Oxford Rhodes plaque gets protected status

Culture Secretary reverses Historic England’s decision not to preserve monument to Oriel College benefactor

A PLAQUE of Cecil Rhodes at an Oxford University college is to be awarded Grade-ii listed status after Nadine Dorries intervened to protect the monument to the imperialist donor. The plaque, on King Edward Street, has stoked division since the student-led Rhodes Must Fall campaign of 2016, and again during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 sparked by the murder of George Floyd in the United States.

An independent inquiry backed Oriel College governors’ desire to remove the plaque, along with a statue of its 19thcentury benefactor, which was erected in 1906 on the facade of Rhodes’ house.

Although Oriel’s governors backed down because legal barriers made the statue too costly to remove, they added “contextualised” notice boards and launched an equality and diversity drive that included race awareness training for its staff.

However, historians complained that the large plaque remained vulnerable to activists’ attempts to pull it down because, unlike the more famous High Street statue, it is unlisted.

Now, Ms Dorries, the Culture Secretary, wants to award it Grade-ii listed status after she rebuked Historic England (HE) for “relying on a presumption against listing plaques generally”. This would overturn HE officials’ ruling four years ago not to protect it, in the latest chapter of Oxford’s long-running Rhodes culture war.

Rhodes, a British imperialist who founded Rhodesia and served as prime minister of the Cape Colony in the 1890s, bequeathed a huge sum to Oriel that has funded many scholarships in his name.

He was not a slave trader but supported apartheid measures in southern Africa. The bust was funded by Sir Alfred Mosely, a philanthropist, as a personal tribute after Rhodes’ death. After the initial Rhodes Must Fall protests in 2016, Historic England ruled that the plaque “did not have the special architectural or historic interest to merit listing”.

The taxpayer-funded quango decided other buildings better marked the Rhodes legacy and that it lacked “richness in the quality of detailing and modelling found in the few commemorative plaques” already listed in Britain.

A review concluded: “The Secretary of State is ‘minded to’ overturn the previous decision not to list Cecil Rhodes’ Memorial Plaque”.

Ms Dorries told the college: “The review request is supported by eminent experts in the field of architectural history, who question HE’S assessment of the quality of the plaque.”

One expert warned ministers in a letter that “the danger now is that, unless it is listed, it will be removed in response to continuing pressure, erasing important aspects of our history.”

A Historic England spokesman said it awaited Ms Dorries’ final decision.