0:16

Hello,

0:16

and welcome to another special panel

0:18

edition of the Bunker. Once a month, we step

0:20

back from the Daily Explainers and we get some

0:22

Bunker regulars together to discuss broader matters,

0:25

bigger themes, sometimes stranger

0:27

things. This time, sleaze,

0:30

political sleaze, corruption, backhanders

0:32

and sexual indiscretion are often what sinks

0:35

governments, and in Britain and America, we sometimes think

0:37

we've become desensitized to dirty dealings.

0:40

What makes sleaze real sleaze? And

0:42

how is it different around the world? Plus,

0:45

the British Museum has been rocked by a spate

0:47

of thefts going back to 2021.

0:49

Should we be taking this opportunity to take another

0:52

look at the ethics of museums? And

0:54

we'll have a few reading tips at the end of the show in

0:57

the Bunker reading group. So let's say hello

0:59

to the panel. Seth Tavo is a

1:01

regular on Oh God, What Now? on the Bunker and the

1:03

author of Behind Closed Doors, The Secret

1:05

Life of London Private Members Clubs. Welcome

1:07

Behind Closed Doors in the Bunker. Hello, hello.

1:09

How are you doing? You okay? Yes, alive and

1:11

well. Jolly good. Seth, I think I saw

1:14

a picture of you

1:14

photographed at the India Club,

1:17

the much loved restaurants in London that's closing

1:20

after more than 70 years. What's the story here? It

1:22

is you, isn't it? Oh, yeah, yeah, no, that's right.

1:24

I've been a regular there for about 20 years since I

1:26

was a student at King's next door. It

1:28

started out actually as a place for people who work

1:30

for the Indian High Commission shortly after independence

1:32

to go to and really a sort of centre for

1:34

the Indian community in Britain. Now

1:37

they've had their property developer who's really been

1:39

in a long term dispute with them. This is Marston

1:41

Properties. They originally applied to have the whole building

1:43

demolished.

1:44

That's been repeatedly refused. They're now having

1:47

it done up so that they're going to gut out

1:49

everything and turn it into a luxury hotel

1:51

because if there's one thing London doesn't have enough

1:53

of, it's luxury hotels. Well, we're absolutely stuck for them, aren't we? What's

1:55

going to happen to the India Club? Is that game over

1:58

for the India Club? They're being forced out.

1:59

out unless they can find a new home. Right.

2:02

Okay. It's taken grim. Answers on an email.

2:05

Kasia Thomas-Avitz produces countless bunker

2:08

podcasts, but not for long sadly,

2:10

because she's going to be leaving us to return

2:12

to academia. It is a tragedy for us. Hi,

2:14

Kasia. Hello. So,

2:16

the bank holiday weekend is coming up. You are an

2:19

historian. Yes.

2:20

Tell us how we got bank holidays.

2:22

There's a tale, isn't there? So you know that

2:25

I love bank holidays. I think

2:27

that there's just something really beautiful about

2:29

anything that disrupts the everyday rhythms

2:31

of like the nine to five life. We

2:34

could go back to pagan times. We could go back

2:36

to the early days of agriculture,

2:38

but I'm going to take us back to 1871 when Sir

2:42

John Lubbock introduced the Bank Holidays

2:45

Act. And this was mainly because other

2:47

industries are entitled to public holidays, but

2:49

banks,

2:50

because of the way that the economic banking system

2:52

worked at the time, weren't allowed holidays

2:55

in the same way. Who will think of the bankers? Well, exactly.

2:58

So the story is that Lubbock, who is a banker

3:00

turned politician, introduced

3:02

bank holidays. So maybe it's not all

3:05

hashtag bad bankers. Maybe

3:07

some of them. Yeah. I mean, since that

3:09

was the last good thing they did for us. Yeah, probably.

3:11

I suppose. I hate to bust in, but his great-great

3:14

grandson also called John Lubbock is a good mate

3:16

of mine. So John, if you're listening, thanks.

3:18

Oh, right.

3:19

Thanks. Yes. Hi, John. What

3:22

the family's done for us. Completing the panel. I'm a global

3:24

and author of Africa is Not a Country. Deepa Falloyan.

3:27

Hi, Deepa. How are you doing? Not

3:29

bad. Not bad. So Beyonce,

3:31

she's in the middle of her ongoing Renaissance tour

3:33

and she's getting stick because her so-called

3:36

world tour doesn't actually include any

3:38

African countries at all. Africa is, at

3:41

last I looked at part of the world. It is part of the world.

3:43

Last time I looked as well, last time I went, it was very much

3:45

there. This is such a pet peeve

3:48

of mine. It's one thing not to kind of turn up

3:50

at all. It's another thing to kind of pretend as if you

3:52

are traveling the world without actually

3:55

ignoring this giant land of 1.4 billion

3:57

people who are very much.

3:59

huge Beyonce fans and contributing

4:02

to sales around the world. Many people

4:04

from cross-continent are having to travel to

4:06

Europe and North America to go and see Beyonce

4:08

and it'll be a lot easier for them if they didn't have to spend

4:11

all that money. There must be acts that, the

4:13

sort of global acts that make a point of including

4:16

Africa and African countries on

4:18

their itinerary. I know that, bizarrely as it is, I know

4:20

that UB40 used to do lots

4:23

of African shows because while in Britain

4:25

they might be sort of considered a bit sort of slightly

4:27

kind of middle of the road, maybe kind of

4:29

decaffeinate

4:29

Iregge around the world, it's

4:32

like they're considered to be absolute dons.

4:34

Yeah, it's always really, really well respected

4:36

when it does happen. A lot of artists tend to

4:38

kind of stop over in South Africa and so

4:41

for a lot of other African countries they're kind

4:43

of saying that's not enough for us, it's quite a big place.

