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 Ian Jackson-Reeves on
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I have posted the following on the Council Services Local Democracy & Politics section. This applies to this matter and should be reviewed and considered by all:
Please note that many residents of Black Boy Lane are against this name change as an unnecessary disruption to the residents and is being pushed through a consultation during the worst UK crisis the the UK has seen since the Second World War.
This is not a change to a statue or a single Building. This is a change that disrupts the life of residents of over one hundred buildings, some of which are maisonettes and conversions. So you can imagine the number of adults and children's records that are impacted by this proposal.
Some residents are families of the Windrush generation who's parents moved into the road in the nineteen sixties. Some of those families see no need for the change and the disruption that will result.
It is known that some of the Councilors that are objecting to this motion are Black and come from a part of the world where real prejudice and segregation was experienced.
There are much more pressing issues that impact Black Boy Lane, where such money can be better spent, traffic enforcement is one such issue.
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Permalink Reply by EMC2 on
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"There are much more pressing issues that impact Black Boy Lane, where such money can be better spent, traffic enforcement is one such issue." - and black youth is another.
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Money can be spend on BAME and white youth, however, the subject of the discussion was how to spend money to benefit the residents of Black Boy Lane.
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Permalink Reply by Anna on
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Just a quick update - I realised that under the Freedom of information Act, I forgot to ask for some extra information or external review. New link here.
I have asked to have all internal council communications about the renaming, e-mails, memo, any communication between the Leader, councillors/various committees.
And, inspired (once more!) by a post here, the real final budget.
Finally, also, a more concrete detailed plan of how to access the help offered to te residents during the transition period.
This will come after the end of the consultation, so the decision will have been made, but I think it will be interesting to have the full rationale behind the whole project weighed against the final budget. Basically, even if I think the writing is on the wall, I want to establish a record of residents’ protests and incurred inconvenience + high cost to the borough versus the actual tangibles, factual benefits (I.e not feelings) to the whole borough.
The council will have a lot of documents to produce (apologies for the employee (s) put in charge of this) but since they didn’t mind Black Boy Lane residents having to deal with endless administrative and legal nightmares of their own, I figured they would agree that it is only fair for them to publish every internal email/etc from their side.
It will be especially interesting to read the internal email and correspondence between councillors and the Leader and see if they match with what has already leaked through.
Least but not last, there will be a public record that the whole operation has been executed during the Covid-19 Pandemic.
Again, for whatever record, I have nothing against Mr la Rose, I have nothing against Black Boys either. But I have something about the way this has been bulldozing through the very vocal objections and concerns of every Black Boy lane residents , Haringey constituents in general, a good part of the council and all conducted during a global disaster, when Covid cases keeps peaking and we are all in lockdown again, on top of the cost involved.
We all understand it comes from a good place but there is no historic proof that our street was named Black Boy Lane as a reference to actual slavery, and other than hurting some non-residents feelings, is not a proven danger to humanity. This is a symbolic issue only and it will have to be able to hold its own against the large sum of money earmarked for the project and the fact that the use of this public money took priority on very real, very current, very direct issues affecting minorities in Haringey.
I know that Haringey residents are all in favour to advance the BAME cause and would be onboard to rename parks, statues, office buildings to celebrate Haringey's beautiful ethnic mosaic. I am more than happy to ignore the 'all lives matter' grumblers, but I don't think there will be many of them. The key difference is it will not concern residential areas and will not affect people's homes, people's lives, people's businesses, people's pockets, people's safety and security.
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Permalink Reply by Adrian Hackney on
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A prediction - I hope I'm wrong.
The reply due on 17th Feb will be late, it maybe given as soon as the 20th, the day after the consultation closes.
The reply will set out why you can't have the information. Commercial confidentiality is a favourite, data protection another reason. Or perhaps you will be pointed to the minutes of meetings already published.
And note that the reason they are give for predicting the lateness of the reply is that with a health crisis going on they might not treat your query as top priority. A reason given in this thread more than once for not carrying out the renaming just now.
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To be fair, the council ‘communication team’ has always come back to me when I asked for clarification. Granted, I never thought the answers satisfactory, but that’s another thing. I might be a muppet but I think we will be given access to those documents. Covid excuses would be of particular bad taste, I agree!
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Answers from Haringey are often "unsatisfactory" for the most common and expected reasons. You'll probably be familiar with the sociologist Max Weber's description a century ago, about how bureaucrats' power depends on secrecy.
But Haringey's problems are magnified by other features of Big-Woman/Man and the Strong-Leader models. These include everything having to go through the bottleneck of a Dear Leader or a cabinet egotist so she/he can have a smiling photo and claim credit.
It can get worse. An ignorant, stupid and incompetent Dear Leader may exclude anyone talented from their leadership "team". The writer C. Northcote Parkinson labelled this as a fictional disease: "injelitance" - a fusion of incompetence and jealousy. Members of injelitant teams may survive by smiling and nodding and hoping to fade into the background. As we saw with Donald Trump such "leaders" may start by favouring and rewarding their lackeys. Later shouting, bullying, and belittling them. Eventually sacking anyone they can't control or who they feel threatened by.
Plainly there are a number of real diseases where patterns of infection and outcomes resemble and often provide insights for organisations - sadly including local councils. Take for example the transmission of fashions for risky schemes of financial speculation. These may be or resemble Ponzi schemes. Some councils, including ours engage in these. Developers and their councillor and senior staff mugs and patsies have the pleasure of gambling with other people's money.
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OMG!
A black man using the word "Black Boy" to refer to himself on Twitter!
"I remember when I was a Black boy in Toronto, fresh from Barbados, regularly chased around the schoolyard by racist kids."
https://twitter.com/cameron_tiff/status/1354990007539400707
Should he be banned from Haringey?
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Thank you. The Twitter post forwarded to the BBL consultation committee for their perusal.
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February's edition of Tottenham Community Press carries the story but only Ejiofor's views are entertained.
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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It’s lazy reporting. They’ve essentially rehashed the press release whilst implying what they’re presenting is reporting.
I’m sure their intentions are good, but they need to take more care. They present themselves as a community newspaper, so they should be scrupulous in reporting fairly and labelling a press release as such.
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I submitted a comment on the article to this effect , but I suspect it will not be approved.
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