LABOUR'S ARTS
IT IS known that Mr Kinnock has already been seduced by the emotional rhetoric of the Greek minister of culture and apparently believes that the Parthenon Marbles should be sent back to Greece regardless of the British Museum's legal and honorable title to them. Further clues about the arts policy of a future Labour government emerged last week at the debate at the Oxford Union at which Mr Norman Buchan MP, shadow minister for the arts, supported the motion 'That the Elgin Marbles must be returned to Greece'. Apart from being anxious to oblige Melina Mercouri, who delivered yet another impassioned plea for the Marbles before the debate, Mr Buchan seemed greatly exercised by the iniquity of museum charges. He was presumably obli- vious to the fact that if the Marbles do go to a Greek museum, visitors will have to pay to see them, whereas the public has always been able to see the sculptures in the British Museum for nothing. It is the trustees of the Victoria & Albert Museum who offend him, and he announced that if they do not agree to abolish entrance charges, a future Labour government will abolish the trustees, just as it will abolish the trustees of the British Museum if they continue to oppose the Greek govern- ment's demand. But Mr Buchan was also anxious to deny that to send back the Elgin Marbles will create a disastrous precedent which will empty our museums of anything foreign, for only objects of 'cultural signifi- cance' will be repatriated. 'But who will decide what is culturally significant?' asked a bright undergraduate. Politicians, of course — who may not always be such objective• and sensitive connoisseurs as Mr Buchan and Miss Mercouri. We must therefore look forward to unprecedented state control of the arts and museums in Britain if a Labour government is returned at the next election.
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