4:46

So just saying, I'm going to South Africa for a couple

4:48

dates doesn't quite help a lot

4:50

of other people from across the continent. Who should be

4:52

doing African countries that isn't? Who's got audiences

4:54

out there that they ought to be serving? I mean, you

4:56

can sort of go across all genres and you'll find

4:58

that there is an audience certainly across the

5:00

continent for artists. And I think that

5:03

is, at the moment there's a lot of kind of relationships

5:05

between Afrobeat artists and hip-hop artists,

5:07

especially in the US and a lot of

5:09

Afrobeat artists are currently traveling the world

5:11

and they'd love to see that reciprocated back on the continent.

5:18

If it ever gets passed through parliaments, the

5:21

online safety bill could see secure

5:23

communication platforms like WhatsApp and Signal

5:25

disappearing from the market. The government

5:27

seems to be signing the death warrants of the very platforms

5:29

they themselves use to conduct all their backstage

5:32

politics on. And with there's no secret

5:34

communication, then there's no scandal. We've had a huge

5:36

spread of the British politics lately, from

5:39

the epidemics of sexual scandal in the house to

5:41

Owen Pattinson's lobbying to Boris Johnson's

5:43

full deck of loans and rule-breaking.

5:46

Are we seeing a shift in the world of sleaze?

5:48

Is sleaze changing and becoming

5:51

a different kind of thing? Seth, you're a

5:53

historian of political scandals. We've

5:56

recently been plagued by them, but people

5:58

seem to care less and less as if we've been kind of...

5:59

beaten onto the ropes to

6:02

accept it. Has there ever been a time of

6:04

worse sleeves than we've got at the moment? Probably

6:06

not, or at least not that's of

6:08

so much interest and public scrutiny.

6:11

I think part of this is that I

6:13

was growing up in the 1990s and that was a boom time

6:16

of its own for scandal. A fantastic

6:18

time to find out about all manner of sexual practices

6:20

just by watching news, the mandatory MPs were

6:22

doing. But what underpinned

6:24

that a lot was there was a far more intrusive press

6:27

than we have today. And

6:29

that's

6:29

quite an interesting year because this was pre-leversen. There

6:32

was an awful lot of we have been covertly

6:34

filming inside an MP's home or hotel

6:36

room. And stuff that practically would be treated

6:38

as illegal now, it probably was illegal then, but they

6:41

got away with it. That

6:43

followed decades if not centuries of deference.

6:46

And so that was a sort of narrow window of greater

6:48

exposure. Now there is, I

6:51

would say, a more guarded press in some ways. And

6:54

so we're finding out things more

6:56

quickly,

6:57

but at the same time there are often

7:00

stories that we won't run with. Yeah. Is

7:02

there a particular British flavour

7:05

of scandal, one that we're prone to? Is it

7:07

evolving?

7:08

I mean there used to be a cliche that Tory

7:10

scandals were about sex and Labour scandals were

7:12

about money. I think there's a kernel of truth in that because

7:15

it's whatever you've been deprived of then once

7:17

you're in office you tend to go all out on. There's

7:21

certainly I think an element of repression just

7:23

in the British character and so as a result

7:25

in our scandals having that. And

7:27

a lot of this comes down to surviving

7:30

a scandal and whether you can

7:32

own it. If you look at people for

7:34

example like the Trumpians or indeed

7:36

the Johnsonians who just don't resign anymore,

7:38

no one

7:38

resigns anymore, they just sort of say

7:40

yeah I did that so what who cares. It's

7:43

very often the case that hypocrisy

7:45

will get you, the lie will get you. If

7:48

you deny something and then are then found to have lied

7:50

as opposed to just saying yeah fine that's

7:52

it. End of story.

7:54

Yeah I mean I seem to remember that

7:56

one chancellor resigned I think in the 1950s or 1960s for

7:59

accidentally. briefing a minor element

8:01

of the budget about half an hour before the

8:03

budget was due to be delivered. And that was considered

8:05

to be a resigning matter. Now that's like

8:08

Tuesday. Oh yeah, I mean, no,

8:11

that was in 1947 and the government

8:13

today doesn't just brief one or two

8:15

bits of the budget, it leaks the whole budget

8:18

days beforehand. I

8:20

think the pace of these things is certainly much bigger.

8:23

I mean, it used to be the matter that we talk about Profumo

8:25

and that rocking society in the 1960s, but

8:27

you might have gotten one scandal every two

8:29

years. Now it's more like two a

8:31

week, sometimes more. Yeah, if

8:34

it's possible to have a sort of, you know, a handful

8:36

of favourites, what are the kind of turning point ones for

8:38

Britain for you, your favourite ones? I

8:41

quite like the Lord Lambton case from

8:43

the early 70s, which no

8:45

one seems to ever remember, but it was a great one. You

8:48

had a vice ring that was being busted by

8:50

the police and there was a leak saying, you've

8:53

got to look into the Jellicoe connections. No

8:55

one knew what the Jellicoe convention was. Actually,

8:57

it was just that there was a brothel in a block of flats

9:00

called Jellicoe House. But that's not what the press

9:02

thought. They thought, oh, I know the

9:04

defence minister is called the Earl of Jellicoe. Let's

9:07

go and bring him up and ask him if he's

9:08

ever upset with a prostitute. And they did so.

9:11

And he says, yeah. I just break it. Yeah.

9:13

Oh, right. Thank you. Thank you very much. Well, let's go and

9:15

ask some other defence ministers. So he said,

9:18

yes. He said, yeah, fine. Yeah. And

9:21

let's try some of the other defence ministers. Well, one of them

9:23

was Lord Lambton. And, you know,

9:25

the suggestion was that they'd been taking drugs with prostitutes.

