Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Council Decides to Rename Black Boy Lane
Following my consideration on the origins of West Green's Black Boy name back in the summer, Haringey Council has decided to rename Black Boy Lane in West Green.
The Council have called the exercise a 'renaming consultation', but the online questionnaire offers only the ability to choose from a shortlist of two new names. So it appears that the decision to rename has already been taken with only the choice of name left to be decided.
They have issued the following press release.
The council has launched a renaming consultation with residents and businesses located on Black Boy Lane, as part of the wider Review on Monuments, Buildings, Place and Street Names in Haringey – which was launched on 12 June 2020, in response to the Black Lives Matter movement.
The council believes that the names of our monuments, buildings, places and streets must reflect the values and diversity that we are so proud of in the borough. One of the street names that has been identified as not being reflective of this is Black Boy Lane.
Meanings change over time, and the term “Black Boy” is now most commonly used as a derogatory name for African heritage men.
As part of the consultation, the council is asking residents to consider new alternative names that celebrate some of the borough’s most notable influencers, and truly reflect the borough’s rich heritage.
The two names that have been shortlisted for residents to consider are, ‘Jocelyn Barrow Lane’ and ‘La Rose Lane’. The consultation will launch today, Monday 28 September and will run for a period of 4 weeks to Monday 26 October 2020.
Letters will be arriving on Black Boy Lane residents' doorsteps this week, who can respond to the consultation using one of the following methods:
- Online: www.haringey.gov.uk/renaming-black-boy-lane.
- Email:
- bblconsultation@haringey.gov.uk
- Telephone: 020 8489 3797
- By post: Consultation Co-ordinator, The Communications Team, River Park House, 225 High Road, Wood Green, London, N22 8HQ
If Haringey residents have concerns or queries about place, street or building names in the borough, please get in touch. Send your views to Leader@haringey.gov.uk.
Bios:Dame Jocelyn Anita Barrow (15 April 1929 – 9 April 2020) was a Barbadian/Trinidadian British educator, community activist and politician, who was the Director for UK Development at Focus Consultancy Ltd. She was the first Black woman to be a governor of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and was founder and Deputy Chair of the Broadcasting Standards Council.
John La Rose was a publisher, poet and essayist. He founded the Caribbean Artists’ Movement and publishing company New Beacon Books which has a bookshop in Stroud Green. In 1975, he co-founded the Black Parents Movement from the core of the parents involved in the George Padmore Supplementary School incident in which a young Black schoolboy was beaten up by the police outside his school in Haringey.
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Tags for Forum Posts: blackboy lane name change, review on monuments, building place and street names
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Nick Eftychiou on
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I’m not very good at this, but can someone show me how to start some poll or petition about this. Reading these comments has made me more sure that it’s not as many haringey residents who agree this change rather than the council leader.
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Permalink Reply by Anna on
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If anyone wants to join me fighting this, please write to the councillors !
Also thank you for everyone weighing in, you all made some valid points and helped me getting an idea of all the problems we’ll face if going through with it, including high costs for Black Boy Lane residents and the council. I have a Friend/contact inside another borough who told me that the whole thing will cost us/the council £200,000 - £250,000 for the whole thing.
We need that money to go towards real issues in Harringay.
This is the content of my letter - you may agree or disagree with the points I am making, or want to add to this. I am not going to defend or explain myself, and I am sure there are some mistakes, I am not a British native, and I am angry!
To: a href="mailto:joseph.ejiofor@haringey.gov.uk">joseph.ejiofor@haringey.gov.uk>
Cc: a href="mailto:mike.hakata@haringey.gov.uk">mike.hakata@haringey.gov.uk>, a href="mailto:julie.davies@haringey.gov.uk">julie.davies@haringey.gov.uk>Councillor Ejiofor,I have been advised to address you directly regarding the renaming of my street, Black Boy Lane.I can not stress enough how angry my neighbours and I are about being told that our street will change, without being able to have our say - and be faced with a choice of 2 names, like a fait accompli. The debate is NOT if La Rose or Barrow were worthy individuals, because they seem like they each have achieved great things. This is NOT about race, it's about the complete disregard to the residents of the street, a 'woke' pet project at great cost to your constituents.I understand Black Boy 'sounds' offensive, but is it?Firstly, there is absolutely no uncontested proof that the historical connection is directly linked to slavery, racism, other crime against humanity based solely on the colour of one's skin. Because from the research I have done, no-one knows if it was named after a chimney sweep, a horse or a king.This frankly feels like a virtue signalling empty gesture that will cost a lot to Haringey Council and greatly inconvenience the street's residents.Furthermore, if you want to celebrate one particular ethnicity, doesn't that exclude the rest of us, residents, your constituents, coming from all over the world?On the top of my head, those are things associated with changing all of the paperwork for us I can think of:- Utility companies e.g. internet, telephone, electric, gas, water
- Bank accounts
- Mortgages
- Credit ratings
- Insurance: home, contents, etc
- NHS / GP / hospital / pharmacy information
- Tenancy agreements, deposit agreements etc
- Internet shopping / delivery addresses
- Businesses / self-employed – Companies House, websites, stationery, business accounts, invoices, contracts
- National and international address grid/algorithms, including Royal mail network, addresses linked with accounts for online shopping etc. Will they sync up?
