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 HoL Site Admin on
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This thread has enough ground to cover without opening up the highly contentious issue of whether it is appropriate to label Tambo as a terrorist. This article on QU South Africa offers an introduction. The internet will yield plenty more information. But please leave discussion of this sub-issue for elsewhere.
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Permalink Reply by Stuart McNamara on
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Just a quick clarification in response to your fair point. I perhaps could have made it clearer in my email to the council that I quoted Albert Road Rec to O.R. Tambo Rec as an example of a well-supported and straightforward commemorative change from a benign previous name and didn't intend to directly conflate the two cases as like for like when of course the Black Boy Lane renaming is in contention, especially with the heirs of John La Rose not supporting the use of his name as the replacement.
With regard to your second point, I'd simply say that I disagree as by extension you'd have to apply the same rule to Nelson Mandela and this was the political position of Thatcher who was a supporter of the Apartheid regime. Her view was not only countered by differing and strong arguments back in the 1970s and 1980s but was also shown by the passage of time as being morally wrong. I would hazard a guess that my view on this is reflective of the overwhelming proportion of Haringey residents, both past and present.
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Hi Stuart
Do you mind me asking about the timing of this letter?
Was there any reason that you sent it immediately after the close of the 2nd 'consultation'?
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Hi Will.
I sent the email to the council on Thursday 18th February, the day before the consultation ended; a consultation by the way that I don’t think was particularly transparent when held for 5 working days during a pandemic lockdown. I would have replied to the consultation earlier if I’d known it existed.
Stuart
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Thanks. I suspected that it was either a matter of you not being aware of the issue until recently or a desire to not be seen to be influencing the consultation as a (former) local politician.
I agree with most of your points and would suggest the council also look to the guidance offered by the LGA here.
In particular,
• All sections of the community have to feel heard by decision-makers, but also by each other.
• Councils should avoid telling people how they should feel or making assumptions about how they do feel. Simply telling people they are wrong to be offended (whether they are offended by a statue or by a proposal to remove it) never works.
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It's right to apply the same rule to Nelson Mandela. He changed his position admirably later in life but he was definitely involved in terrorism which is one of the reasons for his imprisonment. Thatcher was right to label him as such at the time. He is lauded because after a democratic election he didn't pursue a policy of vengeance against the white South Africans. Unfortunately not all members of the ANC are the same.
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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I was sent this leter last night. But didn't publish it since I had neither Stuart's permission to do so nor his email address to seek it. However now that it it has been published with his permission, I have reproduced it below so as keep the essential parts of this issue in one place, and to preserve it for future reference (since as I understand it, OpinionN8 will close after its current annual subscription ends).
Dear Councillors,
Change Road Names, But Do It Properly
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When Edward Colston's statue was pulled down in Bristol it was an important turning point, not least because so many people in Britain, including me, never previously knew who he was. That was largely due to the fact that having been schooled in the UK, no one ever taught me, or millions of students like me, about the central role that Britain played in the transatlantic slave trade. It is vital that we understand our history and we are at a crucial history-making moment in Britain right now. There is a long overdue conversation taking place across the country about who our streets are named after and what their contribution, good or bad, was to Britain and the world.
I moved with my family to Black Boy Lane when I was four years old in 1978. We celebrated Christmases there, attended marriages and also funerals whilst living there, including of my father who died on Black Boy Lane in 1983 when I was nine years old. I walked to St Mary's Primary School along Black Boy Lane every school day as a child. As a former resident of the road, I have concerns that the plan to change its name is not a fully formed proposal but rather is being done in a rush.
Haringey Council's recent decision to change Albert Road Recreation Ground to O.R. Tambo Recreation Ground was the right decision at the right time, recognising a great man who spent some of his most important years in political activism in the sanctity of Muswell Hill. It is also right that Haringey Council has launched a wider review. However, it is vitally important that to avoid getting the process wrong three things should be established. Firstly, the facts on a case-by-case basis must be verifiably established. Secondly, the establishment of a rank ordering of the gravity of any offence caused needs to happen, bearing in mind that finite funds and time may not allow for all the sites to be considered for change. Thirdly, there must be a broadly supported plan for what to change any identified roads and sites to, and how.
Black Boy Lane possibly passes one of those three tests for changing an allegedly culturally insensitive road name, yet it certainly does not automatically pass all three. The George Padmore Institute published in its 30th newsletter recently that the family of John La Rose do not agree with the road name being changed to memorialise him. For the plan, as devised, to proceed regardless is unfortunate and obtuse. The Haringey Council webpage detailing the Review on Monuments, Building, Place and Street Names in Haringey does not make clear whether any such review has actually taken place yet. If not, then it begs the question as to why an outcome on Black Boy Lane is being proposed before the review work has taken place, assuming that it could provide the historical authority to support and evidence any such changes. Other councils such as Bristol and Hackney are doing this very thing through commissions they have established.
