Academic leads backlash over Oxford University statue of Cecil Rhodes
Students seeking to remove a plaque and statue of Cecil Rhodes outside Oriel College, Oxford, are no better than the man they seek to dishonor, writes Nigel Biggar, Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford University in “The Times” (December 22, 2015). If the cries of students in South Africa and England are acted on, other statues of world leaders in America as well as the United Kingdom might crack under the blows of hammers wielded by politically correct activists, says correspondent TREVOR GRUNDY
This Christmas, Nigel Biggar isn’t expecting any bouquets from politically correct students in South Africa and this country.
In an Opinion article published today in The Times, the respected Oxford University academic says under a headline reading “Message to students: Rhodes was no racist” that those calling for a plaque and statue of Cecil Rhodes to be removed from outside Oriel College, are no better than the 19th century founder of the British South Africa Company which received its charter from Queen Victoria in 1889.
Following the example of students in South Africa, a group of activists at Oxford University have said that the commemorations to Rhodes do not reflect the “inclusive culture” of Oxford University. Lobbied by the local manifestation of South Africa’s “Rhodes Must Fall” movement, the college has publicly repudiated Rhodes’s “colonialist” and “racist” views, claiming that they stand in “absolute contrast” to “the values of a modern university.”
And leading the “Rhodes Must Fall” in this country is a student from South Africa, Ntokozo Qwabe, who has been criticized on social media and accused of “disgraceful hypocrisy” considering he is himself a Rhodes Scholar.
Qwabe told The Times that it was “unacceptable to glorify” figures such as Rhodes but that it was correct to accept funds “since it was never his (Rhodes) money.”
Rhodes was a strong advocate of British Imperialism. He attended Oxford in the 1870s (sometimes paying his fees by spreading uncut diamonds – instead of money - onto the desk of his college’s treasurer) and left large sums of money to Oriel College. His name is attached to scholarship programmes for overseas students who show academic and sporting / leadership qualities. Past recipients include Bill Clinton, the former US President.
On Thursday (December 17) the Oriel College caved in to the protests and announced that a plaque dating from 1906 honouring Rhodes would be removed from an Oriel owned property in Oxford, pending approval by the local council.
It is beginning a six-month consultation to decide on the fate of a statue, saying it has not ruled out removing it. Other options being considered are to leave it where it is or provide information explaining the statue’s historical context.
Removing the statue may be harder than students expect since it is part of a Grade 11 listed building and has been flagged by Historic England as being of particular historical interest, not only to students but also the general public.
The “Rhodes Must Fall” campaigners say the statue on the college frontage violates the university’s commitment to “fostering inclusive culture which promote equality, values diversity and maintains a working, learning and social environment in which the rights and dignity of all its staff and students are respected.”
Writing in the London-based newspaper, Biggar says:”This is much more than a storm in a tea-cup. Oriel’s precedent will have international repercussions. At Princeton, for example, the university authorities have yet to respond to students who occupied its president’s officer in November (this year) demanding that Woodrow Wilson’s name be expunged from its school of public and international affairs, because his administration discriminated against African Americans.”
Biggar defends Rhodes and says that following his arrival in South Africa in 1870 had a record of “cordial, even generous relations with Africans.”
He writes: “There’s no doubt that Rhodes saw the British as civilized and ‘native races’ as not, in general. But he had good reason to think that. After all, whether in terms of science or technology or communications or commerce or liberal political institutions and mores, late 19th century Britain was light years ahead of any indigenous African society. And in important respects British civilization was morally superior, too. Just as we in the 21st century are morally hostile to slavery, forced marriage, the honour-killing of women, capital punishment without fair trial, militarism and despotic cruelty, so our Victoria forebears were outraged at these practices among the Zulu and Ndebele. Yes, Rhodes thought that black Africans were generally inferior, but in terms of cultural development, not biology.”
The Oxford Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology acknowledges that Rhodes was often patronizing towards Africans –referring to them as children – but that a question mark hangs over assertions that he organised “the invasion of ancestral lands” in central and southern Africa. He says:
”The lands that the Ndebele occupied in the 1880s had been seized in their own imperial conquest a generation or two before. The vanquished Shona were reduced to the status of vassals, subject to indiscriminate slaughter upon failure to pay tribute.”
After recapping on 19th century history in a land named after Rhodes, Biggar says: “Rhodes was not a racist. He was an imperialist but only because he believed in the modernity and progress that the British empire of his time represented. . . No doubt the fellows of Oriel College also believe in modernity and progress. Maybe that’s why they’ve rushed to judgment about a Victorian magnate and decided before they’ve listened – because they’re unwilling to expose their ‘progressive’ assumptions about alien people to critical reflection. Just like Rhodes.”
In a letter to the editor (The Times December 19) Julian Pettifer writes: “I can only conclude that those who wish to remove memorials to Cecil Rhodes also support Isis in its destruction of all those archaeological remains in Syria and Iraq that offend its ideology.”
Dr Brian Austin comments: ”Now that Oriel College has rolled over by agreeing to remove the plaque honouring Cecil Rhodes, can we now expect to see the Rhodes Scholarships acquire a new, more politically correct, name? And, presumably, if this is the mood of the moment, then the statue of Jan Smuts in Trafalgar Square will have to come down too. Where does this stop?”