- PLUS many of us on the street are non British/EU citizens - all of our visas/settle status are dependent on our address, and on the fact that everything matches with bank/governmental agencies records and ID papers. We're of all creeds, including BAME residents, and absolutely no-one thinks this is a good idea. You are going to put us ineven more precarious positions, as well as cost us money and time. Covid is a mess, Brexit is a mess. You are going to endanger/impoverish us for the sake of a feel-good idea. You're supposed to be in our corner, to help us. We voted for you.
Regarding all incurred potential expenses, I would expect a compensation of a minimum£3000 per household or more as some of those will involve lawyers .On the council side, these are the costs you will have:- Compensation as outlined above for each household - there are about 140 houses in the street, and more than half of those houses are divided in two or more units.
- The compensations will be even more for the businesses on Black Boy Lane.
- Changing the ordinance surveys
- Changing all Haringey in-house paperwork
- Signage /bus signage
- Salary of dedicated employee hired solely to help the residents to get their paperwork straightened
- Salary of Council employees, plural, that will be able to translate the whole mess to English as a Second Language residents.(top of my head, turkish, french, italian, greek just for starters)
So including the per household compensation, the total cost to the council will easily be north of £250,000.If you want to do something for our street, fix the playground equipment in Chestnut Park. Add safety measures to eradicate drug dealing. Put those £250, 000 towards increasing road safety around Chestnut Primary. Black Boy Lane's traffic is horrendous and often blocked when two buses pass each other. It's neither here or there, but I work for an Educational charity in Haringey and I personally would like to see that money go to very real, very alive black or BAME boys and their families. They have been struggling even more during the pandemic, £250 000 will allow a lot of them to get access to technology, a laptop and Wi-Fi and be able not to be left behind when a lot of classes are moving into remote learning. That alone would be a worthy goal.Again, Black Boy Lane residents are from all over so do not pin this on us being typical racist bigots. This feels to us like you are using us for personal PR gains/furthering your political career. We want proper assurances that our lives will not be disrupted because of an empty value-signalling gesture.We want to know what sort of compensations and help you will offer to us. This we will need to be in writing. For home-owners, business owners, renters and landlords alike.
We want to know exactly how you will ensure the transition regarding all things administrative, listed above, that the residents are going to be faced with. What course of action/how much of Haringey's council budget it will cost/the direct contacts of the council employees that will help us with all the inevitable bother stemming from that little flight of fancy.
Are we going to get some sort of Council/official document stating the change of street name?
Would the new street name plaque 'include 'formerly Black Boy Lane' underneath?
What are the assurances that whatever national system used to automatically check addresses from a postcode will correctly and consistently indicate that N15 3AR is 'new name' Lane and not Black Boy Lane? Will they tie up with all state systems like HMRC/Home Office?
For those of us that already spend thousands getting our residency/nationality/settled status - we'll need free access to an immigration lawyer firm that will undertake the tasks of making sure everything is as it should be and synch the change of address on all the relevant documents.
Again, do not try to make it as if it is a race issue. This doesn't really fly in a multi-cultural, integrated and mostly harmonious community like ours. I do not want to hear any 'I am sorry you feel that way' because we are not dealing with feelings here, albeit maybe just yours. We are dealing with the REAL lives of REAL people living on Black Boy Lane - and, in a larger context, all the Haringey residents and businesses who would actually benefit from these however many tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands this little exercise in political correctness will cost all of us.If you are going to go ahead with this, the minimum you can do is to come and explain to us directly how much of a good idea it is, that it is for the greater good and alleviate our concerns with a clear plan, compensation offers, solid assurances of legal and governmental support.Alternatively, can we please just forget about this and not take it further?
I, and the rest of the street residents, will await your answers and the points I raised above.Respectfully,
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I wish you the very best of luck with that petition Anna. I was born half mile or so from Black Boy Lane, attended Woodlands Park/Chestnuts infant and primary schools and so the area holds lots of precious happy memories. I "emigrated" to Norfolk in '72 but enjoy past and present info through HoL.