River Park House in Wood Green was built on the site of the beautiful Carnegie library after Haringey Council authorised its demolition in 1973. The council did the very same thing on White Hart Lane many years later when it authorised the demolition of St Katherine’s, one of the country’s first teacher training colleges and a ground breaking women’s teaching college, as well as the Toussaint L’Ouverture building . Both buildings were demolished to make for the Haringey Sixth Form College with no need and no architectural merit in doing when they could have been blended into the design for the new place of learning. These are certainly not the only such cases and where Haringey Council has undoubtedly made a lot of significant contributions when it comes to fightng for social justice and recognising social change it also has form when it comes to bungling heritage issues and has on plenty of occasions acted with speed, at the expense of historical sensitivity and accuracy.
Why then is Black Boy Lane being prioritised for a permanent, complicated and expensive name change when in any cursory review of the road names of the borough the likes of Henry Havelock, Herbert Kitchener, Redvers Buller, Charles Gordon and James Napier all emerge, and that is only looking at the category of colonial British generals. Havelock and Kitchener have especially brutal résumés, with the latter being in Bruce Grove ward and leading directly to the Broadwater Farm estate.
Residents on Black Boy Lane are being offered £300 per property for the name change which at about 200 properties on the street could be as much as £60,000. It is unclear whether this money would go to a tenant or to a landlord and how that would be determined. It is also unclear if and how this would successfully support a large number of people on the street, including many who do not speak English and may not feel equipped to know how to navigate the formal processes required to change their addresses which is nowhere near as straightforward as it is inferred may be the case. Taking into account the support this may require if it were to be done sensitively and effectively, it could entail the allocation or redirection of a considerable amount of council time and resources which at present are much more urgently needed in the ongoing pandemic battle.
Haringey has often been in its short history a tale of two councils: On one hand, the ground-breaking, change-making borough championing the cause of the downtrodden and developing bespoke solutions for all manner of problems. On the other hand, it has regularly shown itself to be the epitome of slapdash ineptitude, combined at times with divisive virtue signalling, the aim of which has often been little more than the seeking of headline-grabbing political credit for whoever is in charge at the time.
It is wrong in this particular case to change the name of Black Boy Lane to another if there is even a shred of division with the legacy of the late man who it is proposed it is newly named after. It is also vital that this road is not given more consideration than the several other potentially more offensive or anachronistic names that would score more highly in a rank ordering, if such an audit had been done. The proposed Review on Monuments, Building, Place and Street Names in Haringey should be given the remit to actually do some of what it sounds like it was advertised as; otherwise it risks becoming little more than a superficial desktop exercise. To fail to do this important work with the due diligence and attention to detail it deserves, to throw over £300,000 at it for one street with no objective argument made that it is the most worthy candidate for change, and to do so during the height of a deadly pandemic, is ill-advised and could well likely be referred to in the months and years to come as a worthy job done badly and on the back of a fag packet. Haringey's residents and its diverse communities this important project is being done in the name of deserve for it to be done with objectivity, and erudition and not in haste.
Stuart McNamara
Former Resident of Black Boy Lane
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Stuart’s email is well reasoned.
Although I’d challenge Stuart’s assertion that “Haringey Council's recent decision to change Albert Road Recreation Ground to O.R. Tambo Recreation Ground was the right decision at the right time, recognising a great man who spent some of his most important years in political activism in the sanctity of Muswell Hill.”
Stuart goes on to propose three tests which should be applied prior to changing a name (broadly, to establish the facts, to establish the gravity of offence caused, and for there to be a broadly supported plan). In the case of Albert Road Rec, the Council has not showed that the existing name is offensive, nor that it has caused offence. In addition, the Council ran an online poll (open to people worldwide, with multiple responses by the same person permitted) whereby only 51% of respondents favoured the name change.
It’s therefore not at all clear that any of Stuart’s tests have been satisfied in respect of the change to Albert Road Rec.
I also worry that Stuart’s suggestion that the names of other roads/places should be considered will be like a red rag to a bull unless clear criteria are set out.
If I could propose to the Council five criteria which must be satisfied prior to which a name change should be made, they would be the following:1. What is the etymology of the name and is there any evidence to support those who claim it offends them?
2. Who are the ‘offended’ and how many are they in number? Why are they offended and, depending on the answer to 1 above, can they be educated to overcome their sense of being offended? The sensitivities of a small group (or even just an individual hoping to signal their virtuosity) should not be imposed on the majority.
3. If sufficient numbers are offended, would a change in name resolve the issue? Are the alternative names fairly selected and are they acceptable to the majority?
4. When should the change be made? Is it correct to make the change during (for example) a global pandemic and does this impact negatively on whether individuals can be heard (per 2 and 3 above)?
5. What is the cost of making the change - both in terms of public funds and to private individuals? Should the change still be made when this is balanced against 2 and 3 above?
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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On the issue of Albert Road rec, I don’t think anyone claimed it was offensive. Instead it was seen as a way to commemorate someone who lived locally.
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In which case, your reasoning could be applied to support renaming Black Boy Lane in commemoration of John Le Rose.
I think objective criteria should be applied prior to changing any name. Allowing the Council to change names on a whim (for political gain or for reasons of virtuosity) is a dangerous road to go down.
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Frankly I couldn’t care less
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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Changing the name of a recreation ground where nobody lives is one thing, changing the name of a street with 200 households on it to the name of a man who's family object to it, is another. Surely.
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