Boris Johnson says ‘2021 is a significant year for Greece and a very exciting year for Britain to be invigorating our relationship with the Greek people’. If only. If only that good brain of his endowed with an impeccable classical education would dare to think outside the boring old box. Go on, Boris, reinvigorate the relationship with the one thing that would do it instantly: give back those Parthenon marbles. The old refrain that they were legally acquired is an invention, a factoid; say something often enough and people begin to believe it. Boris is a master of that sort of sell. There never was any proof of permission to export those figures, and the laws of the time have become inappropriate and dated. These sculptures represent the very heart and soul of Periclean Greece and so of the modern Greek state. The Ottomans are long gone. After 200 years the Marbles have done their job of enlightening and civilising the peoples of the West. The British Trustees do not own them they hold them in Trust, and to decide that the Greek people should in their celebratory year of 2021 have a chance to bathe in the aura of the originals would be a magnificent, and wholly decent gesture on their part. Those figures so brutally detached from the building still soaring above Athens, should be back where they belong, in sight of the Parthenon itself. A beautiful museum awaits them.
Janet Suzman, Chair of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles
Now is the time, now is the hour, Prime Minister Johnson, to show that you are a true philhellene. That you truly respect not only what the brave Greeks of 1821 and following accomplished, against huge odds, in the name of liberty, but also what the Hellenes of the 5th century BCE achieved in creating a culture and a civilisation that has been an example and model to the world in the 25 centuries since. Consider what Pheidias, master-craftsman and master-designer, and architects Ictinus and Callicrates, would think if they knew that their masterpiece, the Parthenon, had been torn apart and kept apart - not only by a gunpowder explosion in the heat of battle with Venetians long, long ago but by British hands and minds, from the 7th Lord Elgin to the current Trustees of the British Museum even today. Do your duty by the Greeks, would-be philhellene PM Johnson! Reunify.
Professor Paul Cartledge, Vice-Chair of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles (BCRPM) and the International Association (IARPS)
‘Our Prime Minister’s comments are very disappointing. He talks of friendship and cooperation with our European friends and claims that the Parthenon marbles were obtained legally. But the permit for their removal from Athens was granted by the occupying Ottoman forces and the Greeks themselves had no say in the matter.
I believe that works of art should not be returned to their country of origin save in the most exceptional of circumstances. In the case of the marbles their ownership is doubtful to say the least, the British Museum only has some of them and there is a rightful place for them at the Acropolis Museum where the surviving sculptures could be displayed in their entirety. If we are not prepared to return them permanently could we at least lend then to the Parthenon for the 2021 celebrations.’
Lord Alf Dubs, Labour Life peer
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