Decision over future of Oxford's Cecil Rhodes statue delayed

Cecil Rhodes's statue stands on the building named after him at Oriel College

A decision over the future of a statue of British imperialist Cecil Rhodes has been delayed until the spring.

Calls to remove the Oriel College statue in Oxford were reignited in June last year after a statue of 17th Century slave trader Edward Colston was torn down in Bristol.

A commission was set up to examine the statue's future and said a report would be released this month.

But the date has been delayed due to a "considerable volume of submissions".

A spokesperson for the commission, set up by Oriel College, said a report would "likely be published in early spring 2021 in order to ensure that all input is given careful and due consideration".

They added that restrictions on livelihood due to the coronavirus pandemic had also disrupted the group's work.

Campaigners want the statue removed because they say Rhodes, a 19th Century businessman and politician in southern Africa, represented white supremacy and was steeped in colonialism and racism.

Following protests which saw thousands of people gather in Oxford's High Street to demand its removal last year, the governors of Oriel College voted to take it down, reversing the decision they made in 2016.

But a spokeswoman for the commission said despite the vote, there are no pre-conditions on what the review group can decide.

Protesters gathered in Oxford's High Street outside Oriel College in June 2020

The statue sits above a doorway on the front of the college's Rhodes Building, which faces Oxford's High Street.

The commission deciding on its future includes broadcaster Zeinab Badawi, former Conservative shadow culture secretary Peter Ainsworth and Oxford Labour councillor Shaista Aziz.

It has also been tasked with "considering the issue of the Rhodes legacy" and "themes and issues relating to the history of the college, its donors and memorials".

It has held a series of "evidence sessions" over the past six months but has not reached a decision about the future of the statue.

Oxford City Council leader Susan Brown previously urged the college to apply to the council for planning permission to remove the statue.

Because of its Grade II-listed status, Ms Brown said, it could be "placed in a museum, such as the Ashmolean or the Museum of Oxford".

The Rhodes Must Fall campaign began in South Africa, where a Rhodes statue was removed, and was adopted in Oxford by campaigners who argued his views were incompatible with an "inclusive culture" at the university.

Who was Cecil Rhodes?

• Rhodes was a student at Oxford and a member of Oriel College in the 1870s. He left money to the college on his death in 1902

• He was an imperialist, businessman and politician who played a dominant role in southern Africa in the late 19th Century, driving the annexation of vast swathes of land

• Born the son of a vicar in Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, in 1853, he first went to Africa at the age of 17; grew cotton with his brother in Natal, but moved into diamond mining, founding De Beers, which until recently controlled the global trade

• Rhodes's bequest continues to finance scholarships bearing his name, allowing overseas students to come to Oxford University; among the 8,000 students who have been awarded it is former US President Bill Clinton

• Controversial even in his own time, Rhodes backed the disastrous Jameson Raid of 1895, in which a small British force tried to overthrow the gold-rich Transvaal Republic, helping prompt the Second Boer War, in which tens of thousands died