A YouGov survey conducted from 17th to 18th January found that a majority of British people are opposed to taking down Cecil Rhodes’ statue at Oriel College, a proportion in line with Cherwell’s findings about the Oxford student body.
59 per cent of respondents were against removal of the statue. A further 29 per cent were unsure and only 11 per cent were in support of the movement.
At Oxford, Cherwell found that 54 per cent thought the statue should remain and 37 per cent that it should fall, with only nine percent remaining unsure.
A preference for keeping the statue was common across all political demographics. 75 per cent of UKIP supporters thought that the statue should be kept up, while four per cent did not.
Though YouGov found slight variation across region, the greatest amount of support for the statue falling in any given region was 19 per cent in Scotland.
The survey further found that 44 per cent of respondents thought that, “Britain’s history of colonialism is part of our history that we should [be] proud happened,” more than twice the proportion who felt that it was something to regret.
Respondents were more evenly divided, however, on the matter of whether Britain tends to view its history of colonisation too positively, too negatively, or appropriately at 29, 28 and 27 per cent respectively.
This poll comes on the back of one conducted in July 2014 that found that 49 per cent of British people polled believe that countries once colonised by Britain are now better off for it.
The survey’s sample size was 1733 adults with the margin of error not given.
