Rhodes hasn’t fallen, but the protesters are making me rethink Britain’s past | Timothy Garton Ash

The Oxford students have a point. We do need to acknowledge the pain caused by empire

Rhodes Must Fall has failed. Rhodes Must Fall has succeeded. The statue high up on the wall of a college building on the High Street in Oxford will not be removed, instead receding into its former pigeon-spattered obscurity. But the student protest movement has sparked a valuable debate about how Britain deals with its colonial past. I think both these results are good ones.

It was a brilliant stroke of student activism to identify that obscure statue as the target. Every newspaper could print photographs of the honeystone facade in which it stands, looking Brideshead Revisited-cliché Oxford. Dave Spart biffs Evelyn Waugh.

Related: Topple the Cecil Rhodes statue? Better to rebrand him a war criminal | David Olusoga

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