Rhodes must fall part 2

I refer to my previous post and to yesterday's news announcement that, although the commission supported the statue's removal, it will in fact remain in place for the time being because it would be too expensive to remove it. Which comes across as rather a lame excuse even though I was and still am in favour of leaving things be. Because you cannot change history by merely deleting all reference to it.

It was as an Oriel alumni, I suppose, that I received a long email from the Commission of Inquiry the opening of which I quote below (click on to enlarge), and...

...which ended with a link to the even more verbose full report. The amount of effort and associated expense that must have gone into this conclusion defies my imagination but already the campaigners for the removal have reacted in dismay.

So once again, does my own opinion to leave the statue and associated memorabilia in place (but by all means decorate them with an explanation, for example via a bronze plaque placed at street level, of our present understanding of Rhodes' political agenda), and the education which I received and still enjoy the fruit of and which might have been in some part made possible by Rhodes' endeavours, make me in some way culpable?

Floreat Oriel!

Rhodes must fall

The day before yesterday thousands of people filled The High outside Oriel College to peacefully protest for the removal of the statue to Cecil Rhodes that adorns the frontage to the college. All this in the wake of the toppling of the statue of slave trader Edward Colston in an anti-racism demonstration in Bristol, one of many in the UK sparked by the death of George Floyd while he was under arrest in Minneapolis in the United States last month. The statue, which will probably end up in a museum, has since been retrieved from Bristol harbour early this morning - the absence of protesters that early in the day itself says something.

Cecil Rhodes statue, Oriel College

Quoting, the frontage ...displays a statue of Rhodes himself, under a shell canopy propped by barley-sugar columns. At his feet a relief inscription reads E[X]: LARGA: MVNIFICENTIA CAECILII:RHODES, ie 'Out of the splendid generosity of Cecil Rhodes', the raised letters (here in bold) forming the laborious chronogram LMVIICICILIID (ie, reshuffled, MDCCCLLVIIIIII, ie 1911). the date when the building was completed.

The Rhodes Building owes to the initiative and generosity of Cecil Rhodes, intermittently an Oriel undergraduate between 1873 and 1881, whose £100,000 legacy included £40,000 'for the extension to the High Street of the college buildings': £22,500 was to be for building, the rest to replace income from tenements to be destroyed.

Four years ago there was a similar hue-and-cry to have the statue removed, and then it was apparently quashed when furious donors threatened to withdraw gifts and bequests worth more than £100 million if it was taken down.

The whole business is ridiculous IMHO. Firstly, in order to be consistent, if the statue is to be removed the inscription must also be erased and, indeed, the whole building ought to be demolished as it was built with funds supplied by Cecil. Secondly my own education owes itself in part to Cecil's generosity - in my first year I lived in the Rhodes Building, I came up to Oriel on a scholarship, not the prestigious Rhodes scholarship but it was probably funded in part by the Rhodes' legacy. History is history and should ideally be presented as both truthful and unbiased - yes in retrospect slavery was wrong, yes the holocaust was evil, yes both black and white and any other colour of lives matter and yes I owe my wonderful Oxford experience and its positive effect on my life in some small part to the generosity of a historical figure who represented white supremacy and was steeped in colonialism and racism. Does this make me culpable?

Floreat Oriel!

Oxford

I must have done well in my entrance exams because I won a scholarship.  A small group of us traveled to Oxford for the interview.  It was very cold at the time, and the only form of heat in the room I had been billeted in was a one-bar electric fire set into the wall.  I remember huddling around the fire with many layers of clothing and still feeling cold.  The chairs were upholstered with some hard, coarse material which had as much give in them as coconut door matting. And the nearest toilet and wash-room was down a flight of stairs and across the quad.  I understand that Oriel College has now gone soft with en-suite showers and central heating.

In spite of these (literal) inconveniences I look back at my time in Oxford with great thankfulness.

On going up for my first year I was allocated a room in the north-west corner of the Rhodes building, with the same one-bar electric fire, and nearest loo outside in the quad arrangement. But bliss, oh bliss: in the basement at the foot of our stairwell a wash-room with a concrete floor, several baths long enough to lay down in, open-plan showers with huge shower-roses supplied by 3/4" pipe work, and lashings of hot water.  Everything in one room, open-plan style, but that didn't faze me. To this day this sort of arrangement has been my prototype for the ideal bathroom. Regrettably no one else agrees.

The Rhodes Building - my room was on the first floor to the left

My next door neighbour, Neil Mapley, was a self confessed pyromaniac. More to suppress the traffic noise than to create a warmer environment our windows had sliding "double" glazing panels on the inside.  I remember Neil putting bits of paper in the space between the window proper and this sliding panel and lighting them - I tried to stop him...  I enjoyed several walking holidays and one sailing holiday with him: he's the one with the generous mop of hair in my pictures below. Sadly Neil was killed in a motor-bike accident in Africa a number of years ago.

 Neil Mapley and Mike Attwood descending Helvellyn to the Striding Edge

Neil Mapley and Ranolph Poole on the Norfolk Broads

The 2011 edition of the Oriel College Record article "100 years of the Rhodes Building: its creation and a re-appraisal" reveals that the building was opened in 1911.  I had always assumed it was much older.

Recent picture of the front of the Rhodes Building - my room's window is highlighted

The building is famed for its statues with Cecil himself in South African garb taking the highest position. The inscription beneath his statue reads (when translated from the Latin) "From the great generosity of Cecil Rhodes".  The enlarged letters are a chronogram giving the date of construction, 1911, in roman numerals but involving a little "poetic" license as explained here.

The inscription below the statue of Cecil Rhodes