A statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oxford University will not fall after a change in government policy to protect contested monuments prompted a U-turn by officials at Oriel College.
The decision to keep the statue of the Victorian mining magnate and empire-builder on the college’s façade came despite the decision by an independent commission today to back the college authorities’ previously stated wish to remove it.
The governing body said the volte-face was down to “regulatory and financial challenges” and the government’s recently introduced “retain and explain” policy, which will be backed by legislation and says that statues may be removed in only the most exceptional circumstances.
Oriel indicated that its decision was final and pragmatic, though it reaffirmed its ideological preference for the statue’s removal. It pledged to implement other recommendations from the commission, aiming to provide contextual information on Rhodes and increase diversity at the college.
The decision was announced after the publication of a report from the independent commission, which was convened at Oriel’s behest last summer after the governing body expressed its wish to remove the statue and a plaque to Rhodes. Rhodes Must Fall protesters had been calling for the removal of the statue for several years because of the activities of Rhodes, a college benefactor, as an imperialist in Africa and his racist views and actions
The decision was criticised by Rhodes Must Fall in Oxford, which said the statue offered “a clear public reflection of who the University of Oxford was designed to serve and who it was designed to exploit”. It went on: “By stalling the decision process and then refusing to remove it, Oriel College has chosen to reinscribe that violent colonial vision on to our community. We will continue to fight for the fall of this statue and everything it represents.”
