The governing body of the college has denied that the move has anything to do the reported threat by donors to withdraw millions of pounds in funding to the college.

A statement put up on the college website states that the statue will “stay in place” and that the College “will seek to provide a clear historical context to explain why it is there.” Neither will the college remove the plaque to Rhodes in King Edward Street. “The continuing presence of these historical artefacts is an important reminder of the complexity of history and of the legacies of colonialism still felt today,” the statement argues.

The Rhodes Must Fall campaign has called the decision “outrageous, dishonest, and cynical,” and has accused the College of reneging on its promise made in December 2015 to begin a six-month “listening exercise” of student views and debates around the issue before deciding on whether to remove the statue. The Facebook page of the campaign claims that the College had “also committed to further training on race and equality issues, to funding a series of lectures on the history of colonialism, and to fundraising to ensure further scholarships for African students.”

A Daily Telegraph exclusive on Friday quoted from a leaked internal college document to ascribe the turnaround by the Governing Body to threats from displeased donors to withdraw funding worth more than £100 million if the statue and plaque were to be removed. According to the report, £ 1.5 million worth of donations has already been cancelled.

Oriel College has denied that it is facing any operating losses, and claims that it “does not depend on donations” to fund its operations.

The campaign to remove the statue of Rhodes picked up momentum last year after the statue of Cecil Rhodes was brought down at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.

The Oxford Rhodes Must Fall campaign, which has Rhodes scholar Ntokozo Qwabe as a spokesperson, won a victory last week when the Oxford Union voted, after a heated debate, 245 to 212 for the removal of the statue. Leading the argument for keeping the statue was Nigel Biggar, a professor of moral and pastoral theology at Christ Church, Oxford. He argued that if Cecil Rhodes was a racist, so was Churchill and many other leaders whose historical legacies were both good and bad. "If we insist on our heroes being pure, then we aren’t going to have any,” he said.

The campaign goes beyond the question of Rhodes’ racism, Mr. Qwabe argued. It was “deplorable” he said, that only 24 black British students were accepted last year into undergraduate courses. “It's not just about the statue," he said.