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Culture Without Context
Issue 6,
Spring 2000
BBC
Crime Squad
Italian legislation
H.M. Government enquiries
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- Crime
Squad is a BBC1 television programme which goes out in an early evening peak viewing
slot. The "squad" consists of several experts drawn from the police, legal
professions and academia and each programme focuses on a particular aspect of British life
and attempts to expose criminal goings-on. On 21 February 2000 it was the turn of art and
antiques, and the programme included a piece on the antiquities trade.
Crime Squad that night showed the damage caused by Italian tomboroli
to
an Etruscan cemetery, together with an interview with a tomborolo who intimated
that London was the largest market for their looted material. Back in London there was an
interview with James Ede of IADAA and Colin Renfrew, Director of the McDonald Institute
for Archaeological Research. What wasn't revealed on the programme was that one month
earlier, on 20 January, a Crime Squad team had secretly filmed three central London
antiquities dealers, asking them about the provenance of pieces offered for sale. Secret
filming is a usual tactic of the programme, and indeed some were screened on the night of
21 February, but not the antiquities dealers. Why not? Clearly, in general, the BBC are
not averse to using such methods as on their evening news programme of 28 February hidden
cameras were in action filming the showroom of a Bangkok antiquities dealer.
It seems that the BBC Head of Current Affairs, Ms Helen Boaden, had ordered the
Crime
Squad films to be cut under threat of legal action from the dealers involved. This
seems to imply that there were observations or opinions expressed on film that they would
not like to see generally broadcast. We are used to dealers keeping secret details of
provenance. Now, it seems, they also want to keep secret the reasons they give to
customers for keeping secret the details of provenance. When approached, Ms Boaden
defended her decision by saying that the material was not incriminating and that there was
no evidence of disreputable activity.
There are two issues here. One is of immediate interest: what was said on camera? The
transcripts of the films should be released immediately into the public domain. Ms Boaden
might think the contents were not incriminating, but the Italian Carabinieri
might
take a different view, particularly as one dealer apparently admitted to selling
antiquities that had still been in Italy two years ago. The second issue, though, is of
more general concern. The BBC is a publicly funded broadcasting service, and should be
accountable to that public. If it is going to continue to use hidden cameras the public
have a right to know under what circumstances, and who decides what is screened. Is the
Head of Current Affairs to act as judge and jury? Surely not. Episodes such as this
undermine public confidence in the BBC - who knows what other secret films have been
dropped under pressure from powerful vested interests, and who now can trust the BBC?
Professor David Wilson, who took part in the programme, describes his own impressions
of the antiquities trade in his article Undercover in
antiquities.
- Italy's request for the United
States to impose import restrictions on a wide range of archaeological material has
brought into question the role played by Italy's antiquities laws in encouraging the
illicit trade. The argument has been developed, most recently for instance on the front
page of December 1999's Art Newspaper, that Italy's strict antiquities legislation
is partly responsible for the criminalization of the trade and the looting of
archaeological sites, and that the archaeology of Italy would be better served by a more
lenient legislation on the British model, which allows the private ownership and export of
antiquities but which also encourages finders to sell material to museums. This is a
complicated - some might say confused - argument, however, and none of its component parts
stand up to close scrutiny.
First is the claim that Italy's legislation encourages looting and the illicit trade.
Certainly, breaking Italian laws must constitute a criminal act, and thus the illegal
movement (smuggling) of antiquities out of Italy is a criminal activity. If the laws were
relaxed the trade would become legal, that much is clear, but would such a change in
Italy's laws ameliorate the looting? Experience in other countries, the United States for
instance, suggests not. The presumption that an increased availablity of licit antiquities
would diminish looting presupposes an inelastic demand, but in reality demand can easily
be stretched and the market is supply-led. If antiquities trading was decriminalized in
Italy the chances are that the market would explode.
It is, in any case, difficult to sustain the argument that Italy's export control is,
in practice, unusually draconian. The development of the European single market has caused
a dismantling of border controls so that export restrictions within Europe are difficult
to police, and antiquities can move around quite freely. This was rectified for cultural
material (including antiquities) when in 1993 a unified system of export control was put
in place around the European Union, so that antiquities from Italy for instance, exported
from another member state, require a licence to be issued in the country of export. In
effect, export control was shifted from Italy to the United Kingdom - a major exporter of
Italian antiquities. Yet unprovenanced Italian antiquities are exported willy-nilly from
the United Kingdom with no checks made on their origin or the legality of their first
acquisition. Thus rather than blame the looting on Italy's strict export control, it might
be more honest to blame it instead upon the British, and ask what is being done by Her
Majesty's Government to exert a level of control over looted Italian antiquities that its
EU partner has a right to expect.
The British side of the argument similarly fails to convince. In the United Kingdom any
major archaeological site of the kind being looted in Italy would be scheduled. That is to
say it would be protected by law and unauthorized excavation would constitute a criminal
offence - a situation not dissimilar to that which prevails in Italy. In the United
Kingdom there are currently over 13,000 Scheduled Ancient Monuments. Antiquities allowed
into private ownership in Britain are generally found out of context and, by and large,
would not excite a collector to the same degree as an Etruscan bronze or an Apulian vase.
As already suggested, it is certainly the case that British export regulations are more
lenient than Italy's, so that antiquities can, quite legally, be exported, but it does not
follow that British archaeology benefits. There has been no systematic study of
archaeological destruction in Britain, perhaps because it has not in the past been
perceived as a problem. Half an hour spent scanning internet auction sales suggests
otherwise. It is anybody's guess what the true scale of the looting is. Until reliable
data are available it is simply disingenuous to claim that the British system discourages
looting.
Thus there are no clear contrasts to be drawn between the British and Italian
legislations. When it comes to the protection of archaeological sites the British system
is little different to the Italian. Italian export legislation is not as effective as it
could be as it is undermined by the more laissez-faire British, and it is not
certain to what extent British rules deter looting - if at all. They certainly do nothing
to stop the looting in Italy. And the fundamental point remains that the Italian
archaeological heritage is far richer than the British, and so much more difficult to
conserve. So let us hear no more about Italy's antiquities laws and concentrate instead on
the real problem - the marketing of Italy's past in Switzerland, the United Kingdom and
the United States.
- In Britain, the Culture,
Media and Sport Committee on cultural property has been hearing evidence about the illicit
trade from representatives of museums, the trade, archaeological organizations and the
police. It is set to publish its report in July. Then on 12 April Mr Alan Howarth, the
Minister for Arts, announced that H.M. Government is to hold a separate enquiry into the
illicit trade, with the participation of expert advisers drawn from outside the interested
Government departments, and will look again at the UNESCO and Unidroit Conventions. The
Government also hopes to decide what action needs to be taken sometime during the autumn.
First posted September 2000; Page
design updated September 2006 |