9:28

Have you ever slept with a prostitute? Yes. Have

9:30

you ever taken drugs before? And he gives this wonderful

9:32

meandering answer along the lines of, well,

9:35

you must understand that going on holiday

9:37

with a few

9:38

close friends to Marrakech for a month is

9:40

a very different enterprise to shooting up

9:42

on the strand. I

9:45

feel we're losing people of this caliber. I'll

9:47

put it to culture. Do you think that politics

9:50

attracts people with a kind of

9:51

sort of moral death wish they always want to get caught?

9:54

It's the it's the, you know, the clap uncommon moment. I

9:57

think it's very true that politics attracts

9:59

risk taking.

9:59

I mean, no one ever went into politics

10:02

to get rich. You might get people corrupted, but they

10:04

don't actually go into... You could make a lot

10:06

more money as a banker, for example. And

10:09

it attracts chances and risk takers. And

10:12

you find that in terms of risky sexual behaviours. You

10:14

find that in terms of risky investments.

10:16

I mean, these are people who don't take

10:19

risk in the way that normal people do. Yeah.

10:22

Deepa, I mean, you've covered politics across

10:24

the world. Does tolerance for

10:26

this kind of scandal vary from country to country? I mean,

10:28

there's a cliche that the French are

10:29

very relaxed about sex. Yeah. I

10:32

think the main differences come in sort of cultural scandals.

10:34

So sex, drugs, what your politician

10:36

was up to when they were 16 to 18. But

10:40

there is a lot of sort of uniform

10:42

acceptance that corruption is bad and stealing

10:44

public funds is bad. You have some countries,

10:48

Nigeria for one, who are so

10:50

used to politicians sort of dipping into public

10:52

funds that should a politician take, let's say,

10:54

sort of 5% and not 50%, then people

10:57

might say, it's not that bad. Maybe

11:01

we can have a little chat with him and he can calm down a little bit.

11:03

But generally speaking, I think kind of corruption and

11:06

the unwillingness to

11:08

sort of hide the sort of scandals that

11:10

you and your family might be a part of tend to be quite universal

11:13

and translatable. And sort of

11:15

Western political cultures tend to have a thing

11:17

about nepotism. And there is the kind

11:20

of, there's the cliche that

11:22

nepotism is more

11:25

across the Middle East, across Africa, across South

11:27

America, that this is more of an issue and

11:29

that sort of scandal doesn't attach itself.

11:33

Does that apply in your experience? Yeah, generally

11:35

speaking, I think interesting enough kind of in

11:38

sort of covering a lot of countries, I think countries that

11:40

have historically had monarchies

11:42

a lot more comfortable with the idea of nepotism. So

11:45

in this country, we're very

11:47

used to the idea that groups

11:49

are friends and their family members and where

11:51

you went to school that can have an impact

11:54

on your sort of

11:55

future prospects of ruling the country, other countries

11:57

that sort of aren't as comfortable with that idea.

11:59

very much put nepotism very

12:02

high on the on the

12:04

sort of scandal radar. We've seen

12:06

huge financial scandals particularly of a

12:08

medical equipment during the pandemic and

12:10

they're like notoriously hard to get to the bottom of the

12:13

Michelle Mona Fair. She recommended her own

12:15

family business to the taxpayer, got 200 million

12:17

pounds of government contracts, made a hundred million

12:19

pounds profit from the deal and yet may not

12:22

have broken the law. It seems highly likely that

12:24

she hasn't.

12:25

Do you think we might have to face the fact that lots of scandalous

12:28

behavior actually isn't illegal?

12:30

Yeah, absolutely. You know, fundamentally,

12:32

I guess the difference between a scandal and

12:34

criminality is that sort of scandals require the

12:36

public to do something about it. You know, if someone

12:38

commits a crime there are mechanisms already

12:40

in place to deal with that. Whereas when it's a scandal,

12:43

you need the public to be able to do something or

12:46

you need the politician in question to feel

12:48

some sense of shame. And that is

12:50

something that's very much going out of the norm amongst

12:52

a lot of politicians. So that's the thing that can

12:54

be incredibly frustrating. You need some kind

12:56

of will amongst you and your fellow citizens to

12:59

push back against what might not be criminal

13:02

action. But certainly you have to decide

13:04

whether that's acceptable or not. And that can be frustrating

13:07

amongst countries in which they feel that

13:09

there aren't enough of those mechanisms, whether

13:11

it's through recall elections, whatever it might

13:13

be. You know, here in the UK we're seeing laws

13:16

being passed that's making it harder to go out in protest,

13:18

for example. Those are the sort of things that

13:20

are able to punish scandals that

13:22

don't quite rise to criminal action.

13:25

Seth, you can't really mention the concept of scandal without

13:27

talking about Trump, but Trump has seemed so

13:30

absolutely impervious to any kind of

13:32

reigning in and certainly to any personal shaming.

13:35

Is the notion of scandal itself kind of effectively

13:38

dead in the United States now that you can always

13:40

just point to Trump and go, well, look, I'm not sure,

13:42

because although he's doing

13:44

still quite well for the Republican nomination, his

13:47

poll ratings across the whole population are pretty

13:49

much tanking right now. What's been

13:51

so important to Trump sustaining himself up till now

13:53

has been the element of

13:55

populism of saying to his supporters, I

13:58

get away with stuff that you can't do so. And

14:00

you can live vicariously through me as a

14:02

former reality TV star, and I'm

14:04

doing this for you guys. And so there's been this

14:06

element of people who condemn certain kinds

14:08

of behavior, but they say, yes, great that Trump does

14:11

it. He's one of us.

14:13

Yeah, and yet you seldom see

14:15

anybody...

14:17

I mean, we haven't had a classic, you know, homophobic

14:19

Republican senator caught out with a young advisor, young

14:22

male advisor, in a long time. It used to be a staple

14:24

in the 1980s. But we've yet to see

14:26

somebody pop up and go, how can you

14:28

say this of me when you let Trump get

14:30

away with so much? You know, George Santos,

14:32

for instance, is a man mired

14:35

in scandal and has not played the literal

14:38

Trump card and said, look what you're letting the other guy get away with. No,

14:40

in fact, quite far from it. One of the things that

14:42

Santos has embraced has been his homosexuality

14:45

and saying, I'm not a conventional Republican.

