The regular resurfacing of the row over the Elgin Marbles – and other hardy perennials, where Britain takes a high-handed stance against upstart nations, such as over the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar – always reminds me of a story told by Billy Connolly.

He was rambling through a patch of the Highlands, prior to the introduction of right to roam legislation, when he was approached by the laird of the estate, who ordered him off his land.

When he refused and questioned his legitimacy, the laird told him, haughtily, that his forefathers had fought for the land in the 13th century. Connolly dropped his rucksack, put-up his dukes and said ‘right, I’ll fight you for it now’.

The dispute between Britain and Greece is embarrassing not only because of our government’s predictably obtuse position, but also because it forever associates Scotland with a man so riddled with syphilis that his face disintegrated.

If you are going to pin the reputation of a country on an individual, you could hardly do worse than Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin.

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Not only was the self-styled playboy adventurer regarded by many of his contemporaries as a cultural vandal for raiding the ruins of the Parthenon in Athens and pillaging the artefacts that now sit in the British Museum, but he also impoverished himself in the process, such was his lack of business acumen.

Upon returning to Scotland, he attempted to recover some of his lost fortune by suing Robert Fergusson, his wife’s lover, for criminal adultery.

During a subsequent trial at Edinburgh’s Parliament House, the private lives of all parties were laid bare in excruciating detail, including accusations that his Lordship’s nose had fallen off as a result of tertiary syphilis acquired during his frequent carousing in Turkish brothels.

This would, of course, be a minor historical curiosity were it not for the fact that the government’s legal claim to the Elgin Marbles rests entirely on Bruce as a credible witness.

He claimed his agents' actions in removing the marbles from the Acropolis were authorised by a firman – an official edict – from Selim III, the Sultan of Turkey – obtained in July 1801, and later endorsed in March 1810, with the approval of local Ottoman authorities.

While a parliamentary committee cleared Elgin of allegations of illegal acquisition, the authenticity of the firman is disputed, with no official record of it ever having been found in Turkish archives.

Some historians insist the document, if it existed at all, was simply a letter, not a decree, and that its legitimacy is questionable. Eyewitnesses claimed bribes were exchanged with local officials to turn a blind eye to the removal of the artefacts.

Whether the documents existed and were legally enforceable at the time is, of course, neither here nor there, when considering the matter today. Any civilised person would recognise that the rightful place for the Elgin Marbles is in Greece, where they originated.

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The government’s continued insistence that Britain has a legal right to them 'as a result of transactions conducted with the recognised legitimate authorities of the time' is like arguing that art, antiquities, and other treasures looted by the Nazis in occupied territories, should not be returned to their rightful owners because their removal was approved by the Third Reich.

Britain’s position on this and other matters, such as the removal of statues in public places of people who had links with the slave trade, rests on a belief that it is wrong for us to reconsider actions from the past, with a modern sensibility.

Bringing current attitudes to bear on what people said and did in the context of their own time amounts to the rewriting history.

The Scottish Government is currently considering proposals for a dedicated space to address the legacy of colonialism in Scotland, including Glasgow’s role as a major trade route for sugar, cotton, and tobacco, from slave plantations in the US and the Caribbean.

Glasgow's links to slavery are commemorated with place names, including Merchant City and Jamaica Street, and it also has a statue of Sir Robert Peel, a prime minister who opposed the Foreign Slave Trade Abolition Bill in 1806 on behalf of his fellow merchants and his own cotton-spinning firm, Peel, Yates, Halliwell & Co.

Peel is one of eight individuals with links to the slave trade who are commemorated with statues in the centre of Glasgow. They include Colin Campbell, William Gladstone, John Moore, David Livingstone, James Oswald, James Watt, and King William III of Orange.

While many – even most – of us may have only a fleeting familiarity with those names, we continue to honour them with no mention on their statues of their involvement in the slave trade.

The National Galleries of Scotland recently said it will reference Robert Burns’ albeit tangential link to the slave trade – he considered, but never took-up, a job as a bookkeeper on a sugar plantation in Jamaica – in text accompanying its famous oval portrait of the poet by Alexander Nasmyth.

The move was described by Sir Tom Devine, the eminent historian, as an example of the ‘gross intellectual sin of anachronism’ – of judging our ancestors by present standards.

But how far back should we apply the absolution of history? We have no problem in expunging from cultural consciousness figures like Jimmy Savile, Gary Glitter and Michael Jackson, because of despicable acts committed by them decades ago.

Most radio stations no longer play Jackson’s songs because, rightly, they judge that his undoubted musical genius cannot be appreciated in isolation from his alleged crimes of sexual violence against minors.

And while social and economic norms and dynamics are vastly different today, compared with 300 years ago, a basic understanding of right and wrong remains largely unchanged.

Let us not forget that many contemporaries of Peel, Moore, Livingstone et al were arguing for abolition and so acceptance was by no means universal.

The row over the Elgin Marbles and our continued honouring of men who profited from trafficking of human capital reveals a dangerous reverence to history.

The past remains the past but what we do today creates tomorrow’s history and, in failing or refusing to change, we risk sending the wrong signal to future generations about what we view as right and acceptable.