on 12 November I give a talk for the William Morris Society on the subject of past and present views of British imperialism. Here are the proposed opening paragraphs
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I will begin with or in Oxford, because it is so closely associated with WM and because there contested history of the unlamented British Empire is currently an active issue, as in respect of the sculpted figure saluting benefactor Cecil Rhodes on the external wall of Oriel College and the campaign Rhodes Must Fall.
As you see
it’s modest in size and protected from pigeons by a net that makes Rhodes look
as if he’s wearing a spiv’s checked suit. Demands for removal have prompted a
‘retain and explain’ response from Oriel.
Not far away, on a building where Rhodes lodged during his brief university career, is a complementary plaque praising Rhodes for the ‘great services’ he rendered to his country.
Meaning the
expansion/imposition of British political-economic interests in southern
Africa, extending from diamond exploitation to the nation Rhodesia created in
his name.
In summer
2022, the late unlamented Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries intervened in the
heritage listing process. Historic
England said this memorial did not merit legal protection; Dorries insisted it
was of ‘great historical significance’.
I don’t know the reasons she adduced.
But unwittingly she drew attention to both robber baron Rhodes and his
partner in diamond crime who installed the memorial plaque, Alfred Mosely. [No
relation to Oswald] Both made immense fortunes from the Kimberley
mines and in later life both spent part of this on ‘good works’.
[I suspect
Dorries confused Mosely’s plaque with Oriel’s statue, but as it happens the
former usefully cites Rhodes’s imperial impact rather than college benefaction] Just to recap: Rhodes’s commercial misdeeds
were underpinned by his racist ambition of world domination, to extend the
Empire, by bringing ‘ the whole
uncivilised world under British rule, recovering the US and making the Anglo
Saxon race but one empire.’
I will
return to the question of historic monuments.
But we can agree that WM did not celebrate Cecil Rhodes or his
colleagues in business or politics. To Morris, the British Empire was an ‘elaborate machinery of violence and fraud’. When for example the Colonial and Indian Exhibition opened in South
Kensington in 1886, he suggested alternative displays showing the death and
horror at the core of British policy.
WM’s anti-imperialism was an integral part of his Socialist convictions, but pre-dated those.
