Culture Society, Identity and Belonging
In Dudley, in the UK’s West Midlands, the local council has ordered the owners of a pile of blackened bricks to rebuild what they once constituted – a much-loved pub called the Crooked House that had been sinking gradually at one end since the early 19th century because of local mining. In Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a few hours’ drive northwest, the Ethiopian government has asked a local auction house to return a spectacular embossed shield rather than sell it to the highest bidder. The Crooked House burned down last August, a month after being sold to a local farming group. (Three people were arrested and charged with arson.) The shield was looted from Maqdala in Ethiopia by British forces after a battle there in 1868. The Dudley order and the Ethiopian claim have in common an uplifting impatience with larceny. It’s a win for civil society and a defeat for impunity that the 35,000 members of the Save the Crooked House group are going to get their pub back. It would be a win for common sense and decency for Maqdala to get its shield back, and it would add to pressure on the British Museum to return the 11 sacred tabots it holds from the same battle. Why pressure is needed is a separate and baffling question.