught between these forces is, not a sack of old balls, but the supreme artistic treasure of the ancient world. The debate on 12 June will mark the climax of a renewed campaign by the Greek government to restore to Greece the sculptural embodiment of the spirit of the nation. The vote in Oxford - the centre of British Classical scholarship - will without question affect the decision in Whitehall. To put it crudely, your choice will count.

The background
In 450 BC Pericles, the ruler who steered Athens to her greatness, launched an ambitious programme of monumental public works. The Acropolis, the ancient citadel of Athens, was to become the glory and envy of the world. Puritan spirits objected, claiming that he was wrongfully using tribute from Athenian dependencies to ‘tart up the city like a whore'. But posterity has faulted their judgement. The craftsmen Phidias, Ictinus and Callicrates, with the personal encouragement of Pericles, created buildings and sculpture which are wholly emblematic of the pride and intellectual vigour of Athens. It is on the Panathenaic frieze, which ran along the wall behind the Parthenon's columns, that we see classical art at its most sublime. The technical control is minute, the features calm and passionless. The detachment and self-control of the figures are in harmony with the Periclean vision: of the city and citizens of the virgin goddess independent, self-reliant, and superior to the common calls of the flesh. The Panathenaic Frieze consisted of 111 panels. 97 survive. 56 of them are in the British Museum.

The Parthenon, the temple of Athena the Virgin, has suffered two major catastrophes in its history. The first was in 1678, when a cunning Turkish general, under siege from the Venetians, decided to use it as a munitions dump - like hiding a tank in a Red Cross tent. But the Venetian general Morosini reached for his gun, like Goering, at the mention of culture, shelled it, and blew up most of the central portion. The second major catastrophe was the wholesale pillage of the ancient shrine by Lord Elgin from 1801 to 1811.

Greece was at this time a tumbledown outpost of the Ottoman Empire. The national identity which Pericles glimpsed, and which has returned so conspicuously in the 20th century, had shimmered and vanished. Lord Elgin was Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, and had left behind him in England a young and skittish wife, with a pampered girl's insatiable desire for presents. It was in the Acropolis that he realised he had found a few things that might amuse here. Manipulating Turkish dependence in Britain for military support, he secured from the Sultan a firman to remove 'qualche pezzi di pietra’ - a few pieces of stone - that happened to be lying about on the Acropolis. Elgin's interpretation of this phrase was liberal to say the least. For ten years a team of labourers, under the direction of a rapacious Italian called Lusieri, sawed and hacked at the sculptures of Phidias. Huge ox-wagons daily lumbered down to the Piraeus laden with their pathetic cargo: Hermes’ Knee is still in Athens. The rest of him is in the British Museum.

It was the near-anarchy of the Ottoman Empire that allowed Elgin to get away with it. ‘Do you mind if I borrow these bits of stone for a while?’ was how he might have put it to the local sergeant, and the man would have shrugged and returned to his harem in the Erechtheum. And yet it was on precisely this point that the Whiteheall mandarins rejected, in 1983, the formal request of the Greek government for the return of the marbles: that ‘transaction had been conducted with the recognised legitimate authorities of the time.’ As it turns out, even this paltry defence is invalid: a letter from Elgin of 1811 reveals that the Turkish authorities denied ‘that the persons who had sold those marbles to him had any right to dispose of them.’

To be fair, Elgin did humanity a service by bagging the sculptures before they could be quarried for the construction of Turkish hovels. He lost a fortune on the enterprise, and his wife, who probably found them too cold and immodest, was not happy with them either. In 1816 he sold them to the British government for £35,000. Therefore it would require an Act of Parliament to hand them back. This, needless to say, seems to be a more or less insuperable brake on the process of return - yet it could be passed in an afternoon. The reasons for taking the marbles were good. The reasons for handing them back are better still.

The Elgin Marbles should leave this northern whisky-drinking guilt-culture, and be displayed where they belong: in a country of bright sunlight and the landscape of Achilles, 'the shadowy mountains and the echoing sea'. They will be housed in a new museum a few hundred yards from the Acropolis. They will be meticulously cared for. They will not, as they were in the British Museum in 1938, be severely damaged by manic washerwomen scrubbing them with copper brushes. Legend tells that the statues of the gods shrieked as they were torn from the Parthenon. It is now almost two centuries since Lord Elgin's deed, and the gods are not mocked.

Boris Johnson
Balliol

1986

 Guardian 18 December 2021

Helena Smith writes: 'The extent of Boris Johnson’s U-turn on the Parthenon marbles has been laid bare in a 1986 article unearthed in an Oxford library in which the then classics student argued passionately for their return to Athens.

Deploying language that would make campaigners proud, Johnson not only believed the fifth century BC antiquities should be displayed “where they belong”, but deplored how they had been “sawed and hacked” from the magisterial edifice they once adorned.

“The Elgin marbles should leave this northern whisky-drinking guilt-culture, and be displayed where they belong: in a country of bright sunshine and the landscape of Achilles, ‘the shadowy mountains and the echoing sea,’” he wrote in the article, republished by the Greek daily, Ta Nea, on Saturday.'

To read the article in full, follow the link here

Telegraph 18 December 2021

Steve Bird also took up the story: 'Thirty-five years ago, Johnson wrote how the UK’s claim to the artefacts relied on the “invalid” suggestion that Elgin had received the approval to remove them from “the legitimate authorities of the time”.

Johnson wrote: “As it turns out, even this paltry defence is invalid: a letter from Elgin of 1811 reveals that the Turkish authorities denied ‘that the persons who had sold those marbles to him had any right to dispose of them.’”

Greece has repeatedly insisted that because the Ottomans were an occupying force in Greece they had no right to sanction the removal of the frieze to anyone.

To read the Telgraph article, follow the link here(there is a paywall).