Why should we give back the Elgin marbles?

Last October, at a European summit in Brussels, the cameras caught a discreet exchange between Tony Blair and the Greek Prime Minister, Costas Simitis. "Tony," said the Greek leader, coming straight to the point, "I would like to discuss with you about the marbles ... as you know we have elections next year in Greece. This could be useful."

Quite so. To listen to the organisers of the new campaign to return the Elgin marbles, "Marbles Reunited", launched in London yesterday, you would think that this was a high matter of honour and, what's more, something that the British public was clamouring to see effected.

Nonsense. It's about politics and precedent - always has been and always will be. The Greek government wants the marbles back because politicians have made them into a symbol of national pride and inheritance, the more so as they prepare for the Olympics to put Athens centre-stage this year.

The British Museum doesn't want to give them back because to do so would be to open the floodgates to every country that we'd ever looted to demand the return of their treasures. The BM (and, for that matter, the Louvre in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Berlin museums and the Hermitage in St. Petersburg) would be left with empty halls.

The British government doesn't really want to get involved because it's not a situation which it can get right. Give them back and you look as if you're betraying your own institutions. Don't give them back and you look as if you're still defending an imperial heritage.

It's a tribute, no doubt, to the importance of the 2,500-year-old marbles as works of art that they should have taken on such an iconic status. Most of what the 19th century believed in has long since crumbled before the onslaught of multicultural and post-modern assaults. But the devotion to ancient Greek art as the fountainhead of western culture has held fast, and these sculptures are unquestionably from the pinnacle of that extraordinary flowering of creativity.

That said, most of the arguments for and against their return are frankly specious. They were not an example of imperial pillaging. You could argue (and should) about the looting of the Benin bronzes from West Africa, but Lord Elgin took the ruined marbles from the Parthenon in 1811 as an act of preservation, not theft. And he did it through negotiation with the recognised Ottoman authorities of the time. Which is more than can be said for the pillaging of Egypt by Napoleon. And look what effect that seizure had - like the Elgin marbles - on the cultural history of Europe in the last two centuries.

Nor does the Greek argument that these works are part of an architectural whole and should be reconstituted as such carry much water. Because of the pollution the marbles would not be restored on site. The Parthenon is a ruin and will (and should) remain as such. The marbles, under the Greek government's plans, would be housed in a new museum below.

You can argue that the old obstacles to going to Greece to see the marbles no longer exist and that, in today's world, it is as easy for most people to fly to Greece as it is for them to see them in London. But then you could just as easily argue the reverse - it is as easy for the curious to visit London as Athens. As for the surveys purporting to show that the majority of Britons asked would be happy to see them returned: of course they do. Load a question to make a respondent feel good if he or she answers yes, and they will. It is only if you explain the cost that a fair answer can be evaluated.

In this case the cost is in the knock-on effect of all the other suits for return which would result. And the effect on an institution which has had the marbles as its biggest single attraction for 187 years.

But then one can't help feeling that some of the arguments for keeping them are mightily overblown too. Whatever may have been true in the past, there is no case for saying that the marbles are better conserved or displayed here than they would back in Athens. Indeed, given the damage caused by the "cleaning" in the last century, the BM would be wise keeping quiet on this score altogether.

Neil MacGregor, the museum's director, had made a strong case for recognising museums as almost organic accumulations of objects interacting with each other. The marbles in this vision are part of a whole in which they play a part precisely because they can be seen against other cultures and other works of art. It's an attractive view but not necessarily overwhelming. If museums are living institutions which change over time, then some of their contents can too. Given the way that museum directors are now openly discussing - as Nicholas Serota of the Tate is - selling works, and the cavalier manner in which institutions are overturning the wills and intentions of their donors, it is hard to take too seriously their cries about the sanctity of their collections.

In the final analysis the issue of the Elgin marbles remains a political one. There is no absolute reason why they should not be returned. But then there is no absolute reason why they should. So long as there is no obvious benefit in giving up the marbles - and the Greeks are not offering any for all the talk of "loans" and contra-loans - here they should stay.

a.hamilton@independent.co.uk