Editor: Thanasis Gavos
The majority of Britons are still in favor of the reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures in Athens, according to a new poll.
YouGov asked 7,717 adults in Britain on Tuesday to answer the question “where do you think the Parthenon Marbles belong”.
“In Greece” answered 59% of them, “in Britain” only 18% and 22% did not answer.
In all the individual categories of the respondents, ie by religion, gender, political beliefs, age and social class, the return to Greece is the prevailing view.
Indicatively, 49% of the Conservative Party voters answer “Greece” to the question compared to 28% who answer “Britain”. The corresponding percentages among the voters of the Labor Party are 73% against 11%.
At the same time, the Guardian newspaper reveals a reply letter from 2012 of the then mayor of London Boris Johnson to an official of the New Democracy in Ilia, in which the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom wrote that “in an ideal world it is certainly true that the Parthenon marbles they would never have moved away from the Acropolis “.
However, when asked by George Chinos to return the Sculptures from the British Museum in view of the touch of the Olympic Flame for the London Games, Mr. Johnson had responded negatively.
As he explained, in his view the departure of the sculptures from the British Museum after more than 250 years would be a “serious and incurable loss”.
Boris Johnson concluded: “As much as I understand the argument for rehabilitation in Athens, I feel that in the end I must defend the interests of London.”
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