The Oriel dons are right: Rhodes should not fall

Cecil Rhodes’ contemporary, Rudyard Kipling, put it best: ‘If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs…’ That Rhodes’s statue will not fall is the result of a serious, difficult, but careful collegiate decision by the board of 47 fellows of Oriel College. It is good that Oriel dons kept their collective heads, for all about them – as Policy Exchange’s History Matters Project has documented in recent months – are institutions far too readily acquiescing to noisy activism, demanding that condemnation, denunciation and erasure is the only way to go.

‘Retain and explain’ is a far better path to follow than the one known as ‘cancel culture’. What does ‘retain and explain’ mean in practice? That is a good question and Oliver Dowden, the culture secretary, has put together a group of us to work out an answer. At its heart, though, is a simple proposition: adding to the sum of historical knowledge is far better than subtracting from it.