Thread by @lootplunder

1/10 Today, Britain's House of Lords debated whether the British Museum should return 11 Tabots - sacred altar tablets - that were stolen from Ethiopia during Britain's military 'expedition' there in 1868. @BishopWorcester @SteveTheQuip @britishmuseum @alulapan

2/10 Basic background: Tabots are sacred to Ethiopian Orthodox Christians. The British Museum has promised it will never display or study them - they are locked in a room. Nevertheless, it has refused to return them. It says it is considering 'loaning' them to a church in the UK.

3/10 Five lords and bishops spoke in favour of returning the Tabots, citing justice and principle. It remined me of another parliamentary debate in 1871 when William Gladstone himself used similar language to decry the plunder. See the C19th debate here api.parliament.uk/historic-hansa…

4/10 Today's debate offered a rare chance to hear the government position, set out by Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Conservative) @DCMS @CommonsDCMS

5/10 Interestingly he did not make an outright defence of keeping the Tabots. He did not say that keeping them was a good thing. He talked around it, saying the British Museum's trustees were independent of the government, and the government supported the trustees.

6/10 He prevaricated and focused on abstractions. "The British Museum is looking at the complexity of this issue, talking sensitively to the Ethiopian church and others to decide the best way of caring for them and reflecting that complex past."

7/10 And he made a few digs, pointing out that some of the artefacts had earlier been plundered by Ethiopia's Emperor Tewodros II himself during raids on his rivals. (No-one is suggesting returning the Tabots to Tewodros.)

8/10 It's a strange argument - something along the lines of saying it's not stealing if you steal something that has already been stolen. And it is very close to what an army officer wrote in an article excusing the plunder in 1868.

9/10 Back in 1868, the officer wrote in Blackwood's Magazine: "The collection (of loot) was, at all events, a most discreditable one to its late owner, since it consisted partly of crosses, paintings and sacred vessels plundered ... by himself."

10/10 Today, Lord Parkinson said: "The items have a complicated provenance ... Some of the items in the collection were themselves stolen by Tewodros II to assemble the collection in the first place."

150 years on, the debate has barely budged. #Ethiopia #loot #plunder