The fate of Rhodes and other controversial statues hangs in balance after fall of Colston
THE toppling of Edward Colston’s statue has renewed a campaign to remove the figure of Cecil Rhodes from an Oxford college.
The Rhodes Must Fall campaign group has called for the image of the mining magnate and empire builder to be removed from Oriel College, stating the university has “failed to address its institutional racism”. The demands come after the bronze statue of Colston, a Bristol slave trader, was torn down and plunged into the harbour by Black Lives Matter protesters.
The protests have revived a 2016 campaign launched by Oxford students which demanded the removal of Rhodes’ statue and radical reforms to “decolonise” the campus and the curriculum.
An open letter has been addressed to the university’s vicechancellor claiming efforts to address the institution’s imperialist past have been “inconsequential” and campaigners have called for a demonstration outside the college where the statue is mounted.
Demonstrators aligned with the Black Lives Matter movement want imagery that “glorifies” Rhodes to be removed from the university, and action to “make upholding anti-racist values a reality”.
Rhodes, an imperialist and advocate for displacing indigenous populations, was initially the subject of student campaigns in South Africa before Oxford students called for the figure behind the eponymous scholarship to be effaced.
The open letter calling for change also claims black students are underrepresented at the university, that they frequently experience racism, and their curriculum is too “Eurocentric”.
Oxford is a “hive” of inequality, according to campaigners, and must address its “Eurocentrism and imperial amnesia”.
A petition to remove Rhodes’s statue has also been signed by thousands, and states that: “Oxford needs to take down the statue of Cecil Rhodes if they are ever to prove that the university is truly dedicated to equality and racial justice.”
Heritage group Historic England
does not believe the Grade II statue “must be reinstated”, and the listed monument may not have been given protected status in the current political climate. Bristol City Council owns both the statue and the harbour it was rolled into, and has been in discussions with its harbour master over salvaging the sculpture, although “when and how” is yet to be decided.
Historic England can advise on how
to proceed with what it terms “contested heritage” sites as thousands of people sign online petitions to remove statues.
Controversial monuments include the statue of Oliver Cromwell outside the Houses of Parliament and two in Wales dedicated to Sir Thomas Picton, former governor of Trinidad.