14:47

You can't put me in a box. Yes, I do have very right

14:49

wing views. I think part of it in the

14:51

case of US Congressmen, and I'm thinking of one

14:54

particular United States senator who sure remain

14:56

nameless. But I think rent boys are more discreet

14:58

in Washington, D.C. these days. But

15:02

the point I do want to make is that

15:05

the Republican Party has embraced libertarianism

15:08

to a very great extent. And this is

15:10

a way for them to say, we

15:12

don't moralise anymore, actually. We

15:14

are fine with this. And what's

15:17

so uneasy is that they do that whilst also

15:19

saying, by the way, the religious right has nowhere else to go. So you

15:22

should still keep supporting us. Yeah. I

15:24

mean, it makes you wonder whether the needle of tolerance towards

15:26

sexual scandal in particular kind of only moves in

15:29

one direction. You know, to tolerate more of it,

15:31

you can't dial back. You can't turn

15:33

around and say, well, this is fine during the last presidential term. But

15:36

we've decided that now for the next guy,

15:38

we must observe a much stricter framework. There

15:41

was a really interesting study done in the 70s by an academic

15:44

called Lord Humphreys, who

15:46

looked at cottaging behaviour in

15:48

the US in the 1970s. And he came

15:50

up with this idea of what he called the righteous breastplate. He

15:53

said that the people who often were most

15:55

vocal in their moral outrage,

15:58

Christian values and outrage...

15:59

particularly at homosexuality, were very often

16:02

those who actually most indulged themselves. And

16:04

he came up with a statistic, he

16:06

said 38% of people who were within

16:09

this sort of religious outrage movement

16:11

were on average themselves engaged

16:13

in this. Very often they had an element of dissociative

16:16

behavior where they said, well, I see

16:18

myself as engaging in homosexual acts, but I'm not

16:20

a homosexual myself. And I think that's immoral,

16:22

of course.

16:23

Yeah, it's astonishing, isn't it? It's like, and it maybe goes back

16:25

to what we said earlier about the, you

16:27

know, risky behavior and the kind of need to sort

16:29

of step as close to the wire as you

16:32

possibly can.

16:33

So over here, we've seen Boris

16:36

Johnson

16:37

seemingly get away with almost everything. Oh,

16:39

of course, he's no longer Prime Minister, no longer

16:41

an MP. So has he really got away with it? But

16:44

do you think he might have killed the notion of

16:46

scandal in Britain? Because

16:49

what not just this party, but also the press

16:51

were willing to give him a pass on? I

16:54

break down the many, many scandals of Boris

16:56

Johnson, because quite a few of the

16:59

earlier scandals tended to be things involving

17:01

his private life, where fundamentally it was a

17:04

matter for him and the two or three other people who

17:06

were directly involved. And I think we did get quite

17:08

used to saying, okay, well, it's not really a

17:10

resigning matter, as far as we're concerned. Although, of course,

17:12

he was forced to quit from the Tory from Benj on

17:15

one occasion. Where it gets

17:17

trickier is just the endemic lying

17:19

over really quite important things like a

17:21

global pandemic and like the constant

17:25

acceptance of freebie gifts and

17:27

the notion that you

17:29

can be in hock to rich party

17:32

donors and not care at all

17:34

about the rules on reporting these things. We

17:37

have an entire ethics structure has been put in

17:39

place over the last 30 years, that's

17:41

basically gone out the window and the Johnson and

17:43

that's much more serious.

17:59

and that that stuff would definitely be safe

18:02

there. Now you can pick up a piece

18:04

of Roman Onyx jewelry worth 50,000 pounds

18:06

from the British Museum's collections for 51

18:08

quid on eBay, and you might even get positive feedback.

18:11

Some 1,500 items of gold jewelry, semi-precious

18:14

stones and glass, dating from the 15th

18:16

to the 19th century have gone missing from

18:18

the museum and a curator has been fired, although

18:20

there have been no charges and has to be considered as

18:22

innocent. The incident has put

18:25

the argument about repatriating artifacts

18:27

back in focus. Greek culture minister,

18:29

Lena Mendoni, has renewed calls

18:31

for the Parthenon marble to be returned to Athens,

18:34

citing security concerns. Meanwhile,

18:37

the Horniman Museum in London has already

18:39

returned to the first of its Benin bronzes,

18:41

and Glasgow's Kelvin Grove Gallery, which

18:44

has 19 Benin bronzes, says it will return

18:46

them to their legitimate owners. Are

18:48

we rethinking museums in the right

18:50

way? Are we rethinking them fast enough? And

18:52

are we taking advantage of what technology could

18:55

do to make sure that cultural artifacts are displayed

18:57

where they ought to be? Kasia, you're

18:59

sadly

18:59

going to be leaving us on the production side here at Podmasters

19:02

to be a lecturer in museum cultures at Birkbeck.

19:05

Am I going to discover limited edition Podmasters

19:07

merch in your local Carpoot sale?

19:08

There's a reason why I'm the only

19:10

one in the bunker currently drinking from a bunker

19:12

mug. And you've all got O'God right now ones. I'm knocking

19:15

that one on eBay, yes.

