Kmflett's Blog

After a lengthy campaign given new impetus by the Black Lives Matter movement there is progress at last on taking down the statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oriel College Oxford. Its now down yet though.

It has raised a wider question about Rhodes Scholarships but the impact of the cult of Cecil Rhodes goes much wider than that.

My thanks to those who have reminded me that the school I attended in Muswell Hill, Alexandra Park School Comprehensive had,up to 1964/5 been Cecil Rhodes Secondary. Of course AP was not the same school not least because it was comprehensive with a new sixth form building with the intention, a correct one,that numbers of students would henceforth go on to University.

That aside though the buildings,location and most of the teachers were the same. Of all this Rhodes Avenue and an associated Primary School remain. The date (probably) from the mid-1930s. Cecil Rhodes died in 1902 so the assumption of some is that the connection is with the wider Rhodes family who owned much of the area in earlier centuries.

Quite possibly but keep in mind that this was the period when the cult of Cecil Rhodes was in full swing. He was remembered not as a vicious imperialist but as a great Empire builder, one of those who had made Britain Great..

I cant find that much specific research on the cult of Rhodes in Britain but we do know it existed thanks to a 2005 book by a South African academic Paul Maylam, The Cult of Rhodes: Remembering an imperialist in Africa.

He notes how Rhodes was venerated.

In 1925 the Prince of Wales laid a wreath at his burial site while on the 25th anniversary of his death a service was held where the preacher described the site as a ‘second Westminster Abbey’.

By 1939 the England cricket team had stopped by to pay their respects and on 5th July 1953 on the 100th anniversary of Rhodes birth both the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret were amongst 3,000 people paying their respects.

The era of imperial veneration of Rhodes was drawing to a close by the early 1960s. At that stage even the Tory Prime Minister Harold Macmillan had noticed the ‘winds of change’. Whether the current Cabinet have is another matter.