National Heritage Act 1983

Viscount Colville of Culross Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2022 Grand Committee

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a trustee of the Museum of the Home.

In 2019, Manchester Museum returned 43 sacred and ceremonial objects, including human remains and a ceremonial dress made from emu feathers, to their communities of origin, four aboriginal peoples in Australia. It is the first museum in Europe to have returned sacred remains. This has resulted in a cultural revitalisation between the museum and these indigenous communities of origin. They have a very different view of the significance of these objects. For them, they do not just have physical properties but spiritual ones. This new knowledge has allowed the museum to reinterpret its remaining objects, so that they reflect not just how western curators might see them but also the values given to them by their creators.

The resulting equitable relationship has produced great benefits, not just for British audiences but for indigenous peoples in Australia. The Noongar people of western Australia wanted to replant a forest of indigenous trees, in keeping with their deep spiritual connection with the land, but such was the extent of the deforestation there were no seedlings available in Australia. However, Manchester Museum’s botanical collection had continued to propagate these trees. Their seeds have now been returned to Australia, where they are creating a vital link between the indigenous people and their land. This must be a shining example of how repatriation of objects can be a huge win for all humanity.

Manchester is fortunate. It is a university museum which, as the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, says, lies outside the purview of the British Museum and National Heritage Acts, which, as other noble Lords have mentioned, tie the hands of national museum trustees and curators when deciding about disposal of objects. What is interesting from the Manchester example is that it has proved wrong the purveyors of the “slippery slope” argument. When the 43 objects were returned in 2019, there was a huge publicity campaign around the move. The museum was unafraid that other communities of origin would be encouraged to initiate mass claims on the thousands of objects of foreign origin in the museum’s collection. The director, Professor Esme Ward, told me she had not had one single claim for the return of objects.

Instead of tying the hands of our national museums behind their backs with these Acts, the Government need to support trustees and allow them to make their own decisions about the acquisition and disposal of objects. I echo the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, when I say that the trustees in most of these institutions are already publicly appointed and even vetted. Surely they should be the arbiters of these policies. The noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, during his much-admired term as Museums Minister was respected for visiting and listening to museum boards and their directors when they were wrestling with difficult decisions in the culture wars. I look forward to his successor, the noble Lord, Lord Kamall, being equally willing to support the sector as it recovers from the closures and lack of audiences of the Covid years and moves into a brave new world.

Any change in the Acts must be with a view to creating a new environment in which great museum objects can be seen as belonging to humanity. We can all learn from combined research and easy exchange of objects. I hope this mood will allow for the suggestions by Jonathan Williams, the deputy director of the BM, who in August said:

“What we are calling for is an active ‘Parthenon partnership’ with our friends and colleagues in Greece. I firmly believe there is space for a really dynamic and positive conversation within which new ways of working together can be found.”


Recent reports say that the British Prime Minister has refused to countenance such an agreement.

The British and Greek Governments both seem to support nationalist arguments that have created stalemate between our countries. I call on them to back off and allow our great institutions to work out for themselves how these extraordinary objects can be shared to the benefit of us all.

The Government keep telling us that they want to create a global Britain. The success of our creative industries has shown that this country is able to hit above its weight in the world. Now we must empower our museums to become Britain’s cultural embassies—centres of soft power for the modern, tolerant, cultured and informed society we want to project to the world.