19:17

Is it easy to steal from museums? Is this a problem

19:19

that we didn't know about? I think that

19:22

if you were in museums, you knew it was a problem. But

19:24

anyone outside of museums, I think

19:26

the problem comes from the fact that outside

19:29

of museums, you imagine museums to

19:31

be this kind of static monolith

19:33

to the past. There isn't in conversation

19:36

with the world outside it. Now museums

19:39

as you know,

19:40

cost of living, also fuel

19:42

prices going up, a lot of the people are

19:44

underpaid as well. So stealing

19:47

is obviously something that happens when you have an institution

19:49

that is filled with massively underpaid

19:51

people. At the same time, I think

19:54

lots of people don't understand the processes of,

19:56

the working processes inside museums. So

19:58

we imagine that they have

19:59

like navigable archives, you

20:02

can find all of the stuff really easily.

20:04

A lot of the archivists themselves don't

20:06

know what's in the collections because there's a lot

20:08

of stuff. There are huge collections

20:11

that people donate and then every

20:13

single bit needs to be itemised. There's a massive

20:16

backlog. How

20:16

much of a shock with the British Museum theft to the

20:18

museum world? Or was it a case of oh we all knew

20:21

this was going to happen sooner or later? I think the thing

20:23

is that really it undermines the very concept

20:25

of what something like the British Museum is supposed

20:27

to be. It's supposed to be a universal survey

20:30

museum which means it's supposed to stand

20:32

as like the emblem to culture,

20:35

right? To civilisation. Obviously

20:37

that's not necessarily what it always does. It

20:40

very much presents a particular British

20:43

view of the world and Britain is represented

20:46

in response to the other. And

20:48

I think that yeah it's sent shockwaves

20:50

in the sense that it's completely undermined the whole

20:52

reason why it exists. So

20:55

I mentioned the Greek Culture

20:57

Minister raising again the Parthenon marbles.

21:00

The notion of returning artefacts

21:02

from museums in

21:04

Britain and the United States to where they

21:06

were sourced shall we say, gets

21:09

bundled into the whole woke ground, bundled

21:12

into the culture war stuff.

21:14

What is the kind of direction of travel in the museum

21:16

world, in the museum community? Are people broadly

21:19

in agreement that stuff that was at

21:22

best bought, at worst simply stolen

21:24

and looted, should go back to where it came from?

21:26

So Deepa had his personal bugbear earlier and

21:28

this is going to be my personal bugbear. I

21:31

think often when these

21:33

conversations get bound up with the idea of woke,

21:35

it kind of positions them as if they've only existed

21:38

for a few years. The repatriation debate

21:40

grew so prominently in the 90s

21:43

and has existed in museums really strongly

21:45

since. And it also kind of positions it as if there

21:48

are shouty activists and people on social

21:50

media outside of museums. And then inside of

21:52

museums there are stuffy curators that don't

21:54

know anything about the objects but somehow want to retain

21:57

them. In my experience, they know the objects

21:59

in to me. they know the provenance much better

22:02

than people on the outside often. I mean,

22:04

not the communities that are affected, of course, but,

22:06

you know, like from your average Joe or Josephine

22:09

on the street. So it really frustrates me that

22:11

often this is kind of pulled into this woke

22:14

culture, culture wars thing, because also

22:17

this is, yeah, personal bug. We're sorry,

22:19

going off on a thing that,

22:21

you know, when we think about the repatriation debate, when

22:23

we think about what objects are doing in

22:25

museums, they're there as a way

22:27

to explain a sense of the past,

22:29

but also a sense of the world. Right.

22:32

So you can repatriate objects.

22:35

And that will facilitate a type of knowledge exchange.

22:38

And I think that's useful to museums and the stories

22:40

that they can tell. So this idea that,

22:43

oh, soon there won't be anything left in our museums because

22:45

they're all going off, you know, they're all going

22:47

to be like sent back across the world. Well, personally,

22:49

I think if they are right. OK, let's

22:51

say that did happen, which it wouldn't, because only one percent

22:54

of collections are ever are ever shown. Actually,

22:57

isn't it much better to be like, now let's

22:59

open up

22:59

dialogue. Let's have dialogue. Let's talk

23:02

about how these objects came to be here,

23:04

how they've gone back, how we facilitate

23:06

communities and knowledge exchange. Essentially,

23:09

isn't that what they're supposed to be? Like hubs of knowledge.

23:11

Yeah. Deepa, you

23:13

cover the British Museum's collection

23:15

of African objects in your book, particularly

23:18

things like the Benin Bronzes. You know,

23:20

the justification is that world destinations

23:23

like London and New York and the Sandys and Bell in this

23:25

whole world cities, their world destinations.

23:27

So the stuff is going to be seen by more people

23:30

if these items are there. Does

23:32

that stand up?

23:33

It doesn't really. And this is an argument

23:35

that museums have been making for a long

23:38

time now. In 2002, they

23:40

actually released a statement, 18 of the sort of self-described

23:43

great galleries and museums of the world included

23:45

the Louvre, the British Museum, the

23:47

Art Institute in Chicago, the Met in New York,

23:50

released a statement, in which they called the Declaration of

23:52

the Importance of Universal Museums, in

23:54

which they sort of divided their argument

23:56

down to three basic points. The first point

23:59

being that... Sure it's bad to steal items,

24:01

but keeping items isn't

24:03

as bad because the context for which they were stolen

24:06

is very different, which is obviously

24:09

insane because the concept

24:11

of theft hasn't changed. I'll sort of take the restitution

24:14

argument back to 1871 when then

24:17

Prime Minister William Gladstone gave an angry speech

24:20

in Parliament saying it's a real shame

24:22

to this nation that Robert Napier thought it appropriate

24:24

to bring back great treasures

24:26

from Ethiopia, then known as Abyssinia

24:29

and what we now call the McDowell Treasures back

24:31

to the UK and he said that he cannot understand

24:34

why something that means nothing to us and

24:36

means everything to them would have been stolen. Robert

24:39

Napier responded and said, oh,

24:42

it was a mistake. We'll get them back to

24:44

Abyssinia very quickly. And in fact,

24:46

those items are still in the V&A today. Their

24:49

sort of next argument was that these

24:52

items, they've been in these museums

24:54

for so long now that they're sort of part of our culture.

