Hello, welcome to a new series of legacy.

And today we're in your hometown, Peter, in Oxford, standing underneath the statue of a man

who, until recently, had been somewhat forgotten in Britain.

That is, until a campaign to get this statue removed.

Take it down! Take it down! Take it down!

It is unacceptable for a university in the 21st century, like Oxford, to have figures

like Rhodes glorified. The idea that we should remove his statue is completely wrong. Leave him.

We're talking about someone who created his own colony so that he could paint the map of Africa, British Red.

There are some that want to cancel, those who seek to erase our history.

Shut down a view they disagree with, rather than argue against it.

This country is overdue a conversation,

a really sophisticated, nuanced conversation about the legacy of empire.

Cecil Rhodes, a name that has recently become a byword for the worst of British imperialism. But for all of his

life and most of the century after his death, here in Britain, Rose was overall quite a celebrated

figure. And a perfect example of this is the statue that we're standing under Affle in the rain,

which was erected in his honour at Oriel College in 1911.

It is a rainy day in Oxford.

It reminds me a lot of when I was an undergraduate here,

but something that has changed since I was a student here is that there is a plaque on the wall underneath that statue of roads,

which describes him as a committed British colonialist

who exploited the peoples of southern Africa. And the plaque adds, in recent years,

the statue has become a focus for public debate on racism. In June 2020, Oriel College declared its

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