Our museums have fallen into the hands of a careless generation

When the British Museum was founded in 1753, parliament drew upon the legal devise of a family trust to underpin it. The museum was to sit above the shifting sands of fashion. The trustees were to treat its collection like an ancestral family estate – albeit one belonging to the whole nation-and pass it on intact, preferably enhanced.

Its founding fathers displayed a wisdom lost upon its current custodians. As was revealed last week the museum is in talks with four foreign governments to part with its collections.

The published minutes of the board tell us less about their plans than parish council minutes would of changes to verge cutting. We do know, however, that it is negotiating the long term loan of its most celebrated objects, the Elgin Marbles.

“Long term loan” is a legal fiction constructed to circumvent the museum’s statutory duty to maintain its collection. There is surely no realistic prospect of the marbles returning from Greece should they ever be sent there. Parliament, like the nation, is being treated like a fool.

The call for restitution of artefacts is wider than one institution. Instead of conserving their collections, today’s curators appear intent on denuding them. To the liberal progressives running many museums, it is unfashionable and career limiting not to do so. Some of the works, like the Elgin Marbles, would not have survived had they remained in-situ. The UK is world class at displaying them, unlike many of those seeking return.

It is a slippery slope. One unpicking inevitably opens the floodgates, with a precedent now set. The origins of works of art are often complex and attempts to reverse their movement around the world by our ancestors are bound to be destructive. Every generation since ancient times traded cultural objects. Each took advantage of the circumstances of the time.

At the heart of today’s drive for restitution is the pervasive and corrosive post-colonial guilt wracking the progressive Left. We see it in the Church of England’s decision to devote funds to slavery reparations rather than crumbling parishes. As Nigel Biggar has exposed, many of the arguments that rest on the sins of empire are ahistorical. British motives in Benin, from where the Benin Bronzes were removed, included the emancipation of slaves and the ending of human sacrifice. 

Given the complicated passage of time, centuries-old injustices can rarely be fitted into simple moulds, nor easily rectified. The liberal elites seeking to do so are embarrassed by British history and eschew our own national community. They advance the interests of Greek citizens above their own. They view the nationalism of others as “progressive”.

What can be addressed are today’s injustices. Appalled by the destruction of Palmyra by Isis, I persuaded David Cameron, the then prime minister, to create a Cultural Protection Fund. Heroic Syrian and Iraqi archeologists were trained at the British Museum. We passed the Cultural Property Act to tackle the modern trade in stolen artefacts.

But if others are more focused on cultural vandalism at our own institutions, what is to be done? The Government should simply be clear to the trustees of the national collections that their self aggrandising negotiations must cease. If they don’t like it, as many trustees are publicly appointed, other trustees are available. It’s never too late for conservatives to reform our cultural institutions – as in other spheres, they simply need to act like conservatives.

The former director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor declined requests for restitution. He argued that the museum was not only a national collection, but a universal one, free for every visitor to see. He embraced cultural diplomacy, but with astonishing touring exhibitions which forged links between peoples rather than capitulation to foreign governments.

There’s an adage that family businesses only last three generations: “Rich father; Noble son; Poor grandson”. Those special trusts created by our forebears, like the British Museum, have fallen into the hands of a careless generation. We need to rescue them.

Foreign governments seeking restitution sense this and calculate that our institutions – indeed the UK itself – lacks the self confidence to fight back. We must prove them wrong.