Oxford’s Oriel College Decides against “Costly” Removal of Cecil Rhodes Statue

The governing body of Oxford University’s Oriel College rejected a recommendation by an independent report to remove a statue of the imperialist figure and Oxford benefactor Cecil Rhodes. 

Oriel College said on Thursday that it would not remove the depiction of the 7th Prime Minister of the Cape Colony due to costs and the “complex” planning processes. Rhodes is a controversial figure in the United Kingdom for his role in British colonial politics. In June 2020, a new front of the long-running anti-Rhodes campaign emerged when Black Lives Matter protesters gathered in Oxford to call for the removal of the statue. Inspired by the toppling of the Edward Colston statue in Bristol earlier that week, the so-called ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ campaign cited Rhodes’ “racism” and “colonialism” in a petition which gained 100,000 signatures, urging Oriel College to remove the statue. Oxford City Council leader Susan Brown, adding that she was sympathetic towards the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ campaign, said at the time that the statue should be removed and placed in a museum. She then proceeded to set up an independent inquiry to examine Rhodes' legacy.

The inquiry was chaired by the Master of St. Cross College Carole Souter and included other figures such as: 

Notably, Beinart held a professorship established under Rhodes’ name. Rhodes, himself an Oxford alumnus, was an important figure for the University of Oxford, having created a scholarship program which today enables 83 students from the United States, Germany, Hong Kong, Bermuda, Zimbabwe and several Commonwealth countries - including a number of southern African nations - to come each year to study at Oxford.

The panel made a number of recommendations including either the “contextualisation” or complete removal of the statue. The governing body of Oriel College said on Thursday that after weighing up the “regulatory and financial challenges” associated with removing the statue, it had decided to keep it in place. The College noted that attempting to place Rhodes’ figure elsewhere “could run into years with no certainty of outcome,” considering that it would require cooperation from several outside institutions, including the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government. Instead, the College will focus on “improving [its] educational equality, diversity and inclusion amongst its student cohort and academic community.” 

In response to the announcement, the Rhodes Must Fall campaign condemned Oriel College’s decision:

“No matter how Oriel College might try to justify their decision, allowing the statue to remain is an act of institutional racism. The morality of the decision of whether to remove the statue above High Street has been subsumed into a cost-benefit analysis, one that does not take into account the human cost of letting the statue remain. Pretending that this is a choice made due to financial costs is a slap in the face with the hand of white supremacy, fed by the value system of profit before humanity, the same value system that justified enslavement. We are disappointed at the refusal to listen to not only the voices of the people who have called for the removal of the statue of Rhodes for many years but their own governing body and the recommendations of the independent commission. We will continue to fight for the fall of this statue and everything it represents.”

Oxford City Council leader Susan Brown said she was “deeply disappointed” by the College’s decision.

“For people in our city this was the most important action that Oriel College could have taken to show any acknowledgement of the discrimination of the past and they have failed to act.”

Brown, castigating the College for “backtracking,” said she feared any measures taken by the College in future would “not be enough to inspire confidence without this important symbolic step.” 

“It is well past time for all institutions to tackle the difficult issues of colonialism and discrimination,” she proclaimed. 

The provost of Oriel College Lord Mendoza asserted that the college was “fully aware of the impact [the] decision is likely to have in the UK and further afield,” adding:

“We understand this nuanced conclusion will be disappointing to some, but we are now focused on the delivery of practical actions aimed at improving outreach and the day-to-day experience of BME students. We are looking forward to working with Oxford City Council on a range of options for contextualisation.” 

Meanwhile, the Education Secretary Gavin Williamson tweeted: “Sensible & balanced decision not to remove the Rhodes statue from Oriel College, Oxford - because we should learn from our past, rather than censoring history, and continue focussing on reducing inequality,” and the vice-chair of think tank Policy Exchange's History Matters Project, Dr Samir Shah, said: “Oriel has rightly decided not to spend time on a fruitless effort to change the past, but to plough resources into trying to change the future, especially for ethnic minority young people.” 

Speaking to the Daily Mail, Robert Poll from the pressure group ‘Save Our Statues’ welcomed Oriel College’s decision and noted that it “recognise[d] two important facts: that our heritage is protected by planning law, and that people do not want to see it destroyed.”

“Over a thousand people wrote to the commission and the majority were in favour of keeping the statue. We must stop sitting in judgement of history and trying to assert moral authority over the past. Calls to remove statues only inflame tensions and sow division. Let this be the last call for a statue to fall.”

The General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, Toby Young, also commented on the developments and called Oriel College’s decision a “victory for common sense over the woke Taliban.”

“We cannot cleanse our past of historical figures whose views we now find distasteful and the attempt to do so, by pulling down statues and renaming buildings, is a hallmark of a totalitarian society. The Rhodes Must Fall movement has caricatured Rhodes as an evil racist, determined to oppress black and brown people, but that is over-simplistic. He was a member of the Liberal Party, he founded the newspaper in South Africa that became the mouthpiece of Nelson Mandela's ANC and he created a scholarship programme that was open to all, regardless of ethnicity, saying 'no student shall be qualified or disqualified for election to a Scholarship on grounds of his race.' By the standards of his time, he was actually pretty woke. I hope this sensible decision encourages other institutions to stop self-flagellating themselves about their own links with 'problematic' historical figure and instead treat their statues and busts as an opportunity to learn more about the past. Cancelling the dead in a frenzy of moral indignation is not the best way to understand our rich and complex history.”