24:57

They're part of British culture. And

24:59

that would come as a shock to the communities

25:01

in which these items were stolen from in the first place. But

25:03

as you mentioned at the heart of their argument is this idea

25:06

that London, New York,

25:09

Berlin,

25:10

these are cultural

25:12

hubs in which it is incredibly easy

25:14

for communities around the world

25:17

to come and see these items. Now

25:19

that in and of itself is surprising

25:21

at a time when we're seeing immigration

25:24

policies that are making it even harder

25:26

for people to come and visit

25:28

the US and UK and Europe from the

25:30

very nations that these items were taken from in the

25:32

first place. So on so many different levels,

25:35

this basic argument just doesn't hold up anymore.

25:37

Yeah. I mean, we all know people who

25:39

have had

25:40

friends and relatives who refused entry, you

25:42

know, just for tourist visits for no particular reason at

25:44

all. Yeah, just because you come from the wrong place. And

25:47

like I said, but I'm here for your beautiful museums.

25:49

Yeah. Doesn't usually cut much ice. No,

25:51

no. With border force, does it? There's no particular

25:53

reason to come and say I'd quite like to see some

25:56

of the 90% of Africa's material

25:58

cultural legacy that's currently being held.

25:59

outside of the continent. It doesn't really

26:02

work in the, yeah, I'm just quite like, you've got some of

26:04

my things. I just want to sort of peep out

26:06

from a safe distance, I promise. So, I

26:09

mean,

26:09

we live in a time when

26:12

making facsimiles and

26:14

making digital representations of artifacts.

26:17

Yeah, this technology is reaching

26:19

hitherto unimagined heights. You know, you

26:21

go to the Natural History Museum in London, all

26:24

those data, so there's a cast. You know, so

26:27

much is a facsimile anyway. It

26:29

does not seem to detract from the experience. It

26:31

doesn't seem to detract from the wonder of the education

26:33

value and so forth.

26:35

I mean, do we know, do any of us are on the table, cash-in,

26:37

maybe this is one for you, why museums

26:39

can be so resistant

26:42

to simply displaying facsimile

26:44

stuff while the real thing goes back to its original

26:47

source? I think it's mainly about cost.

26:49

I think like printing and facsimiles can be quite

26:52

expensive. And I think it's also about the, I

26:54

think it kind of goes back to an idea around

26:56

the allure of the object, of the

26:59

true object, you know, that there is something that

27:01

gets lost somehow in its reproduction, which is

27:03

obviously nonsense when you think about dinosaurs,

27:06

right? That example is kind of perfect. And

27:09

like I said earlier, this could just really tie back into

27:11

that idea of knowledge exchange again,

27:14

like more knowledge in more museums is better,

27:16

right?

27:16

Like, yeah. Deepa, unsurprisingly,

27:19

I'm trying to think like, my idea

27:21

of where the great museums are tend to be, across Western

27:23

countries, I am not aware of kind

27:25

of, the museum culture of Africa

27:27

itself might be, for instance, or African countries, you

27:30

know, on a rainy Saturday, does like a mom and lego

27:32

strike a kiss to the museum for a bit of peace and quiet. Yeah,

27:34

absolutely. But one of the things that have simply made

27:37

it harder for a lot of museums

27:39

to fully establish these sort of international

27:41

reputations is, as I mentioned before, that 90%

27:44

of our material cultural legacy was

27:46

taken during colonialism. The frustrating

27:48

thing is that, you know, building on

27:51

this idea of exchange

27:53

and sharing these items wouldn't

27:55

lead to the complete decimation of

27:58

museums around the world. bronzes

28:00

for example, the British Museum has about 900

28:02

Benin bronzes. 800 of them are permanently in

28:06

storage and only 100 of

28:08

them. 800 of them we think are in storage. We

28:10

think are in storage. We're not sure. Yeah, exactly.

28:12

And a lot of the cataloging of

28:14

these items is incredibly poor. And

28:17

so you have, speaking

28:20

for Nigerian Lagos in particular, you have

28:23

a lot of creators and historians

28:25

who are trying their best to

28:27

buy back a lot of these items from private

28:30

collections, from universities and establish

28:33

centers in which these can be shown

28:35

within the country. But that is something

28:37

that's been incredibly challenging.

28:39

That's really frustrating as well, because as soon as

28:41

they get bought into private collection,

28:43

they just disappear. So you don't even know where they are.

28:45

So you're like, oh, great. All of that really

28:48

rich and important material culture

28:50

of like world civilization is just gone.

28:54

And we don't know where.

28:55

Seth, you're also a historian of a different kind.

28:58

Do we over fetishize physical objects

29:00

and perhaps under emphasize stories

29:03

and narratives which could be more

29:06

easily served by a facsimile? You know, history

29:08

is more than a collection of sorts

29:11

of, you know, busts and canoes

29:13

and death masks and weaponry. Yes,

29:16

I think there is a degree of fetishization,

29:18

but actually source material really matters.

29:21

Physical objects and what we can tell from the really do

29:23

matter. What I think is more

29:25

dangerous is when we don't actually properly

29:27

contextualize them, because just saying

29:30

here is a pretty gaudy thing with some jewels on

29:32

it doesn't tell you, for example, whether that jewelry

29:34

was put on display only for one special day of

29:36

the year as an extraordinary unusual

29:39

representation or not. But I think actually

29:41

using that as a springboard for exhibiting

29:44

these things can be fantastic. You

29:46

also wrote about historical buildings and

29:49

the communities around them. What do you say

29:51

to Deepa's point that like the

29:53

buildings themselves, the museum is the British Museum

29:55

and places like it, they shouldn't

29:58

be considered just as cultural artifacts?

29:59

their own right that you know we don't have to preserve

30:02

the entire content of the British Museum for

30:04

the British Museum to be the British Museum.

