12 June 2020updated 03 Aug 2021 6:34am

“It was intensely painful“: The Story of Rhodes Must Fall in Oxford

Organisers of the original 2015 movement to challenge institutional racism at Oxford University speak to the New Statesman about that experience, and their hopes for the current resurgence.

By Ailbhe Rea

Protestors hold placards during a protest called by the Rhodes Must Fall campaign calling for the removal of the statue of British imperialist Cecil John Rhodes outside Oriel College, at the University of Oxford on June 9, 2020. - Following the toppling of slave trader Edward Colston during a Black Lives Matter protest in Bristol on June 6, the Rhodes Must Fall campaign has called for a protest action outside Oriel College, University of Oxford where a statue of imperialist Cecil John Rhodes is mounted on the wall. (Photo by Adrian DENNIS / AFP) (Photo by ADRIAN DENNIS/AFP via Getty Images)

“We thought we might get a few dozen people to take interest. When it exploded, and became a full-blown national conversation, it was to our surprise as much as it was to anyone else’s.”

It is 5pm on Tuesday 9 June, 2020, and thousands of people have gathered for the Rhodes Must Fall protest outside Oriel College, Oxford. Against a backdrop of international Black Lives Matter protests and inspired by the toppling of a statue of Bristol slave trader Edward Colston two days previously, the protestors are reviving calls for Oriel College to remove a statue of the 19th-century colonialist and white supremacist, Cecil Rhodes, and calling on Oxford University to decolonise its curriculum.