The question of whether to remove various statues dotted around the UK has raged since last year. Sparked by the death of George Floyd and the subsequent Black Lives Matter movement (BLM), thousands of statues were defaced, many of which had been linked with the transatlantic slave trade or historic racism. The most memorable scenes were witnessed on Bristol harbour, where the statue of Edward Colston – an English merchant who was involved in the slave trade – was pulled down and thrown into the water.

Since then, almost 70 memorials across the UK have been renamed or taken down.

While many have applauded the move for “decolonising Britain“, others, like Joanna Williams, a leading academic and director of Cieo, a think-tank, argue that the act is the “height of luxury”.

Speaking to Express.co.uk, she said those focused on taking down memorials were unlikely to have any pressing issues on their lives like poverty and joblessness.

She said: “If you campaign to have a statue removed from an Oxford College, you’re not doing anything to help young black kids growing up on a council estate in London, whose biggest worry is about knife crime – and that’s just one example.

“It’s clearly for their own political or intellectual pleasure that they’re doing this.

“This is for their own gratification and bigging themselves up, but it’s the absolute height of luxury.

“It kind of tells you that everything else is fine in those people’s worlds if their biggest problem is a statue that was erected 200 years ago that most people never even bat an eyelid when they walk past it.”

The statue of Cecil Rhodes at Oriel College, Oxford, has been the most recent focus of the statue removal movement.

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Rhodes served as the Prime Minister of the Cape Colony in the late 19th century and was one of the most committed imperialists of his time, playing a dominant role in driving the annexation of vast swathes of land in South Africa.

As a result, many view him as having laid the foundations for apartheid.

Last week, a local Oxford artist said Rhodes’ statue at the university should be fitted with a slave collar.

However, Dr Marie Kawthar Daouda, an African tutor at Oriel College, recently hit out at protestors and university staff, saying Oxford dons should promote equality by raising awareness of places in the world where there is work to be done, rather than “throwing tantrums” over a statue.

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Dr Daouda, originally from Morocco, said that anti-Rhodes “virtue signalling has little to no effect” as she called for “less emotivity” in the way that academics respond to the British imperialist.

This came after around 100 academics at the University of Oxford said they would refuse requests to give tutorials to Oriel College’s undergraduates amid the row over Rhodes’ statue.

The Department of Politics and International Relations (DPIR) at Oxford University also condemned Oriel College’s decision not to remove its Rhodes statue from outside the college building, arguing that his “racist and patriarchal views” were at odds with the values of the university.

Yet, in a statement, Dr Daouda said: “As an African female tutor at Oriel, I would be glad to see less emotivity in the way some members of the university deal with Rhodes and with the whole race craze in general.

“Equally, Victorian and Edwardian patriarchy was in many ways still better than the conditions girls and women currently endure in several African countries.

“On the virtue-signalling scale, some causes definitely score higher than others.

“The DPIR is in an ideal position to promote equality and diversity by raising awareness about places in the world where there is still much more work to be done than under the dreaming spires.

“Fussing that much over a statue is a dazzling sign of Western privilege.”

In May, Oriel College was accused of “institutional racism” after its governing body said it would not seek to move Rhodes’ statue.

An independent inquiry into its removal had been set up last year in June.

While a majority of members on the commission supported the college’s original wish to remove the statue, it this year decided against it, arguing that there were “considerable obstacles” in the way.