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Group to hold a mass tour of "racist Oxford", statue of Queen Victoria at Royal Holloway also now a target

Rhodes statue militants now have their eyes set on Queen Victoria

Student demanding the removal ofa statue of Cecil Rhodes outside Oriel College, Oxford University, have widened their down with imperialism campaign by targeting the woman who gave the African entrepreneur and arch-imperialist acharter which gave him a royal seal of approvalfor the exploitation of Africas mineral and other resources in the 19thcentury the legendary Queen Victoria.

On Wednesday this week, hundreds of students many from Commonwealth countries will converge on Oriel College, Oxford University for a tour of racist Oxford where protestors are calling for the removal of a statue of Rhodes, who left over 100,000 to the college in his will after he died in March 1902.

Oxford campaigners claim that forcing ethnic minority students to walk past the Rhodes memorial amounts to violence. They argue that Rhodes helped pave the way forapartheidin South Africa.

A statue of Rhodes was removed in April 2015 at the University of Cape Town after it was attacked as a symbol of oppression.

A statement from the students here said that the sites that will be visited before the march will be part protest and part imperial tour of racist Oxford.

The Mass March for De-colonisation has the support of the National Union of Students black students campaign.

In a statement, the marchs organisers said that the statue of Rhodes was part of a wider struggle for de-colonial learning and the anti-imperialist struggle.

It claimed that white supremacy had been built into the very structures of Oxford Universitys buildings.

The students repeated earlier assertions that the statue of Rhodes was a symbol of both the (British) empire and the philosophy of racial violence andapartheid, the myth of white superiority and the reality of white domination which we are dedicated to dismantling.

A report in The Times (March 7, 2016) said that the activists have had their campaign bolstered by Harvard Law Schools decision to alter its crest and to stop using the term masterbecause of its connotations of slavery.

The decision was backed by Dean Martha Minow.

The original shield depicted three bundles of wheat, an image borrowed from the family crest of Isaac Royall, a wealthy merchant who donated his estate to create the first law professorship at Harvard University.

Royall made much of his wealth through the slave trade.

A spokesperson for Oxford University said:The university supports the rights of lawful, peaceful protest.

Campaigners against so-called imperial violence are also calling for a statue of Queen Victoria to be removed at Royal Holloway, University of London and for Christs College, Cambridge, to sever a memorial fund left by Jan Smuts, the former prime minister of the Union of South Africa.

A statue of Smuts by Jacob Epstein is set on a granite pedestal to the north of Parliament Square which is one of Londons main tourist magnets.

Other statues include one of Winston Churchill, David Lloyd George, Jan Christian Smuts and Nelson Mandela.

The campaign against the Rhodes statue at Oriel College has been on the boil for months.

Now student activists have Queen Victoria in their sights.

The fury of conservatives, traditionalist and monarchists is likely to be public and loud.

The campaign at Royal Holloway focuses on the statue of Queen Victoria at the Founders Building in Egham, Surrey (southern England).

Grace Almond of the colleges women of colour feminism society wrote: That some white students are so defensive over a statue of Queen Victoria, someone who sanctioned so many colonial exploits, shows just how far white supremacy and racism is ingrained at our university.

She added: Queen Victoria was implicitly involved in colonial exploits. She gave Cecil Rhodes a Royal Charter to lead an imperial conquest in southern Africa. If she hadnt have given him the charter, he would not have been able to further colonization of that region of the continent on behalf of the monarchy.

On November 14, 1889 the British Colonial Secretary addressed a dispatch that Queen Victoria had approved a Royal Charter creating the British South Africa Company (BSAC).The Charter granted almost sovereign- like powers to the BSAC under Cecil Rhodes.

In 1877, Benjamin Disraeli (Britains first Jewish prime minister) had Queen Victoria proclaimed as Empress of India a gesture Disraei and most of the Conservative Party he led saw as a way of underpinning the monarchys pivotal role in the spread of empire.