30:06

Oh totally and I think it's actually really interesting

30:08

when you look at museums as something

30:11

that tells you about how objects have been seen themselves.

30:13

So I mean you mentioned the Horniman Museum earlier, it's

30:16

eccentric to put it mildly. The

30:18

Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford is a real freak

30:20

show, a Victorian style freak show

30:23

and actually the way that that objectifies

30:25

things I wouldn't you know completely

30:27

retrofitted I'd say this is how the Victorians

30:29

actually viewed stuff. You make an exhibit of

30:31

the exhibit in its own right and I completely

30:34

agree with Kasher's point about how average about 1%

30:36

of items are on display. This is a symptom

30:38

of a wider problem I think we have when we're trying

30:40

to sort of grapple with difficulties around

30:43

our past and that's to say we'll just shove it into

30:45

a museum but a museum isn't dumping ground.

30:47

A museum is a rotating constantly

30:50

updating exhibition space and there should

30:52

be no shame in that. Talking about how things

30:54

are remade and how

30:57

ideas of what an exhibition

30:59

is and how objects are displayed has reminded me of my

31:01

bugbear which is the changes to the

31:04

Imperial War Museum which I've seen happen

31:06

in my lifetime and the key

31:08

one is that as you would led through the

31:10

Second World War exhibit the kind of

31:12

climax of the exhibit was

31:14

the gigantic swastika eagle

31:16

at the end of the room. This is it this

31:18

is what it was for this is the kind of this

31:21

is the head of the enemy this is this is why we did

31:23

all this stuff and then they

31:25

redo the exhibition and that

31:27

incredibly potent thing is

31:29

now a kind of sideshow elsewhere hidden

31:31

down a you know hidden in a little byway of the of

31:33

the of the hall and

31:36

it

31:36

like the narrative is gone and it's been

31:39

removed and I've just never been the same for me you're

31:41

looking at a scans at me though Kasher. I

31:44

just don't want to alienate anyone I know from the Imperial

31:46

War Museum. Well

31:49

they redeveloped the Second World War galleries I think

31:52

they opened in 2021 so they're now situated

31:54

so the Holocaust galleries is above them so

31:57

they kind of integrate that story between the Holocaust

31:59

and the Second World War.

31:59

a bit more. I mean it's not like

32:03

this kind of moment in the same way but it's

32:06

definitely there still and I think it's still an important

32:08

story and a really important exhibit.

32:11

You've

32:11

really got to look for it though. From

32:13

your point of view, Kasia, what do you think the museums of tomorrow

32:15

will look like? I was having a little think about this

32:18

and museums are obviously places of ideology

32:20

and they reflect the societies that they're in,

32:22

right? They're living institutions as I mentioned.

32:25

So early Victorian museums

32:28

like Seth mentioned kind of were just like cabinet

32:30

of curiosities almost and then

32:32

you get start to get more museums and heritage

32:35

sites of the everyday in the 1980s, a

32:37

social history comes through. Recently

32:40

I'd say like within the last 10-20 years

32:42

you get more museums on social

32:45

issues. So for example the Migration

32:47

Museum which is my favorite museum in

32:50

Luscham Shopping Center is all

32:52

about how different waves of migration

32:54

have completely transformed Britain but

32:57

you also I think get more that are on climate

32:59

change for example so at the moment

33:01

we're kind of living in the Museum

33:03

of Social Change era I guess.

33:06

So the museums of the future I don't

33:09

know but as a sci-fi fan I wonder

33:11

if maybe they'll be about how we live side

33:13

by side by our alien pals.

33:16

The museum

33:17

of past human civilization.

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We're coming to the end of the podcast, and we're going to finish up

34:21

by raising the cultural tone of the show with

34:24

the bunker reading group. What reads

34:26

will the panel recommend? Fiction, nonfiction, biographical,

34:29

historical, whatever you like. Deepa,

34:31

I'm going to come to you first. What should people be reading? I'm

34:33

currently reading Ordinary Human Failings,

34:36

which is a novel by Megan Nolan. It's her

34:38

second book. Her first was Acts

34:40

of Desperation. And Ordinary Human Failings

34:43

is about this Irish family

34:45

back in the 1990s who leave

34:48

their town. There's some scandal

34:49

around, you know, a pregnant teenage daughter, and they move

34:51

to a new town, and they sort of try and keep to themselves.

34:54

But a crime is committed,

34:56

and the people of the town kind of look at this

34:58

sort of recluse family, and they,

35:00

suspicion is thrown their way. And

35:03

it hits a lot of sort of classic points of a

35:05

great sort of crime thriller, a

35:08

journalist who's on the search

35:10

for the truth. But it has a

35:12

lot of kind of warmth and so

35:14

many really lovely moments, and I

35:16

highly recommend it. Give us a title again so the listeners don't

35:18

have to press a rewind

35:19

button. It's called Ordinary

35:21

Human Failings by Megan Nolan. Fantastic.

35:24

Seth, how about you? I've been reading a wonderful biography

35:27

of James Gilray, the artist,

35:30

really the granddaddy of political satire. He

35:33

is the subject of a new book by Tim Clayton

35:35

in the last year. Lends a lot of insight

35:38

into the madness that was so much

35:40

a part of Gilray. I mean, he struggled with his mental

35:42

health for many years, had numerous suicide attempts,

35:45

ended up completely mad, and it

35:48

was a very, very sad end actually

35:49

to his life. But also bringing out things like

35:51

the collaborative nature of it. His

35:54

business partner and personal partner was Hannah

35:56

Humphrey. She was the one who printed most of his prints. Her name

35:58

appears on the cover.

35:59

on everything, barely talked about, but actually it

36:02

was a deeply collaborative enterprise between the two

36:04

of them. So it's a really fascinating story and

36:06

a beautifully rendered book full of lovely, pretty

36:08

pictures. And the one that got written out of it again.

