Oxford students targeting the Queen’s portrait are undermining the real battle to reevaluate our history

I don’t take much pleasure in agreeing with Gavin Williamson – but the education secretary is right to describe as “simply absurd” the decision by graduate students at Magdalen College, Oxford, to remove a photograph of the Queen from their common room. It is the sort of deliberately provocative, divisive action that undermines the broadly sensible steps we have all taken in recent years to reevaluate our history.

This decision is small in the grand scheme of things; yet it will alienate many moderates in the so-called “culture wars”, people who want to have serious discussions about statues and museums and the legacy of colonialism in this country. If this is where the story ends, they are entitled to think, then let’s put a stop to it now. It is a great shame; an error of judgement that blights what has, for the most part, been a welcome, necessarily uncomfortable, conversation.

A bit of background might be helpful at this point. On Tuesday evening, it was reported that a substantial majority of postgraduate students from the college’s middle common room (MCR) – which does not represent the college – voted for the print of the Queen, purchased in 2013, to be taken down. Minutes from the meeting note that, “for some students, depictions of the monarch and the British monarchy represent recent colonial history”. One student added: “Patriotism and colonialism are not really separable.”

Both of these things may indeed be true but removing a photograph of the Queen doesn’t make them untrue. It is petulant, tokenistic and, ultimately, self-defeating. This is not the same as the removal of, say, the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol. That statue represented, for many, a very specific, traceable relationship between the city and the slave trade. It would, in fact, be hard to argue that it represented much else and its toppling was welcome and no doubt overdue.

The Queen, on the other hand, means all sorts of things to all sorts of different people. She is also, unlike Colston, our head of state. Having a conversation about the past is fine; trying to erase the present is rather more insidious.

Now of course you might say, well, so what? An image has been removed from a room most of us will never visit. The students at Magdalen College, Oxford, should be allowed to decorate their surroundings however they see fit. Get on with your day. This certainly seems to be the line taken by Dinah Rose, president of Magdalen College. “Maybe they’ll vote to put it up again, maybe they won’t,” she tweeted. “Meanwhile, the photo will be safely stored.”

That all seems reasonable enough but Rose’s next comments reveal what appears to be the true motivation of the students of the college’s middle room. “Being a student is about more than studying,” she wrote. “It’s about exploring and debating ideas. It’s sometimes about provoking the older generation. Looks like that isn’t so hard to do these days.”

And there you have it: this was always about provocation. This has less to do with initiating serious debate about our past – no-one, really, is offended by a photograph of the Queen. It is all about stoking anger, making a statement, sticking two fingers up at the mustard cords brigade.

Fine – students have always done that. But let’s not dress it up as anything else. Because if we do – if we attempt to make a connection between the toppling of the statue of Colston and this minor farce – we risk polluting what has been a largely constructive conversation with the childish pranks of a few postgrads.

These students claim to want real progress and change but their behaviour will have – already has had – the opposite effect. For now, they will no doubt be drunk on the publicity but the hangover might be more stubborn than they are used to.