Meander through Oxford’s dark past is more than a woke walk

Far from a ‘woke walk’, it is stimulating, not antagonistic, and disagreements are polite.

The statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oxford University has a star turn on Uncomfortable Oxford’s walking tour.

Rhodes did not fall, for all the sound and fury of those student protests in 2015, but Oxford’s controversial benefactor is, it seems to me, looking rather sheepish as the tour party stands below the statue of old colonialist Cecil and listens to a run-down of the lowlights of his CV.

An imperialist, land-grabbing trader in blood diamonds who believed Anglo-Saxons should run the entire world, Cecil Rhodes is, as they now say, problematic — there were protests even when his statue was erected outside Oriel College in 1911 — but he makes a star turn in Uncomfortable Oxford’s walking tour around the university’s ignoble history.

Two history doctoral students devised the tour at an ideas festival in 2018. Last year, almost 3000 tourists took part and their original program, of which I partook this month, now has spin-offs on artefacts in the Ashmolean ­museum and controversial university donors.

I had feared something earnest and preachy, a “woke walk” about how awful male white privilege is, but Paula Larsson and Olivia Durand have created a 90-minute tour that is stimulating, not antagonistic. Members of the party are encouraged to discuss their own feelings and to disagree, politely.

“There is a diversity of perspectives,” Larsson says. “It is not about blame or shame. There are no easy answers.”

One of our group wants the statue to go, others prefer a plaque put up nearby to challenge him. Let the facts stand for themselves. The most innovative suggestion was that the weathered gargoyles on St Mary’s church opposite could be recarved, as others have been around the Bodleian ­Library, to create African faces who look in silent protest across at their oppressor. Rhodes may not fall but he doesn’t have to be ­respected.

We began at the Carfax Tower, the heart of Oxford, with a history of the violent relationship between town and gown. After passing Rhodes, we turn up Catte Street and stop outside All Souls College to discuss its library, founded in 1710 with a £10,000 bequest (about £1.3m, or $2.48m, today) from Christopher Codrington, who grew rich off the labours of the 300 slaves on his Caribbean plantations. In 2017 a protester stood outside with “All Slaves College” painted in red across his chest. The college responded with a 16-word plaque by the library (visible from the street only when the door is open) remembering “those who worked in slavery”. As one of our party remarks: “It makes it sound like a natural disaster, a mere unfortunate event.”

Yet more is happening: All Souls now funds a scholarship for students from the Caribbean and there are hopes for a research centre into African heritage.

As the tour continues we hear about Merze Tate, the first African-American woman student, recently honoured with a room named after her in the history faculty, and Christian Cole, the first black student, who came from ­Sierra Leone in 1873, earned a place at the university but was not admitted by any college and had to support himself by busking.

After visiting the Oxford Union (Elitist networkers! Boo! Hiss! Boris!), we finish behind St Peter’s at the Tirah Memorial to soldiers killed suppressing rebel tribes in India in 1897. One of our group suggests this “furthers the ‘otherisation’ of the colonies” and criticises the lack of any mention of dead ­Indians. Being less enlightened, I thought it was just a way for soldiers to honour dead pals.

Some might sneer at this attempt to re-evaluate past attitudes but, aside from a coolness when I suggested that a dead historian with problematic views on Africa was not entirely without academic merit, I found the tour and the debate it provoked enjoyable.

Near the end, I ask Larsson if they have any plan to expand the concept to Cambridge, my alma mater. “Which college were you at?” she asks and when I say Trinity she smiles and recalls its founder. “Ah, Henry VIII,” she says. “We could talk about the problems with him for days.”

The Times