36:10

Yes. Kasia, what's

36:12

your recommended read? So if I say

36:14

the words petty bourgeoisie to

36:17

you or anyone, often I

36:19

see eyes glaze over

36:21

because it's a bit of a caricature.

36:23

I went to university and I read Karl Marx

36:26

once of a phrase. But

36:28

it's actually been reframed and rescued by

36:30

the sociologist Dan Evans in A Nation

36:32

of Shopkeepers, The Unstoppable Rise of

36:35

the Petty bourgeoisie, which I'm currently

36:37

reading. And

36:39

if you don't want to read it, then there's a really great

36:42

write up in The New Statesman by

36:43

Anushikalian. But it's just about how

36:46

class is still an important factor in terms

36:48

of how we live our

36:50

politics. And there's an idea of the

36:52

new petty bourgeoisie and the older petty bourgeoisie

36:55

and who that might be, whether they be Plumbers

36:58

or downward graduates. There's a kind

37:00

of link between these. So

37:02

well, as the son of shopkeepers

37:04

and an absolute seon of the petty

37:06

bourgeoisie, who's now a tiny

37:09

business owner, I think

37:11

the petty bourgeoisie get a terrible rap. And

37:13

the piece of The New Statesman was great because it was about

37:16

Dan's talking about, you know, he's gone off to into

37:19

academia and thinks this is going to

37:21

be a glittering future and he has to go home and

37:23

find all the people he left behind. Absolutely.

37:26

You know, they're Plumbers and they're delivery guys and

37:28

they've got little businesses and they're as happy as

37:30

happy can be. They're all loaded, having

37:32

a fantastic time, wonderful relationships,

37:34

no doubts about their lives and having an absolute whale

37:36

of a time. And E is rather miserable, isn't he?

37:38

Yeah. It's like that story that we always talk

37:41

about about your dad saying that you should have been

37:43

a butcher. That was more a threat than an

37:46

encouragement. And it's like,

37:48

now that the listeners can see what I look like on the thing,

37:51

there's no way on earth I'm going to be a butcher. You

37:54

know, it's like, I can't. Photoshop that.

37:55

But anyway, I'm going to try and

37:58

get him on the bunker. So. hear

38:00

a little bit more about Dan's ideas. Excellent,

38:02

keep an eye out for that. Well, my recommended

38:04

read, I'm going to lower the tone enormously,

38:07

it's a collection of Roger Ebert's reviews

38:09

and it's called I hated, hated, hated this

38:11

movie. It's a collection of his bad reviews

38:14

and I think it's actually out of print now but I

38:16

go back to it on the shelf every now and again when I want to read a

38:18

fantastic writer just offloading

38:21

on terrible, terrible movies. I used

38:23

to loan this book to young reviewers

38:25

on magazines to show them how to really

38:28

put the boot in and it's fantastic.

38:30

I mean, this review of the Beverly Hillbillies

38:32

movie in 1993, the movie has an assault

38:35

on the eyes, the ears, the brain, common sense and

38:37

the human desire to be entertained no matter what

38:39

they're charging to get in, it's worth more to get out. This

38:42

is, you know, I can't remember

38:44

which one but this sticks in my mind. He said he

38:46

was reviewing some forgotten, terrible piece

38:48

of cinematic dreck and he said,

38:51

the first page of my notes says, not

38:53

very interesting central cast, not sure what this character

38:55

is doing. The second page of my notes said,

38:57

pacing awful, no ideas. The third

38:59

page of my notes said, egg, milk, bread,

39:02

crisps, water and laundry.

39:05

That's just the best possible bad review you could

39:08

read. So I mean, if you can find it, according

39:10

to Amazon, it's going to run

39:12

you $35 to pick

39:14

it up but it is on Kindle and

39:17

you will enjoy it an awful lot.

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to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

39:57

And that's...

39:59

brings us to the end of

40:01

this month's Bunker Panel Show. Thank you so much,

40:03

Seth Tabor. Thank you. Thank you so much,

40:05

Deepu, for learning. Thank you very much. And thank you,

40:08

and eventually goodbye to Passion Thomas

40:10

Evers.

40:10

Thanks, Andrew. We

40:13

hope you've enjoyed listening. We'll be back with another Panel Show

40:15

in a month's time. In the meantime, the daily regular

40:18

bunkers will be back tomorrow and every day of the week.

40:20

Thanks for listening. If you're interested in supporting

40:22

us and helping us do more of this, there is, of course,

40:25

Patreon. You'll search Patreon Bunker Podcasts.

40:27

You'll get the podcast early. Without ads,

40:29

you'll get remarkable mugs and other merchandise.

40:33

Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.

40:38

The

40:38

Bunker was presented by Podmasters

40:40

group editor Andrew Harrison, Dr.

40:43

Kasia Tomashevitch, Deepu Falloyan,

40:46

and Seth Tabor. It was produced

40:48

by Chris Jones and Liam Tate, audio

40:51

production by me, Robin Leiburn. Our

40:53

art is from Jim Parrott and social media,

40:55

Jess Harpin. Our managing editor is

40:58

Jacob Jarvis. Music is by Kenny

41:00

Dickerton. The Bunker is a

41:02

Podmasters production.

41:14

Hi, I'm Steve Richards, the

41:16

presenter of the twice weekly podcast

41:18

Rock and Roll Politics, based on a live

41:21

show I do. Each week, we

41:23

gather in one podcast to make sense

41:25

of the madness that seems to

41:28

be erupting around British politics

41:30

all the time. And in the second, we have the

41:32

conversation with someone in politics

41:34

or the media. And together, we

41:37

try and make sense of it all. So

41:40

do join us. Please subscribe. Rock

41:42

and Roll Politics with me,

41:44

Steve Richards.