Oxford now yielding to Rhodes statue pressure
EARLIER this year, a student at the University of Cape Town emptied a bucket of faeces over a statue of Cecil Rhodes on campus. The bronze sculpture, he and his friends maintained, was symbolic of the “institutional racism” and “white supremacy” that apparently dominate the university. How did the campus authorities react? By explaining that almost every prominent figure in the late nineteenth century held some views that our generation finds jarring? By gently pointing out that you can disagree with someone, even detest someone, without defacing his statue? By expelling the instigators on grounds of sheer oafishness?
Sadly not. The university senate convened to discuss what to do about the offending mass of metal. Outside, as they deliberated, protesters chanted “One settler, one bullet!” Eventually, it was decided that the right not to be offended trumped everything else, and the statue is now boarded up, awaiting its fate.
Ah, well, you might say, after the monstrosities of apartheid, race is an understandably charged issue in South Africa.
Perhaps a little bit of overshoot is to be expected: a guilty conscience, allied to fear of a self-righteous mob, can be a powerful thing. Except that this isn’t just happening in South Africa. Cecil Rhodes also handsomely endowed his – and, as it happens, my – old college: Oriel, Oxford.
Having made a fortune in diamonds, Rhodes became a keen philanthropist and, among many similar bequests, left Oriel 2% of his estate on his death in 1902. Part of that sum was used to fund a new building, to which a statue of the dapper nabob was added on its completion in 1911.
Now, an Oxonian mob, using the same cretinous #RhodesMustFall hashtag as in South Africa, has complained that walking past that statue inflicts violence on them.
Incredibly, rather than telling them to mind their own business, Oriel has rushed out a statement to the effect that it is talking to planning authorities about removing the effigy because “it can be seen as an uncritical celebration of... the colonialism and the oppression of black communities he represents”.
In the meantime, a notice has been put next to it, insisting “many of Cecil Rhodes’ actions and public statements are incompatible with the values of the college and university today”.
Even more depressing than the pusillanimity here is the utter imbecility. As the great historian Herbert Butterfield wrote in 1931: “The study of the past with one eye upon the present is the source of all sins and sophistries in history. It is the essence of what we mean by the word ‘unhistorical’.”
In every age, some people like to posture by comparing their ethical standards favourably to that of a past generation. It’s the most facile kind of virtue signaling, because it allows you to look down on dead heroes. Thomas Jefferson may have written the most sublime constitution on Earth, but he owned slaves! Winston Churchill may have saved Europe from Nazism, but he had unenlightened views about India! Florence Nightingale may… oh, you get the idea.
Rhodes was a mildly controversial figure in his own time, disdained by the same sorts of people as those who disdain self-made tycoons in our own age, and for the same sorts of reasons. But his political views were not especially outlandish by contemporary standards.
He supported the Liberal Party and strongly backed Charles Stewart Parnell and Irish autonomy, which he saw as a stepping stone to imperial federation.
Like many Victorians, he believed Britain’s global hegemony reflected the innate qualities of the British people. He would, I suspect, be surprised to see the Rhodes scholarships, which he founded, being taken up today by non-white students from independent Commonwealth countries. But that, in a sense, is the whole point: Oxford, like the rest of the world, has moved on.
Outside Oriel’s dining hall are two rather grander statues: one of Edward II and one (we think) of Charles I. Here are two kings so abominable that they are in that rare category of English monarchs killed by their subjects. Both held opinions that were, if we must use the buzzword, far more “unacceptable” to modern sensibilities than those of Rhodes.
The statues were raised during the reign of Charles I when, even by the stan- dards of that era, Oriel was distinguished by the fervour of its support for royal absolutism. Is Oriel thereby endorsing an anti-democratic and authoritarian agenda? Did I, a Whig whose sympathies are with the parliamentary cause, suffer violence every time I had to pass under those stone likenesses on my way to breakfast? The question is too silly for words. Rhodes is commemorated by Oriel because he left money to the college. Accepting that money in 1902, and honouring the benefactor, doesn’t mean endorsing his opinions today.
If you really don’t understand that, maybe you shouldn’t be at university. — The Daily Telegraph