I would say resident ethnicities have altered beyond comparison since my living there but it would be great seeing all come together over this cause.
But if a name change is deemed essential then how about historical references such as : Hospital Lane, Station Road or back to Hangar Lane ???
Good luck Anna (and all opposed to scheme).
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Having read the above, three points occur to me:
Firstly, there is, or was, a perhaps-informal policy of waiting at least 50 years from a person’s death before erecting a public statue, presumably on the grounds that anything critical coming out of the woodwork about them would have emerged by then, so perhaps the same policy should apply to street re-naming too? After all, various arts organisations have had to rename sponsored spaces when their benefactors turned out to be scammers and a (mythical) “Jimmy Saville Road” wouldn’t have looked so clever when the supposed “hero” was unmasked.
I support Nick’s point about ethnic minorities in Haringey: figures suggest the borough’s schools host native speakers of more than 70 languages and, while not all communities are long-established, many have been here for at least enough decades to have a claim to consideration for (re-)naming rights. Many London roads reflect geographical features, so if — and only in the opinion of those who live there — “Black Boy” is really considered offensive, Nick’s suggestion of using “Chestnuts” could well be an appropriate and politically neutral alternative.
Finally, even without 1984 parallels, one needs only to look at many former Eastern bloc states and other totalitarian countries to see a pattern of street-renaming as one politburo or junta member was expunged from the record by later regimes. “History” may be a fluid concept, subject to revision in light of new information or examination from a different viewpoint (eg EP Thomson’s revelatory working-class history), but isn’t where we are now a culmination of all that’s gone before, palatable or not? How does deleting references we now find dubious — rather than explaining them — benefit comprehension or enable humanity to move forward? As examples, Armenians complain that the post-WWI massacres have been denied, Koreans that the WW2 subjugation of “comfort women” has been air-brushed from Japanese history, but denial doesn’t mean the events didn’t happen. If — even though it’s apparently unproven — “Black Boy” has slave-trade connotations, might prominent signage and roadside history panels be a better way of informing people about historical wrongs than appearing to try and deny them by deleting the name?
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Thank you Don, those are great points and the debate on racism/xenophobia as a whole is one always worth having, and to keep fighting against. However, what I want to highlight is that the Lead Councillor is using this as a PR coup designed to further his own agenda and political career while completely ignoring the real issues actual residents of the street will face. Those £250k earmarked for the whole thing can help actual, real, alive and sometimes a bit lost ‘black boys’. That would show everyone that the councillor really cares about the issue. But it won’t be as flashy a gesture like renaming a street with a naughty name like Black Boy, regardless of its residents interests.
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Yeh, for a bit of context, Black residents (mostly of African, rather than Carribbean descent) are about 15% of the population of the borough. I'd dare note that there are now likely more Turkish people specifically on the ladder and surrounding wards.
I feel that's worth noting as well before renaming everything.
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I agree and again it should be put to a vote for all of Haringey residents who actually we as tax payers are funding. I agree also that this council leader has his own agenda and feel he is only interested in a minority of the residents of Haringey. Surely a leader of a Council be representing all the residents. I don’t know who voted or appointed for this leader but I personally think he needs to go....
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My thoughts entirely, although the background of all the LBH councillors seem to reflect the borough I wonder if tokenism is at work. The changing of Rhodes school name just because Thomas was Cecil's uncle, and the changing from Albert to Tambo (Tambo was directly responsible for the murder and maiming of over twenty people) is the type of revengeful thinking you'd expect in the third world. Gentrification and populations are changing quickly, and this will reflect in local democracy, and I doubt if say, the Turkish or Polish contingents could care less about Britain's past 'errors', as most people don't. I hope that this madness driven by a personal whim is fought 'tooth and nail' until it dies a natural death by demographics and common sense.
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Permalink Reply by Christina Davis on
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Is Haringey Council wanting to change the name of Albert Road near Muswell Hill to Tambo Road - I didn't know that. Is the 'Albert' Prince Albert or another Albert....
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Christina, since Albert Road is named for Albertus Magnus, Albert the Great, 'Universal Doctor' and teacher of Thomas Aquinas, Oliver Tambo has some way to go before he is qualified to evict Albert. Unless someone at LBH wishes to argue that since Albertus was from Cologne and is a canonised Catholic saint we can't possibly tolerate him any longer.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Please Eddie tell us
All other green spaces are jealous
Who thought-up this wonderful lark
To name a saint after a park?
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