OXFORD students will demand today the removal of a statue of the Victorian arch-imperialist Cecil Rhodes from the university after 1,500 signed a Rhodes Must Fall petition.

Campaigners will gather at Oriel College, where the statue of its imperialist benefactor Cecil Rhodes stands, after being being inspired by a similar movement in South Africa.

Mr Rhodes carved out colonies all across southern Africa and the large territory now split between Zambia and Zimbabwe was named Rhodesia in 1895 in his honour.

Students have called the statue “a veneration not only of the crimes of the man himself, but of the racist imperial legacy on which Oxford University has thrived.”

Student and organising member of Rhodes Must Fall Oxford Charlotte Ezaz told the Star: “Unless we condemn this iconographic veneration we become complicit in perpetuating colonial narratives.”