Not long ago a plaque was put up in Oxford to commemorate those who worked in slave conditions on the Codrington plantations in the West Indies

Not long ago a plaque was put up in Oxford to commemorate those who worked in slave conditions on the Codrington plantations in the West Indies. It is the work of a group that seeks to publicise Oxford's colonial past. In 2017 its activists demanded that the statues of Christopher Codrington be removed from the library of All Souls College, one of the most prestigious and wealthy of Oxford's colleges. In the eighteenth century Codrington had owned three hundred slaves in Barbados, and he bequeathed to the college £10,000 for the building of this library, together with 12,000 books. The group also demanded an end to the glorification of the man. Today the Codrington Library is reckoned one of the most beautiful in the world, so it would hardly be easy to stop glorifying its founder. The college even saw a solo picket: Olufemi Nylander, a graduate, stood with his torso bare, the words All Slaves College written in red across his chest and a chain round his neck. In the end the city council resolved to put up a commemorative plaque, while the college administration refused to remove the statue of Codrington from the library built with his money.