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 note your comments but I’m totally against changing the name. However if this has to be why should it be a name of any persons of any ethinicity? Why a Jamaican as suggested by you? In the 70s a vast amount of cypriots came to haringey, then the Kurds, not forgetting others. Why not from them? And who is the council leader to be the one to consider this? I personally am furious in a time when they are cutting care, when the streets are in a mess, where crime has gone up and money is wasted on changing a name!
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Seems to me that the range of views expressed on HoL are a useful - if skewed - sample. Even more useful if all local councillors took a look and reflected on the different perspectives and points raised.
Anyone seen a similar discussion on another local website? (Publicly available. Not a private What'scrap echo chamber.)
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Reading all continued comments there are so many people against this name change. Is there a way of doing some sort of poll to see how many actual haringey residents agree with the change? I am also again stressing all I saw was a note by the haringey leader asking people to write to his email and never saw any public vote over this. I am furious about this and as a resident of haringey for 56 years living in the same street and my parents since 1961 think we have a right to vote on this and being denied this as we don’t live on black boy lane is unfair
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I completely agree Nick, I'm sure we could find links (albeit tenuous) to past colonial activities in the borough, Rhodes Avenue, the roads between Wightman and Green Lanes, mostly military. Where do we stop?.
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Permalink Reply by Colinloves on
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As a life long Anti-Racist and supporter of BLM, Im against this.
There is no proof of it relating to black people. Yet, its being renamed, for Black people.Unless there is evidence of a negative representation of black people - it should of been left alone.
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I find all this meddling with our history so very sad. I was born in Tottenham and remained there for 23 years. It is MY home, always will be. I attended Woodlands Schools so Black Boy Lane was an everyday sight to me. I can't recall any of us kids sniggering over the name. It was just a name. As was Wightman Road. And the pub as we were growing up never raised a comment between us or any locals that I know. We used the Black Swan near High Cross. Found out some time later that it had been renamed The Swan !!! Pandering to the few. One of my very best mates down our road was Jamaican, known each other since age of six. I can't stand the sight of 25 or so men kneeling before a football match. Why still do this? Black Lives Matter of course. BUT surely EVERY LIFE MATTERS. There are racists out there but I think BLM provokes and feeds them. I moved out to Norfolk in 72 where a local road was and still is named, White Woman Lane. A local pub is The White Swan. No problem, they have been so named for centuries. Why can't we all move on and live harmoniously. What's gone is gone. Can't be changed. Lessons learned. Sad. Very good comment by Colinloves
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Thanks, Hugh, for the links you provided.
I seem to be having a similar problem as you finding minutes which give more and - especially - detailed information on the discussion decision-making process leading up to this proposal.
The little I've found tends to suggest your headline may be right: the decision has been made. And possibly the only issue remaining is whether the new streetname should be John La Rose or Jocelyn Barrow. At least that is my impression from the"Black Boy Lane Renaming Consultation" online form.
It insists that only residents and businesses on Black Boy Lane are allowed to fill it in. And it asks only two substantive questions. Most of the remainder of the online form is taken up with requests for personal details.In Hugh's information above the link Leader@haringey.gov.uk is given. Apparently it's for others who have wider concerns. It might suggest that Cllr Joe Ejiofor himself is leading on this issue.
The webpage also suggests that changing this streetname is part of a wider project.
"In response to the Black Lives Matter movement, we announced our Review on Monuments, Buildings, Place and Street Names in Haringey on 12 June 2020."
I assume therefore that staff at the Council may be spending their days checking-out the name of my street or your street. So I'd better say that I live near several roads named after soldiers who fought in one of the Boer Wars.
To go back to the online survey, it says the "consultation" began on Monday 28 September 2020 and ends on 26 October 2020. So residents and traders now have only three weeks to reply. Luckily nothing else of any importance whatever is going on. For example, the pandemic is over. Everyone has kept their jobs and/or businesses. They have no concerns about their kids' health or schooling. Nobody is worried sick about elderly or other vulnerable family members, friends, or neighbours. Nor has anyone got sleepless nights about their bank overdraft. Nor their Council Tax. Nor fixing the plumbing. Nor the risk of a second lockdown.
Well, yes, it's the perfect time to focus on streetnames.
But there remains a small issue of cost. Personally, when the letter arrives from Joe Ejiofor telling me he's changing the name of my street, one question I'll ask him is how much I and all my neighbours are going to have to pay for all necessary legal and administrative changes needed.
I won't ask him whether he considered ways other than streetnames to celebrate and mark the achievements of deceased Haringey residents. I guess that's not his thing. But it does seem that there are other ways to use the substantial sums of cash the "Review on Monuments, Buildings, Place and Street Names in Haringey" might cost in total.
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Boer Wars may be all right, Alan. It's probably still OK to have bashed up the Afrikaans who invented apartheid.
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Hi,
I agree with what you say on mnay things here about the renaming of BBL not that BLM is an extreme left political movement. It is a legitiate movement that seeks to right a lot of the great injustices meeted out to certain ("black") people over centuries.
You wouldn't say that if is was about anti-semitism which receives a completly different treatment the world over.
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Are you deliberately engaging in misinformation?
As someone who is of mixed heritage I will no longer respond to your posts.
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Are you referring to me? If you are I’m not sure what misinformation you refer. And for others reading I’m from an ethnic minority group where my parents came over in the 50s to work here.
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