Tony Blair considered a “long-term loan” of the Parthenon marbles to Greece in the hope of support for a London 2012 Olympic Games bid, newly released documents reveal.
Twenty years before Rishi Sunak cancelled a meeting with the Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, over the ownership question of the sculptures, Greece was lobbying Blair, the then prime minister, for a long-term loan, bypassing the issue of ownership.
The return of the marbles, taken from the 2,500-year-old Parthenon – the greatest surviving monument of classical Greece – by the Scottish peer Lord Elgin, has been a longstanding demand of the Greeks.
The Greek “reunification” plan was to place them in a planned purpose-built Acropolis museum – “looking out over the sacred rock from which they came” – in time for the 2004 Athens Olympics, according to a proposal handed to Blair by the then Greek prime minister, Costas Simitis, during a meeting in October 2002.
The UK government’s position was it was a matter entirely for the trustees of the British Museum. And the then culture secretary, Tessa Jowell, had advised Blair that any loan would be on a “long-term-indeed permanent” basis.
But, with London considering bidding for the 2012 Olympics, and Greece having assumed the EU presidency in 2003 and about to host the Olympics, Blair’s culture policy adviser, Sarah Hunter, wrote to him in April 2003 that there were “good reasons to change tack”, and to privately and publicly “encourage” the British Museum to find an “accommodation”.
“The Greek case has become more sophisticated – arguing for a loan rather than restitution of ownership – and contrasts with the BM’s blinkered intransigence to consider any compromises,” she wrote in files released by the National Archives on Friday.
“The marbles could be a powerful bargaining chip in IOC [International Olympic Committee] vote building for a 2012 Olympic bid. The publicity attached to this move could secure the Greek nomination and help garner a wide range of other IOC votes, although we would have to guard against other nations asking for reciprocal acts.”
David Owen, a former foreign secretary and SDP leader, had suggested the Greek and UK governments come to a sharing arrangement, she wrote.
She continued: “It seems sensible: rational policymaking favours the Greeks. But this is not a choice that is within our powers to make: the BM trustees alone have the statutory power to make a loan and to start a government persuasion exercise in the BM’s 250th anniversary year will be met with resistance and much broadsheet angst.”
She asked whether to explore the issue. Blair’s handwritten reply in the margins reads: “Yes. Why not put David Owen in charge of negotiating this? It would give it profile, he has clout, and could probably help with the BM whilst distancing it a little from govt.”
Owen had previously written to the Cabinet Office, forwarded to Blair, stating he had been told “that the host country is consulted by the IOC extensively about the suitability of future applicants and it would not be difficult to get the Greeks to put their support behind a London bid for 2012 as a quid pro quo … ”
However, Andrew Adonis, the then head of the No 10 policy unit, cautioned in a handwritten Post-it note: “This needs v careful handling: let’s speak. I don’t think we should move at all until it is clear what we are doing about our bid.”
In the end, the museum was not completed until 2007 and Lord Owen is understood not to have been approached about negotiating any loan of the marbles to Greece.
