What’s your’s is mine, and what’s mine’s me’ own!
Property Law throughout the civilised world has been seen as fairly uniform. If you make something, pay for something, or inherit something, it’s usually accepted as belonging to you! No one can take it from you without buying it, and not suffer the penalties listed under the varying Laws regarding property. If you give it to someone, or bequeath it as part of your estate, the worst which may happen is that you may be required to pay either a ‘gift’ tax or ‘death duties’ if part of an estate.
When the worst excesses of the Nazis had been covered by the Nuremburg Tribunals, which resulted in the executions of some of the leaders of that truly evil movement, the eyes of the world turned elsewhere, and it was only much later that the full extent of the Continental plunder of art both public and private was realised by the West; and attempts made to restore these items, paintings, sculpture, objets’ d’art to their lawful owners, or in most cases their decendants, as the owners had perished in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and other Nazi death-camps.
The only Government which opposed the searchers in their efforts to restore private property was that of the Soviet Union, but it was always assumed that this was the ‘Reds’ being their normal obstinate, distrustful selves, and not much notice was therefore taken of their stubborn refusals.
Fast forward now to 2005, and the seizure on the Swiss border of an art shipment at the request of the trading company Noga on the grounds of a claimed Russian government debt. The shipment was released after intervention by the Swiss Government, but the Russians remained nervous. Fast forward once more, and we arrive early this year when negotiations were taking place for the British display of a huge exhibit from Russia’s Hermitage museum, as well as many other places within the former Soviet Union, but once again the ‘Reds’ commenced baulking as they knew that many of the exhibits destined for the exhibition were items pillaged from private collections after the butchery of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution.
So our political masters listened to the wilting flowers of the Department for Culture, and commenced a dialogue to check what impact Legislation would have if an anti-seizure Bill was piloted through both Houses at Westminster; and included in this ‘dialogue’ was the supremely cynical statement that if nothing was done “there would be damage to the UK’s status as a leading cultural venue!"
A timetable for Legislation was then prepared with a Second Reading in the Commons slated for 5th March 2008 after all procedure through the Lords. The country’s most useless M.P. David Lammy, recently promoted well above his level of incompetence even said “ The Bill has been introduced in the House of Lords and will be subject to the usual parliamentary scrutiny.” But someone smelt a rat, and heard that there were moves in the Commons to defy the whips, and push a rebel vote against the Bill through the Commons, so we now read that C ulture Secretary James Purnell had made the order to bring the legislation in on 31 December. So this supremely cynical and self-serving piece of Communist-friendly legislation wasn’t even heard within the House of Commons. We can now look forward to lots of art exhibits from the Soviets, full of exhibits which they were shit-scared to send out before for fear that they would be expropriated by their rightful owners or decendants of their owners, all for the greater glory of New Labour, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and all the other names within the collective thieves’ kitchen known as the Labour Government.
Mike Cunningham
8 Comments
View Printer Friendly Version
Reader Comments (8)
Mike: Interesting topic, but art has been appropriated over the course of history by many different nations. There are artworks in the British Museum which have meritorious claims upon them from other nations. The Met Museum here in New York has had issues as well.
Empires tend to steal. It is their purpose and why would art be exempt. But if the rightful owners can be found they should be able to reclaim their property and this kind of ex-empires club back scratching is unedifying to say the least.
Render unto Ceasar...
It's called free market capitalism "i.e. - if you can take it and hold it its yours" - people seem to think that there are 'fair' rules, and that its all a game like 'tennis' --- it's not, any rules (such as they are) always morph to suit the needs of the powerful!
The biggest swinging dick ALWAYS wins.
Quelle surprise, and get over it -- what do you want? a declaration of war on the ex-USSR-reborn!.
Onan
The free market is about trade not conquest. And in a free market you have to have property rights. It is that idea of freedom that says the thief is not entitled to keep what he stole.
I thought all legislation had to be passed by the Commons, or is this related to the "Abolition of Parliament" act they got passed earlier this year?
http://www.vaticanbankclaims.com/
This is a list of the objectives of communism within the US as stated in 1963. Communism as embodied by a monolithic dictatorship has collapsed but its products are now passing through western institutions. How many of these goals have been achieved?
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a39c45f45049e.htm