The extent to which Boris Johnson has encouraged Greece to launch its campaign to retrieve the Parthenon marbles has been revealed in letters written by the future prime minister to the woman who will lead the initiative with unprecedented gusto.
In unequivocal prose describing his affiliation with “the cause”, Johnson, then president of the Oxford Union, implored the Greek minister of culture, Melina Mercouri, to put the case for the return of the antiquities to the public, saying that her involvement in the debate “will be an important step in your campaign’.
“If the proposal were successful, and I am sure it will be, it would send a clear message to the British government that their policy is unacceptable to cultured people,” he wrote on March 10, 1986, inviting the actor-turned- politician, to turn the union in June of that year.
“I think the majority of students will agree with me when I say that there is absolutely no reason why the Elgin Marbles, the most exquisitely important and beautiful treasures bequeathed to us by the ancient world, should not be immediately returned by the British Museum to their laws at home in Athens.”
Johnson always recognized the importance for Greece of wood carvings, considered the pinnacle of classical art. But in the coming years, his tune would change dramatically. As both Mayor of London and Prime Minister, he reiterated the long-standing position of successive British governments that the antiquities “were lawfully acquired by Lord Elgin under the relevant laws of the time”.
Discovered in an Oxford library by Yannis Andritsopoulos, the London correspondent for the Greek daily Ta Nea, the letters not only highlight Johnson’s U-turn but also his role in igniting a campaign that was in its infancy.
Sculptures from the fifth century BC were acquired by the British Museum in 1816, more than a decade after they were removed from the Acropolis in highly controversial circumstances by Lord Elgin, England’s ambassador to the High Gate, the central government of the Ottoman Empire .
Mercury first announced that Athens would formally request their repatriation at a world meeting of culture ministers convened by UNESCO for UN heritage in 1982. At the time, she was looking for like-minded people in Britain.
Last November, Johnson insisted the matter should be resolved by the trustees of the British Museum when his Greek counterpart Kyriakos Mitsotakis raised the issue for the first time in Downing Street.
Greek Culture Minister Melina Mercouri talks to Boris Johnson before addressing the Oxford Union in 1986. Picture: Reuters/Reuters photographer
The museum owns about half of the decorative artwork that once adorned the Parthenon. Mitsotakis, who has made the return of the treasures a top foreign policy priority, has often spoken of the artistic, cultural and aesthetic need to bring together “iconic monuments inextricably linked to a nation’s identity” so that they can be viewed in their entirety as a unified whole.
The Tory leader’s one-time zeal for the restitution of the marbles might have gone unnoticed were it not for the discovery of an article he wrote 36 years ago in Debate, once the official journal of the Oxford Union Society. The essay, also discovered in the archives of an Oxford library by Ta Nea, similarly called on the British government to return the artworks to Greece, “[then] a collapsed outpost of the Ottoman Empire’. Elgin, Johnson argued, had taken advantage of the “almost anarchy” of the nation’s vassal status to have the treasures “cut and hewed” from the temple.
In response to the discovery, Downing Street officials insisted the polemic was written by the then 21-year-old classics student in a fit of “momentary” exuberance.
But the letters offer further evidence that Johnson’s original position was far from transient. In a second letter to the Mercury, also delivered on Oxford Union note paper, he denounced the “sophistry and intransigence” of the British government.
In an effort to entice the famously voluptuous Greek woman to deliver the keynote address, Johnson also referred to her director husband Jules Dassin, who “very kindly took the time to see me,” and said she would be among the list of other notables speaking to the union. “Recent Oxford Union lecturers have included Richard Nixon, Geraldine Ferraro, Helmut Schmidt, David Lange and Caspar Weinberger, so we are used to international personalities,” he wrote.
Mercury eventually accepted Johnson’s invitation to speak at the Oxford Union, reportedly eliciting roars of approval as he exhorted the audience to understand the sculptures’ importance to the Greeks. “They are our pride. They are our victims. They are our noblest symbol of perfection… they are our aspirations and our name. They are the essence of Greekism,” she declared. The House voted by a large majority to return the relics to Athens.
“Mysteriously, however, the debate procedure seems to have disappeared,” Andritsopoulos said. “I have looked them up and down in the archives of various Oxford libraries, but without success. Who could benefit from their disappearance?’
In a third letter, written to the Greek embassy presser, Johnson spoke of the “big and magnificent” party planned at the Oxford Union on the eve of the debate. “To make things faster, we’re looking for cheap ouzo and retsina,” he wrote. “I was informed that it might be possible to get it through the embassy. Could you advise?”
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