"How is it that major institutions do things that are against their own interests, immune from public scrutiny, and damaging to the nation generally?" Asks Robert Tombs. The professor emeritus of French history at the University of Cambridge goes on to answer: "An obvious answer is that “woke” or “radical progressive” shibboleths have become pervasive."
Campaigners for the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles including the 32 BCRPM members might wish to disagree. Plus, one does not get rid of an injustice by labelling it with a shibboleth.
"Public institutions should be different. Most people, I imagine, suppose that they have effective checks and balances, and legally or morally binding rules.
Or so we might think. Yet strange things are happening. Two of our greatest – the British Museum and the Church of England – have been behaving in ways that are indeed against their own interests, immune from public scrutiny, and damaging to the nation.
The British Museum, through its chair of trustees George Osborne, is seemingly trying to give away one of its greatest treasures, the Elgin Marbles. This plan temporarily ground to a halt only because the Greek government refused to go along with Osborne’s wheeze of making the handover theoretically a loan in order to get round British law. Instead, Athens demanded outright transfer of ownership.
It is now apparently being claimed that there is a “moral obligation” that overrides the law. I shall not discuss the pros and cons of a transfer. Suffice it to say that there might be an argument on cultural grounds for returning the marbles to the special museum in Athens, just as there is an argument for keeping them in London.
But such arguments are rarely explained or seriously discussed by those in power in Bloomsbury or Athens. Instead, dogmatic assertions are made as if they were self-evidently true. The Greek refrain is that Lord Elgin looted the marbles and therefore the British Museum is a receiver of stolen goods. Such accusations, and hence the idea of a “moral obligation”, have been demolished in a report by the historian Sir Noel Malcolm, published by Policy Exchange.
Every curator and trustee in the museum should have digested this pamphlet. Have they? Their plain duty is to protect both the museum and the national interest. They should not acquiesce in Osborne’s private diplomacy, never publicly justified.
What is its aim? To boost Greek tourist revenues and flatter national vanity at Britain’s expense. We owe no such duty to the Greek government. If the issue is a grave diplomatic embarrassment, parliament should have the courage to act openly and change the law. Athens could then offer to buy the marbles: £300 million as an opening bid?"
To read all of Robert Tombs' article in Yahoo! News, follow the link here.
We are certain that Professor Tombs has the best interest of all things British and the Parthenon Marbles at heart but would be keen to remind him and many more readers of Yahoo! News that there are hundreds of thousands of Greek artefacts in many museums, all around the world. In the British Museum there are no less than 108,184 Greek artefacts, of which only 6,493 are even on display.
When BCRPM's Chair, Janet Suzman met with the former President of the Hellenic Republic Prokopis Pavlopoulos in April 2019, he made it clear that Greece's request for the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles was the only request being made by Greece to the UK.
